On guard for orca: Who watches the watchers? The Marine Mammal Monitoring patrol
It looks like Tommy the Tugboat, but the M3 has a whale of a job.
On a late-summer sunny afternoon, the black-and-yellow Marine Mammal Monitoring patrol boat is bouncing through American waters off Washington state's San Juan Island.
Michelle Kehler scans the rolling water with her binoculars, making sure the commercial whale-watching boats, the Bayliners and the sailboats are adhering to Canadian and American whale-watching guidelines.
"It's a zoo out here," she says.
Members of J and K pods, the endangered southern resident killer whale population, are feeding close to shore. About 40 boats jostle for position, manoeuvring backward and forward as tourists and pleasure-boaters strain for a glimpse of black fins slicing through the water.
Five days a week from May to October, volunteers with the Marine Mammal Monitoring program, a non-profit Victoria-based stewardship society, patrol the boundary waters of southern Vancouver Island and northwestern Washington. Like teachers in the schoolyard, they censor bad behaviour and praise good behaviour around whales.
The program is a partnership between Veins of Life Marine in Victoria, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and, on San Juan Island, the Friday Harbor Whale Museum's Soundwatch Boater Education Program.
The M3 boat may look comical -- like a Zodiac with a yellow phone booth on top -- but its role in protecting the whales is immense, says Fisheries officer Stephan Beckmann.
"It works very well for the whales," says Beckmann. "They know all the commercial boats and have worked very effectively to establish that relationship."
Continue reading this story from the Victoria Times Colonist:
On guard for orca: Who watches the watchers? The Marine Mammal Monitoring patrol
