The Small Fish at the Heart of Our Fight to Save the Resident Orcas
What we have watched disappear from Victoria Harbour, the Gorge Waterway and Portage Inlet—and why every beach, dock, storm drain and abandoned vessel matters
People sometimes ask why we have continued this work for so many years.
Why do we keep examining storm drains, walking shorelines, removing debris, documenting docks, reporting abandoned vessels, reviewing old reports, questioning governments and fighting for source control?
The answer is the Southern Resident killer whales.
We fell in love with these remarkable families long ago. Everything we have done since our swim event in 2000 has, in one way or another, been connected to their survival.
But saving Resident killer whales does not begin beside a whale-watching boat.
It begins far inland, at a storm drain.
It begins beside a contaminated creek.
It begins under an abandoned vessel resting on the beach.
It begins along a small strip of sand and gravel at the edge of the tide.
It begins with a little fish that most people have never noticed.
It begins with the lowly sand lance.
The Little Fish Holding Up a Food Web
Pacific sand lance are slender, silver forage fish that spend much of their lives close to the seabed. They school in enormous numbers when conditions are right, but they can also disappear directly into loose sand to rest, hide from predators and survive periods when they are not actively feeding.
They do not leap waterfalls.
They do not have the public profile of Chinook salmon or the emotional power of an orca family swimming through the Salish Sea.
Yet sand lance are among the small, energy-rich fish that help hold the marine food web together.
They feed on plankton and are eaten by salmon, seabirds and many other marine animals. Research in the southern Strait of Georgia has found that sand lance can form a substantial part of the diet of resident Chinook salmon during parts of the spring and summer.
That gives us a food-web relationship that is simple enough for anyone to understand:
Protect the intertidal beach.
Protect the sand lance.
Feed the Chinook.
Give the Resident orcas a chance.
The connection is not that every sand lance from the Gorge will become part of an orca’s meal. Ecosystems do not work through such a simple one-fish-to-one-whale calculation.
The connection is cumulative.
Every functioning forage-fish beach contributes energy and resilience to the larger marine food web. Every beach that is buried, armoured, shaded, polluted or cut off from its sediment supply removes another piece of that resilience.
The Southern Residents already face limited Chinook availability, contaminants and vessel disturbance. When we destroy the habitat supporting the prey of their prey, we make recovery even more difficult.
Sand Lance Need More Than Water
It is easy to look at Victoria Harbour, the Gorge and Portage Inlet and think that because water remains, fish habitat remains.
That is not necessarily true.
Sand lance cannot successfully use every shoreline. They need particular combinations of loose sand, coarse sand and small gravel, the correct beach slope and tidal elevation, and access to nearby subtidal burying habitat.
Their eggs develop among individual grains of beach sediment. Water and oxygen must continue moving through the spaces between those grains.
If clean sand becomes packed with fine silt, contaminated particles or excessive organic material, the beach may continue to look like a beach while losing much of its biological function.
Research has estimated that only a small percentage of the Canadian Salish Sea intertidal zone is likely to provide moderate-to-high-quality sand-lance spawning habitat.
Suitable habitat is naturally limited and patchy.
That makes the remaining natural pocket beaches, sandy shelves and gently sloping intertidal areas far more important than their size might suggest.
To a municipal planner, a short beach between two rock outcrops may look like an insignificant strip of land.
To a sand lance, it may be one of the last usable pieces of habitat in an entire urban waterway.
What We Have Watched Happen to the Shoreline
For more than three decades, we have worked in and around Victoria Harbour, Selkirk Waters, the Gorge Waterway, Portage Inlet, Craigflower Creek and Colquitz Creek.
We have watched the shoreline change.
Some of that change occurred long before Veins of Life Watershed Society was formed. Industrial filling, roads, railways, bridges, warehouses, marinas, seawalls and shoreline development had already removed enormous areas of natural foreshore.
Other changes happened slowly, one property and one permit at a time.
A wall was constructed.
A beach was covered with riprap.
A dock was extended.
A float was added.
A stormwater pipe was installed.
Vegetation was cleared.
A bank was landscaped.
An old vessel was left to deteriorate.
Each alteration could be described as small when considered by itself.
The fish experienced all of them together.
Filling Did Not Alter the Habitat—It Erased It
Much of the modern shoreline of Victoria Harbour and its connected waterways was created by filling natural intertidal areas.
Shallow coves, mudflats, pocket beaches, marsh edges and gradual shoreline slopes were converted into industrial land, transportation corridors and waterfront development.
The living connection between the upland and the sea was replaced by rubble, pavement, retaining walls and buildings.
When an intertidal beach is filled, the damage extends beyond the footprint of the new land.
The natural transition from vegetation to upper beach, intertidal sand and gravel, shallow subtidal habitat and eelgrass is broken.
Sediment can no longer move naturally from eroding banks and creek mouths to the beach. The shoreline becomes steeper and less able to respond to waves, tides and changing water levels.
For a fish dependent on a narrow range of sediment conditions, that is not a minor alteration.
It is the removal of its home.
The Hardening of the Intertidal Shoreline
Seawalls, concrete edges, rock embankments and riprap are often described as shoreline protection.
They may protect a road, building or private property.
But they do not necessarily protect the beach.
A natural shoreline moves.
Banks erode. Sand and gravel are released. Waves and tides redistribute that material. Logs, seaweed and organic matter collect along the high-water line. Native vegetation stabilizes the upper shore while insects and other organisms fall into the water.
A hardened shoreline interrupts that process.
A seawall can cut off the supply of new sediment, reflect wave energy and increase scour at its base.
The beach becomes narrower, steeper or coarser.
In some locations, the upper intertidal disappears entirely between the wall and the rising water.
Scientists studying armoured shorelines elsewhere in the Salish Sea have documented reduced beach wrack, fewer high-shore invertebrates, coarser sediments and cumulative ecological effects where large portions of the shoreline have been hardened.
The position of the structure also matters. Armouring placed low on the beach generally causes greater disruption than structures kept farther landward.
This is what we mean by the hardening of the intertidal area.
It is not only the presence of concrete or rock.
It is the conversion of a living, moving sediment system into a fixed engineered edge.
The Old Harbour Studies Were Already Sounding the Alarm
The loss of shoreline habitat is not a new concern.
The Victoria and Esquimalt Harbours Ecological Inventory and Rating project began systematically documenting intertidal and backshore conditions in the late 1990s.
Across the harbour study area, it recorded extensive anthropogenic shoreline, including seawalls, riprap, piers, pilings, wharves and floats.
Only a comparatively small part of the shoreline was classified primarily as beach habitat.
The report described hardened shorelines as common in the Gorge and Portage Inlet. It noted narrow lower-intertidal beaches, bare-looking upper-intertidal areas and locations where human activity had substantially reduced ecological value.
Those measurements are now decades old.
They do not include every dock, shoreline alteration or redevelopment that has occurred since.
But they establish something important:
The reduction of natural intertidal habitat was already extensive before the latest generation of waterfront development.
Much of the older knowledge was gathered before the internet.
It remains scattered among paper reports, consultant studies, municipal planning files, DFO correspondence, shoreline maps, aerial photographs, university research and the memories of people who worked on these waters.
That history must not be discarded simply because it was never placed online.
One Dock Is Never Only One Dock
Docks are often considered individually.
One ramp.
One float.
Several pilings.
One private boat.
The environmental review, when one occurs, may focus on the small footprint of that particular structure.
But the real ecological question is cumulative.
How many docks already occupy the waterway?
How much shallow shoreline is now shaded?
How many floats rest on or approach the seabed at low tide?
How much eelgrass, algae and intertidal vegetation has been displaced?
How much propeller disturbance is occurring?
How many boats are releasing fuel, oil, sewage, cleaning chemicals, antifouling compounds and debris?
How much natural shoreline remains between the structures?
In March 2000, Fisheries and Oceans Canada warned the Township of Esquimalt that granting a variance for one private dock could establish a precedent leading to more dock requests throughout the Gorge and Portage Inlet.
DFO recognized that the Gorge, Portage Inlet, Craigflower Creek and Colquitz Creek formed a connected fish-habitat system.
Its letter identified dock shading, physical disturbance, vessel pollution, sewage, antifouling chemicals, sediment disturbance and cumulative foreshore development as serious concerns.
The warning was clear.
Treating every structure as an isolated application would eventually produce a cumulative habitat problem that no single application review would acknowledge.
That is exactly the concern we continue to raise today.
Many docks and related structures now occupying the Gorge, Selkirk Waters and Portage Inlet are located in shallow intertidal or nearshore areas.
Some appear to touch or nearly touch the bottom at lower tides.
Some shade aquatic vegetation.
Some are connected to heavily modified shorelines where little natural habitat remains.
We are not arguing that every dock causes the same degree of damage.
We are arguing that governments must stop pretending that each dock exists alone.
Storm Drains Also Reshape the Beach
The shoreline is not only being changed from the water side.
It is being changed by everything draining from the watershed.
Storm drains carry runoff from roads, parking lots, industrial properties, commercial areas, construction sites and residential neighbourhoods directly into the harbour system.
That runoff may contain suspended sediment, tire and brake particles, copper, zinc, lead, petroleum hydrocarbons, PAHs, PCBs, pesticides, bacteria, nutrients, plastics and endocrine-disrupting compounds.
Some contaminants arrive dissolved in the water.
Others attach to fine particles and settle into the intertidal and subtidal sediment.
This creates another form of habitat loss.
A sand-and-gravel beach can slowly become clogged with fine material.
Contaminated sediment can accumulate in quiet coves and behind structures.
Sudden storm flows can scour one part of a beach and bury another.
Outfalls can create channels, erosion zones and depositional fans that change the physical character of the shoreline.
The result may still be described on a map as “intertidal habitat.”
But is the sediment still suitable for sand-lance eggs?
Does oxygen still move through it?
Has clean sand been replaced by silt?
Are hydrocarbons, metals and persistent contaminants accumulating?
Are tire-derived chemicals and endocrine disruptors being measured?
Are restoration sites being recontaminated after every major rainfall?
These are the questions that source-control programs must answer.
Monitoring the receiving water without controlling the discharge is not enough.
Cleaning contaminated sediment without stopping the source is not enough.
Building a small restoration project beside a polluted outfall is not enough.
For the sand lance—and ultimately for the Chinook and Resident orcas—
Source control must come before restoration and continue after it.
Why Abandoned and Derelict Boats Matter
The Dead Boat Disposal Society was formed because abandoned vessels are not simply an aesthetic problem.
A dead boat can occupy and damage intertidal habitat for years.
It may settle onto the seabed, crush vegetation, shade the foreshore and move during storms.
It may release fuel, lubricants, batteries, wiring, treated wood, antifouling coatings, plastics, fibreglass, sewage and loose debris.
As the vessel deteriorates, the cleanup becomes more difficult and more expensive.
Removing a dead boat is therefore not merely waste disposal.
It is habitat protection.
It is pollution prevention.
It is source control.
The Dead Boat Disposal Society was created to identify, assess, remove and safely dispose of these vessels before they become permanent sources of contamination and physical habitat loss.
That work is part of the same food-web responsibility.
An abandoned boat on a beach may appear far removed from a Resident killer whale.
It is not.
The boat affects the intertidal shoreline.
The shoreline supports forage fish.
Forage fish support salmon.
Chinook salmon support the Resident orcas.
M3: When Our Love for the Whales Became Monitoring
Our Marine Mammal Monitoring program—M3—grew from the same concern.
By the beginning of the 2000s, the Southern Resident killer whales had been designated endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
At the same time, increasing commercial whale-watching activity and private boating raised serious questions about disturbance, vessel behaviour and the cumulative pressure being placed on the whales.
M3 was developed by Veins of Life Watershed Society to establish an active stewardship role for marine mammals in the transboundary waters of the Salish Sea.
Working with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and other partners, the program monitored vessel activity around whales, promoted responsible viewing guidelines, provided public education and conducted on-the-water stewardship patrols.
M3 helped advance principles that later became widely recognized through responsible whale-watching programs:
Slow down.
Keep your distance.
Stay out of the whales’ path.
Limit the cumulative disturbance caused by many vessels.
But M3 also taught us something larger.
Protecting whales cannot stop at the distance between a boat and an orca.
Distance regulations address immediate disturbance.
They do not create Chinook.
They do not restore forage-fish beaches.
They do not remove contaminants from stormwater.
They do not uncover buried habitat.
They do not remove abandoned boats.
They do not stop the next misplaced dock.
True whale recovery requires work throughout the food web and throughout the watershed.
What the Evidence Proves—and What Still Needs Investigation
We must be careful not to claim more than the evidence supports.
We do not have a continuous historical count showing exactly how many sand lance once lived or spawned in Victoria Harbour, the Gorge or Portage Inlet.
We are also not claiming that every beach altered by development was a confirmed sand-lance spawning beach.
What the available evidence does demonstrate is that:
Sand lance depend on rare and specific sediment habitat.
Suitable habitat is naturally limited and patchy.
The harbour shoreline has undergone extensive filling, armouring and development.
Seawalls, docks and shoreline structures have occupied and fragmented shallow habitat.
Stormwater and other discharges continue to deliver sediment and contaminants.
Abandoned vessels can physically and chemically damage the intertidal area.
Protecting Chinook prey and prey habitat is essential to Resident killer whale recovery.
The missing historical sand-lance count is not an excuse for allowing further habitat loss.
It is a reason to apply precaution.
It is also a reason to recover and digitize the old studies, maps and observations that documented the watershed before so much of its natural shoreline disappeared.
The Reason We Continue
The sand lance is easy to overlook.
It has no great voice.
It does not breach beside a boat or carry a newborn calf through the Salish Sea.
It spends much of its life hidden beneath the sand.
But the survival of the most celebrated animals in these waters depends upon countless less-celebrated lives below them.
The Resident orcas cannot survive on admiration alone.
They need Chinook.
The Chinook need functioning rivers, estuaries and nearshore feeding habitat.
They also need the small schooling fish that transfer energy through the marine food web.
That is why we continue examining storm drains.
That is why we challenge misplaced docks.
That is why we document contaminated sediment and hardened shorelines.
That is why we remove abandoned boats.
That is why we insist on source control before restoration.
And that is why, after all these years, we continue fighting for the lowly sand lance.
Because when we protect the little fish hidden in the sand, we are protecting the Chinook.
And when we protect the Chinook, we are giving the Resident orcas something they desperately need:
A chance to survive.
Veins of Life Watershed Society has worked in the Victoria Harbour–Gorge Waterway watershed since the 1990s through shoreline and stream cleanup, stormwater investigation, habitat restoration, public education and marine-mammal stewardship.
The Dead Boat Disposal Society focuses on identifying, assessing, removing and safely disposing of abandoned vessels and marine debris before they cause further contamination and habitat loss.
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