It Costs a Lot to Save a Whale

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published by Hakai Magazine. Read the original story on their website.]

For more than a month, a global audience waited anxiously as rescuers fought against time to save a young killer whale trapped in a tidal lagoon off northwestern Vancouver Island. For the two-year-old female named kʷiisaḥiʔis (Brave Little Hunter), the stakes were high. After all, kʷiisaḥiʔis had watched her pregnant mother become beached and die in the same lagoon on March 23 — a blow to the region’s threatened population of about 380 mammal-eating transient killer whales.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada, also known as DFO, and the nearby Ehattesaht First Nation launched a major joint effort to save the young kʷiisaḥiʔis. Two dozen DFO employees got involved, ranging from senior management to two key killer whale experts who travelled to the nearby village of Zeballos, B.C. The rescue effort leaned heavily on the First Nation, which offered extra hands, the use of the band office, a drone and two vessels, as well as fuel, food and other logistical support.

Rescuers reached deep into their bag of tricks, attempting to lure kʷiisaḥiʔis out of the lagoon by playing recordings of other transient killer whales and banging metal oikomi pipes from boats to direct the young killer whale toward the lagoon’s exit. All attempts failed. The rescuers even plotted to capture the killer whale in a sling and transport her by helicopter back to the open Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, they fed the killer whale emergency rations of harbour seal meat to help maintain her strength.

Then, finally, some good news. On April 26, 2024, kʷiisaḥiʔis swam out of the lagoon on her own at high tide. It was a happy result for all — but not the end of the story.

Federal documents obtained by Hakai Magazine through an access to information request reveal that rather than wrapping up, the tale of kʷiisaḥiʔis has simply entered a new chapter — one where DFO and the Ehattesaht First Nation are now debating how to foot the bill.

While kʷiisaḥiʔis was still trapped in the lagoon, the small Ehattesaht nation, with a membership of about 500 people, said it had been “overwhelmed by the offers of equipment and ideas from around the world.”

But with the young killer whale now safe, the nation’s GoFundMe bid to raise $500,000 has only managed to pull in around $44,000.

And, while the DFO documents claim the agency had made it clear that anyone volunteering in the rescue, including First Nations, would not be reimbursed, the Ehattesaht are “seeking $250,000 in reimbursement from the Governments of B.C. and Canada for their response contributions.”

DFO argues that the Ehattesaht nation is requesting more than it spent. The documents suggest that DFO might be willing to reimburse the First Nation, but the department declined to release further details of the funding issue with the Ehattesaht. Ehattesaht Chief Simon John did not respond to requests for an interview.

According to the federal documents, DFO also racked up big expenses during the rescue operation. As of April 21 — five days before kʷiisaḥiʔis escaped on her own — DFO’s tally had ballooned to more than $260,000. That’s a significant chunk of the Canadian government’s $1-million annual budget for rescuing marine mammals and sea turtles in distress. Known as the Marine Mammal Response Program, that effort “may need to seek additional funding later in the year” to maintain regular programs based on the final costs of the kʷiisaḥiʔis rescue attempt, the documents say.

As the rescue effort stretched on and the costs continued to climb, the documents reveal that DFO cited “high public scrutiny” as a reason not to abandon the young whale in the lagoon.

That, says Jim Harvey, professor emeritus and former director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories of San José State University in California, is a common experience for experts tasked with protecting marine animals.

Wildlife rescues raise fundamental questions about society’s relationship with wild animals. When should people intervene, and when should we let nature take its course? Which species should benefit? And what should the balance be between rescuing wild animals and broader conservation initiatives?

Every animal in distress is a different situation, but Harvey says public pressure and media attention often force rescue authorities to act. From a conservational or scientific perspective, however, it’s not necessarily the most defensible option.

As an example, Harvey points to the time when, as a post-doctoral researcher in 1988, he helped the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration try to save three grey whales trapped in pack ice in Barrow, Alaska. That rescue mission reportedly cost as much as US$1 million, and ultimately, one whale died and two survived.

The thing is, says Harvey, in the late 1980s, the Alaskan grey whale population was in pretty good shape. “That was a lot of money,” says Harvey, that “could have been spent somewhere else.”

Harvey wasn’t involved in the attempted rescue of kʷiisaḥiʔis. “In that case,” he says, “saving an individual, especially a female, might actually be a really important thing to do.”

But the reality is that coping with public pressure is a persistent issue for rescue organizations wrestling with how best to allocate limited resources. On the flip side, publicly displaying rescued marine mammals can be invaluable for education and fundraising.

For Harvey, the argument in favour of rescuing a stranded animal is stronger when humans are obviously to blame for the animal’s plight, such as a whale entangled in fishing gear, and weaker for natural events such as starvation caused by, say, an El Niño-induced lack of food. However, the notion of “natural” has been stretched razor thin by climate change, habitat loss and other issues.

The Marine Mammal Center, based in California, is one of the world’s largest marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation organizations. As Jeff Boehm, a veterinarian and the centre’s chief external relations officer, says: “In the 50 years of this organization, what we’ve witnessed is that in almost every situation we can connect the dots to some action of humans.”

The Marine Mammal Center operates along 1,000 kilometres of California coastline, as well as in Hawaii. The centre’s 2024 operating budget is $22.4 million, and the organization typically responds to as many as 800 marine mammals a year, including California sea lions, northern elephant seals, harbour seals and endangered Hawaiian monk seals. None are considered at risk of extinction, but the public expects them to be rescued all the same.

Even if the rescued animal is not vital to the health of a population, Boehm argues that rescue operations offer other benefits. For instance, the Marine Mammal Center’s rescue work has helped scientists better understand the health risks faced by these animals, including the impact of toxic domoic acid (a product of some algal blooms) and the prevalence of urogenital cancer among California sea lions.

Jessica Farrer, research director at the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, Washington, agrees that striking the right balance between rescue and broader conservation is difficult.

“I do think we should probably be spending more money on habitat restoration, climate change — the bigger-picture things — than we currently are,” Farrer says. “In the long run, that will likely have more of an impact. But those are harder problems to tackle. It takes more co-operation and people. Saving one killer whale, perhaps, makes everybody feel like they’re doing something.”

The whereabouts of kʷiisaḥiʔis, meanwhile, are unknown. In the weeks and months following her escape, boaters up and down the coast have been on high alert for signs that she is still alive. The latest and most promising report came on July 5, when a recreational sailor filmed a small killer whale matching kʷiisaḥiʔis’s description swimming alone near Yuquot, B.C., about 50 kilometres south of the lagoon where this story began.