{"id":7641,"date":"2025-07-19T08:39:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T08:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7641\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T08:39:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T08:39:03","slug":"how-vancouvers-urban-orcas-foster-connections-community-among-whale-watchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7641\/","title":{"rendered":"How Vancouver\u2019s urban orcas foster connections, community among whale-watchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Orcas swim in the Vancouver harbour on June 14. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen this ever in my life. I feel so lucky, to be honest, to see that here, in nature,\u201d Jaksuwong says.Chatchawan Jaksuwong\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Chatchawan Jaksuwong says he used to feel empty when he looked at the ocean.<\/p>\n

But after encounters with whales in the urban waters of Vancouver the photographer now feels a deep sense of connection, and he\u2019s found community with fellow enthusiasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a switch from that feeling that I used to have before to, I don\u2019t know, let\u2019s say (a) warmer feeling,\u201d says Jaksuwong, who moved to the city from Thailand about two years ago.<\/p>\n

He grows emotional as he describes the new-found sense of expectation when he gazes at the ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know there\u2019s something there that makes you feel OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaksuwong is among a growing community of whale fans who track and share the surging number of sightings around Vancouver.<\/p>\n

Experts say the return of orcas, humpbacks and other marine mammals has been decades in the making, following the end of commercial whaling in British Columbia in the late 1960s along with the wind-down of the large-scale culling of seals and sea lions, the primary food for certain killer whales.<\/p>\n

Andrew Trites, who leads the Marine Mammal Research Unit at UBC, says whales are the \u201cambassadors of the Salish Sea,\u201d and their recovery is an opportunity to boost public awareness and encourage protections for their habitat.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople care about what they see, and unfortunately, they see very little below the water\u2019s surface to understand the richness of life and the need to maintain a healthy ocean,\u201d says Trites, a professor in the school\u2019s zoology department.<\/p>\n

Jaksuwong once saw a whale from a distance during a tour off Vancouver Island. But he says he never expected to see whales from shore in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m obsessed with orcas,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cIt\u2019s my thing now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one encounter last month, he raced to catch up with a pod of whales reported to be passing Stanley Park. He caught a bus, then ran to the middle of Lions Gate Bridge that overlooks the city\u2019s Burrard Inlet in hopes of an overhead shot of the whales using his telephoto lens.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never run that fast before (with) the gear and stuff, right?\u201d he recalled in an interview. \u201cIf it\u2019s meant to be, it\u2019s meant to be. That\u2019s what I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was greeted with scenes worthy of a wildlife documentary \u2014 the whales were hunting a seal. Several of his photos show blood in the water roiling around the orcas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen this ever in my life. I feel so lucky, to be honest, to see that here, in nature,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Jaksuwong was \u201cover the moon\u201d to capture a photo of a young orca leaping out of the water, a moment he had been waiting for, he says.<\/p>\n

He shared the photos with the Facebook group \u201cHowe Sound and Sea to Sky wildlife sightings,\u201d devoted to tracking and sharing encounters with orcas and other wildlife in the region. It has almost 27,000 members.<\/p>\n

That day, June 14, the orcas had a bigger audience than usual \u2014 a crowd was gathered at Locarno Beach to watch a triathlon, with the whales stealing attention from the finish of the men\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

Jaksuwong joined the Facebook group in May, when a grey whale known as Little Patch spent several weeks feeding in Vancouver\u2019s waters. <\/p>\n

Since then, he\u2019s become friends with fellow enthusiasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe share our interests and we kind of like text each other, \u2019whale here, whale there,\u2019 and then we go see them together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Seal population has been stable for some years, kept in check by the orcas, but they have spread to areas where people are more likely to see them. This is a sign that, \u201cif people just got out of the way, then Mother Nature can heal itself,\u201d Trite says.Chatchawan Jaksuwong\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Erin Gless, executive director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association, which represents 30 companies in both B.C. and Washington state, says there has been an \u201cexponential increase\u201d in sightings around Vancouver in recent years.<\/p>\n

It has given whale-watching operators the opportunity to share stories about the whales as individuals, fostering a sense of personal connection, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to tell you that this humpback is nicknamed Malachite, and he was born in 2021, and he goes to Mexico in the winter,\u201d Gless says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re really trying to do is put a much more personalized spin on these animals, so that they\u2019re not anonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trites says he came to B.C. around 1980 and \u201cnever thought\u201d he\u2019d see a humpback in local waters in his lifetime, after whaling decimated the population. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt took the humpback whales a century to find their way back here again,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

There were no other marine mammals to be seen regularly either at Vancouver\u2019s Spanish Banks beach or the Stanley Park seawall, he says, after the culling of seals and sea lions in the name of safeguarding fisheries.<\/p>\n

The end of the cull around 1970 laid the groundwork for the long-term recovery of Bigg\u2019s killer whales, also known as transient orcas, which hunt mammals.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we go basically from looking at what I would say was a relatively empty ocean in terms of marine mammals to one now that literally any day I can go and find a whale or a seal or a sea lion or a dolphin or a porpoise,\u201d Trites says.<\/p>\n

The seal population has been stable for some years, kept in check by the orcas; but they have spread out to areas where people are more likely to see them, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it\u2019s a sign that if people just got out of the way, then Mother Nature can heal itself,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

There is an exception, however, in the story of recovery, Trites says.<\/p>\n

Bigg\u2019s orcas differ from the southern resident killer whales that frequent the Salish Sea in the summer months. That population is endangered and at risk of extinction due in large part to declining numbers of their preferred prey, chinook salmon.<\/p>\n

In Vancouver\u2019s busy waters, whales are also at risk of ship strikes, Trites says, while noise from vessels disrupts their ability to feed and communicate.<\/p>\n

Gless says people are lucky to be part of the story of the whales\u2019 return, but \u201cwe need to keep it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t be like, \u2019Oh, they\u2019re recovered enough, so now let\u2019s go ahead and build this new pipeline or increase shipping traffic.\u2019 Those are all things that still concern us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaksuwong, meanwhile, continues to watch for whales, monitoring sightings and making his way to the seawall as often as he can, alerting others along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see the look on their face when they see the orcas,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s rewarding for me too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Orcas swim in the Vancouver harbour on June 14. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,66,865,61,900,892,886,323,883,913],"class_list":["post-7641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-science","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-wildlife","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}