Saving the Southern Resident killer whales: how VR and community science drive real change

The Southern Resident orcas are one of the most visibly threatened symbols of environmental degradation and climate change in the Salish Sea. Just 74 remain. Critical Distance, an immersive view of orca life beneath the surface of the Salish Sea, makes one of the threats to their survival— shipping noise—very real.

When Saturna Island’s Susie Washington-Smyth saw the opportunity to use the augmented reality headset experience to press policymakers into action, she took it. The new board member with the Saturna Island Marine Research and Education Society (SIMRES) travelled to Ottawa last year with the show, which takes its audience underwater as orcas swim around you and cope with freighter traffic. Critical Distance had already played in 2021 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, and made a splash in 2023 at the International Marine Protected Areas Conference in Vancouver. Now it’s showing in Victoria as part of Ocean Week, today through Monday (June 6 to 9).

Last June, when SIMRES took the VR experience to Ottawa’s Canadian Nature Museum as part of Ocean Week Canada, the visit included a House of Commons event organized by Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May.

For Washington-Smyth, the soft power of educational storytelling is a key component of fighting for policy change, and citizen involvement is central to getting groundwork done. Bureaucrats and politicians move slowly. But they’re motivated by what they are shown and by the voices around them. “A lot of officials brought their kids,” Washington-Smyth said on the deck of her Tumbo Channel home on Saturna.

Constructive engagement also motivated Washington-Smyth’s efforts to expand the influence of the Southern Gulf Islands Whale Sighting Network (SGIWSN), a community science project that provides consistent, reliable data to federal government departments tasked with working to save the Southern Resident killer whales. One project, known as Spyhopper, has used SGIWSN's data with huge success.

“I got pissed off when Transport Canada decided to create the interim sanctuary zones in 2019,” Washington-Smyth says of the federal department’s efforts to improve conditions for the critically endangered orcas. “They did it without any solid baseline data.” She wanted indicators to measure change in orca behaviour and direct adaptive responses to protect them.

SIMRES worked with SFU to bring a master’s student to Saturna to do fieldwork on the degradation of kelp forests, a key ecosystem that supports a wide range of coastal marine life, including orcas.

Hands-on approach makes SIMRES stand out

Washington-Smyth believes SIMRES has important scientific expertise on its board and creates a hands-on opportunity to build something unique and effective. “There aren’t many organizations that have that.”

Joining SIMRES’s board became the next step for Washington-Smyth, who spent almost all her professional life working for governments and agencies to advance environmental concerns.

All these threads also came together at the Saturna Lodge last March, when SIMRES assembled scientists young and old, Indigenous community members, federal bureaucrats, fieldworkers, and many others to examine the prospect of a kelp forest restoration project at East Point, where the wasting disease affecting sea stars—including one that’s a key sea urchin predator—contributed to the dramatic decline of the kelp forest along the shoreline.

Sea urchins live for a very long time and eat young kelp plants. Along with ocean warming, the rise of “urchin barrens” is yet another human domino effect, one that dates back to the extirpation of urchin-loving sea otters from the BC coast two centuries ago.

Washington-Smyth says she would like to get Parks Canada to work with SIMRES on an urchin harvesting project to help restore the kelp beds at East Point. Habitat restoration is part of Parks Canada’s work, she says, and it shouldn’t stop at the edge of the water.

Partnership with First Nations

A partnership in Haida Gwaii involving the Haida community, scientists, fishers, and Parks Canada, showcased in a presentation at the Saturna workshop, was an inspiring example. Partnership is an increasingly important model for the cash-strapped federal parks agency, which already accommodates whale research and education on the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve at East Point.

Despite the enthusiasm of funders and bureaucrats—SIMRES just received a $25,000 grant from the Pacific Salmon Foundation for the project—there are impediments. The need for more money is one. A profusion of government agencies—fisheries, transportation, parks—is another. But Parks Canada proved an adept partner in Haida Gwaii and has some strong relationships on Saturna, where much of the Gulf Islands reserve is located, and work is progressing to duplicate that success on Saturna.

In government, sometimes good ideas get lost when frontline people who know the issues run them up the chain of command for approval 3,000 miles from our islands. But the head of Parks Canada came to the House of Commons event that May organized, and these little connections matter.

Step by step, we may yet save the orcas that are so symbolically and ecologically important in the Salish Sea.

Charles Campbell is a journalist in recovery from decades working at the Georgia Straight, The Tyee, and the Vancouver Sun. He joined the SIMRES board in May.