BC Ferries passengers were given quite the treat on Halloween — but instead of gaining from all that candy, they shed some water weight, according to one YouTube commenter, who saw this super pod of more than a thousand dolphins swimming along with the ferry on the Strait of Georgia firsthand: “Absolutely amazing,” passenger Diane Williams wrote of the video posted by Rob Maguire. “Moved me to tears. In 35-years of traveling to Mayne [Island] I have never seen such a sight before.”
These peaceful guys, along with other sea creatures, are endangered by the increased tanker traffic from the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, Kinder Morgan’s planned expansion of the Trans Mountain line to Burnaby, and a proposal to ship jet fuel up the Fraser River, which would intensify ship noise and increase risks of spills. The Enbridge Project alone would add 200 ships per year to the coast.
“You forget what extraordinary wild animals the orcas are, what extraordinary animals the dolphins are, and how they live their lives,” says Dr Rob Williams, marine conservation biologist, alumnus of UBC and head of Oceans Initiative. And, of course, their lives depend on being able to hear signals — like an orca is coming. That reminds us how important it is to keep the ocean as quiet as possible so that they can hear what they need to hear.”