Explosions are not new events in the waters around Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula.
The Royal Canadian Navy has been setting off explosives at the test range on Bentinck Island, near Race Rocks, for nearly 70 years. Last summer, it conducted explosive demolition training at the range.
The U.S. Navy has had authorization for decades to conduct testing and training in Juan de Fuca Strait and Puget Sound. The current permit, which authorizes, for example, testing and training with sonar, firing torpedoes and dropping bombs from aircraft, could result in 51 incidents that disturb a southern resident killer whale’s behaviour each year.
Training and testing plans on both sides of the border are supposed to consider impacts on marine life. Many, including Washington state’s governor, consider the risks of these activities to sea life too great, especially for the critically endangered southern resident orca. Many marine scientists say our understanding of potential impacts are inadequate, increasing the risks.
They’re probably right.
But that any marine life other than economically valuable salmon and herring is considered at all is a huge step forward from earlier thinking. Consider, for example, how unconcerned the world was about orca and other marine mammals just six decades ago, when the tops of Ripple Rock, in Seymour Narrows just north of Campbell River, were blown off.
Seymour Narrows are the Inside Passage’s pinch point. Their location, halfway along Vancouver Island’s east coast, means high and turbulent tidal waters, 10-metre-wide whirlpools, boils, treacherous and unpredictable currents, and more. But 65 years ago, twin peaks of an underwater mountain called Ripple Rock also lay just a few metres below the surface at low tide. “Old Rip” had sent about 120 vessels to the bottom, with 114 lives lost.
In early April 1958, after three years of mining and engineering, tunnels within the two peaks were packed with 1,250 tonnes of high explosive. At 9:31 am on April 5, the narrows exploded, lowering one peak by 22.8 m and the other by 14.3 m.
The event was billed as the largest non-nuclear peace-time explosion. (You can view a video of blast at cbc.ca/player/play/1403703364.)
Salmon weren’t running at that time of year, and fisheries officers documented no dead salmon or herring immediately after the explosion and its resulting local tsunami. According to newspaper accounts, red snapper were found floating “helplessly on the water top, bellies distended, eyes bloated hideously,” and “four species of rock cod, not numbering more than 100, were scooped from the swirling waters in the narrows or spotted by fisheries officials.”
The Daily Colonist reported: “Five killer whales must be nursing sore heads. They were spotted heading south towards the rock just before the blast by observers on the tug Phyllis Carlyle. About 10 minutes after the giant explosion, they were seen hightailing it north again.”
A local resident was reported as saying: “Shortly after the explosion, we saw four blackfish swimming below us from the blast area — they seemed to be acting quite funny.”
Orca — killer whales, blackfish — had a bad reputation, so little was known about them. Most fishermen shot them on sight. The public thought they were vicious man-eaters. In 1960, Campbell River–area fishermen proposed bombing the whales from the air. In 1961, the federal government installed a Browning machine gun on Quadra Island to kill whales coming through Seymour Narrows. (The gun was never fired).
Vancouver Sun reporter Jack Scott described the animals in 1964 as having “a mouthful of teeth and disposition that can only be described as perfectly dreadful.”
It wasn’t until an orca was captured alive for the first time and kept at the Vancouver Aquarium that research into the animals began, understanding improved and attitudes changed.
Within less than a decade, the Canadian and U.S. governments banned whaling. Capturing whales for aquaria became seen as unethical and was banned by many local jurisdictions in the 1990s.
Now whales, and in particular orca, are considered iconic species and cultural icons. Research is encouraged and greater understanding is sought.
And, although more undoubtedly could be done, even national laws and public opinion require the Canadian and U.S. military to consider how their activities affect the animals.
