Wild Ocean Whale Society (WOWs)
Respect, Observe, Preserve
Sightings & Maps
Our Whales and Dolphins BC website is home to our published Sightings Reports and Maps.
The Sightings program is part of a coast-wide whale, dolphin and porpoise monitoring effort, gathering information about
population sizes, travel, food sources and essential habitats, as well as individual or family identification for tracking purposes.
Every sighting report is valuable!
Sightings Reports
We monitor and track whales, dolphins, porpoise, and sea otters (different from River Otters).
Real-time cetacean sightings reports come from the general public (YOU!) viewing from shore as well as a variety of commercial and pleasure craft ocean users.
From these reports our volunteer Analysts compile and locate each sighting in BC waterways together with behavioural observations on our maps. Editors confirm the reports are compiled and mapped correctly, then add any media submitted or prearranged for use.
Additional educational editorial is added to open each published issue.
We welcome your reports and photos!
On publishing we send out personalized maps to reporters and notification to subscribers of our Latest Issue highlighted on the Whales and Dolphins BC website. Links are also posted to our social media pages and the data stored in our database.
All Sightings is a searchable yearly list of all sighting reports published back as far as 2010.
Our Maps
Learning BC geography or marine sciences?
Our maps provide great educational information about the coast and waterways that these animals move in.
The current issue map, published in each report, has numerous filters giving public access to search by specific publication number, date ranges, specific species or locations.
Reported a sighting and provided your email? We will send you a personalized, searchable map of your reports.
For map access to dates between 2016 to 2013, use a more current map to use filters.
Specific Research data needs? See our Research & Monitoring page.
Did You Know?
British Columbia’s coastline is over 25,725 kilometres or 13,890 nautical miles (15,985 statute miles)
There are numerous fjords and waterways and over 40,000 islands of varying sizes, with many of their nooks and smaller bays not included the measurements.
Flight distance, ‘as the crow flies’ covering this area, from Vancouver, BC to Anchorage, AK is 2,141 kilometers or 1,156 nautical miles (1,330 statute miles).
Bottom Line: Do the math! There’s a lot of coastline to monitor and track the animals in the ocean, who intermittently show themselves in various waterways.