The Quartermaster and I were discussing some subject or other and watching for drift.
There was quite a lot of it around, due to the high tides at that time.
At 3:45 there was a crunch at the after end of the ship, as if we had struck a small log. I
went and looked out the window at the back of the wheelhouse and noticed a reddish-brown
discolouration in our wake. My first impression was that we had struck a butt-end of a
dead-head just below the surface of the water. Then four killer whales surfaced about two to three ship lengths astern.
The first thing I noticed about these four surfacing whales was that one was bleeding profusely. I told the Quartermaster to bring the ship hard around and we steamed up to within ten feet of the whales. The pod consisted of a bull, cow and two calves. It was one of the calves that had been struck by the ship's propellers. It was a very sad scene to see. The cow and the bull cradled the injured calf between them to prevent it from turning upside-down. Occasionally the bull would lose its position and the calf would roll over on its side. When this occurred the slashes caused by our propeller were quite visible. The bull, when this happened, would make a tight circle, submerge, and rise slowly beside the calf; righting it, and then proceed with the diving and surfacing. While this was going on the other calf stayed right behind the injured one.
We stayed with the whales for about ten to fifteen minutes; there was no fear of the ship being too close (about ten feet at times). I felt at the time that there was very little we could do to alleviate the obvious pain and suffering that was taking place and that the calf could not survive for too long.
It appears that the young whale did live for at least fifteen days. We later received a report from a resident of Powell River, who, on 10 January. 1974, observed "two whales supporting a third one, preventing it from turning over." We do not know whether the whale survived after this, as we received no further sightings or photographs from which we could identify the individual. We suspect, however, that it might have been a young A5-pod whale identified as A21, which was last seen in 1973, Serious injuries from collisions with vessels are probably rare events, as none have been observed among the known whales in British Columbia and Washington State during the past twenty years.
