fisheries

Chief says rescue effort for stranded orca calf four, five days away as plans ramp up

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Plans are settling into place for an attempt to rescue a young killer whale calf stranded in a tidal lagoon near the Vancouver Island village of Zeballos within four or five days, says the area’s First Nation chief. Ehattesaht Chief Simon John has previously said the plan to remove the female orca calf from the … Read more

Helicopter to airlift stranded orca out of B.C. lagoon

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Plans are now underway to airlift a stranded killer whale calf out of a remote tidal lagoon off northern Vancouver Island in an effort to reunite the young orca with its extended family. Fisheries Department and First Nations officials say the plans involve placing the two-year-old calf into a sling, lifting it out of the … Read more

Bottom-contact fishing banned near rare Central Coast coral reef

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Federal authorities have closed Canada’s only known live coral reef in the Pacific Ocean to all commercial and recreational bottom-contact fishing. Fisheries and Oceans Canada says the indefinite closure came into effect on Feb. 14 for the Lophelia Reef, located in the Finlayson Channel of British Columbia’s Central Coast, about 500 kilometres northwest of Vancouver and 200 kilometres directly east of … Read more

Human-caused climate change fuels hottest February on record, all-time high ocean warming

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For the ninth straight month, Earth has obliterated global heat records — with February, the winter as a whole and the world’s oceans setting new high-temperature marks, according to the European Union climate agency Copernicus. The latest record-breaking in this climate change-fuelled global hot streak includes sea surface temperatures that weren’t just the hottest for … Read more