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Humpback ‘muggings’ being reported on B.C. coast

Whale-watching vessels are receiving unusually close encounters by curious juveniles in the Salish Sea
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A juvenile humpback whale interacts with a commercial whale-watch vessel this week in the Salish Sea.

The whale-watching industry knows them as “muggings.”

But to their paying clients in the Salish Sea, unusually close encounters with certain juvenile humpback whales can be the experience of a lifetime.

“We were held hostage,” Andrea Hardaker, manager of Wild Whales Vancouver, joked of one such experience this summer.

“The passengers loved it. But they don’t know what to expect on the trip. Whatever they see they think is normal. For our guides and the captains, we know it isn’t normal. It can be a little scary.”

Commercial whale-watch operations this past season in the region started reporting young humpbacks approaching closely and interacting with passengers and vessels.

The interactions typically last 15 minutes to two hours, and there’s little to be done but shut down the engine or put it in neutral and wait for the whale to move off. And with humpback populations expanding on the B.C. coast, such events are also expected to increase.

Michael Harris, executive-director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association, said he is aware of a juvenile female humpback approaching boats recently in the San Juan Islands.

He said he’s been working in Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia for 30 years and has “never ever seen this kind of behaviour going on. They must sense this is a safe place to be.”

Jen Dickson, a naturalist with Prince of Whales in Victoria, described one incident last September in Juan de Fuca Strait in which a young humpback repeatedly rubbed its face along the hull of the company’s six-metre inflatable.

“There were some delighted screams,” she said. “It is intimidating to see them that close; they’re so much larger than the boat.”

Cathy Morimoto, office manager with Steveston Seabreeze Adventures, said one female humpback that engaged in the behaviour is known as Windy — and pity anyone found downwind of her blow hole. “Boy, does she stink. Oh man.”

But the whale is also extremely gentle and knows exactly how close to get to a boat.

“She’d go under the boat so her tail would be on one side and her head on the other and she would rub all the stuff off her back on the bottom of the boat. You never felt her, never felt any movement.”

Everyone knew exfoliation was underway because you could see bits of skin and debris coming off in the water, she said.

More than 2,000 threatened humpbacks are thought to feed in B.C. waters before heading to Hawaii and Mexico for the winter. The overall population in the North Pacific is closer to 20,000.

Lance Barrett-Lennard, a whale researcher at the Vancouver Aquarium, noted that humpbacks are intelligent, curious and sometimes social creatures, and that such occurrences are to be expected as their numbers grow and they become accustomed to vessels.

“They haven’t been hunted since the mid-1960s,” he noted.

While such encounters are rare in B.C. waters, they remain a concern to Paul Cottrell, marine mammal coordinator for Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

“It’s important that people remain calm and don’t panic,” he advised, cautioning the whale-watch industry against deliberately seeking out whales known to interact with boats. “We don’t want them to become habituated.”

Canadian laws forbids anyone from disturbing, harassing or killing a marine mammal, and whale-watch guidelines urge boaters to keep at least 100 metres from whales and not park in their path.

Humpbacks reach maturity at nine years of age. Males typically grow to 13 metres and females 14 metres, and weigh 25 to 40 tonnes.

Hardaker said the term “mugging” originates in Hawaii, where the behaviour is more common, and believes these are the first such reports in local waters.

Humpback biologist Jim Darling said in Tofino, some female humpbacks in their Hawaiian breeding waters are known to “use the boats to avoid unwanted males” and may even keep their belly up against the underside of the hull.

Wild Whales Vancouver had up to 10 close encounters this season in the southern Strait of Georgia, mainly near Galiano Island, and estimated two juvenile humpbacks aged three to five (not travelling together) were responsible.

The whales typically rolled on their backs and sides next to the boat and looked up at the passengers. One even placed its head on the boat while spyhopping, a behaviour in which the whale rises up vertically to look above the water surface.

“It was slow and gentle, not aggressive,” Hardaker said. “Just kind of curious, I guess.”

Hardaker fears what might happen should a humpback try to befriend a bigger, more dangerous, vessel. “It’s concerning. If they pick a ferry or tug boat, they could get seriously injured.”

Luna, a juvenile killer whale, befriended humans on the west coast of Vancouver Island before being struck and killed by a tug in 2006.

In 2012, The Vancouver Sun reported several incidents involving so-called “friendlies,” grey whales accustomed to close human interaction with tourist boats in the breeding lagoons of Baja California in Mexico over the winter. They approached unsuspecting pleasure craft in the Barkley Sound/Broken Group area off the west coast of Vancouver Island.