Wild Ocean Whale Society (WOWs) is a registered B.C. charity incorporated in 2013 which evolved from a blog under the Whales and Dolphins BC banner started in 2010 by our founder, Susan MacKay to raise public awareness, respect and enthusiasm for the protection and welfare of our coastal wildlife and marine ecosystems through information and education.
Whales and Dolphins BC is our educational website and sightings and mapping program, gathering and publishing whale, dolphin and porpoise sightings and behavioural observations in B.C. waterways, and providing educational material to teachers and the public.
Our programs are extensive and not limited to our Sightings Reports and Maps, which are the backbone of what we do to monitor the health of our oceans and the species within.
We are extensively involved in Rescue and Response, dealing with more species than cetaceans; everything living, from the tiniest of birds to the largest of whales, we respond. We have been called in, and assisted with many terrestrial animals including both wild and domestic species.
Our Outreach includes presentations, workshops and our live streaming webcam through our YouTube channel 24/7 facing out from Powell River. The views extend from Texada Island’s VanAnda in Malaspina Strait, across to Vancouver Island, and just beyond Savary Island, with Cortez Island as a backdrop. Incredible sunsets, by the way.
Our dedicated team of volunteers are both online and on the ground. Every reporter of sightings is also a volunteer supporter. We do NOT publish whale sightings in real time due to the pressures placed on whales by boaters wanting to be close. But to monitor the species movements, we need your current sightings reports.
WOWs also runs shorter term projects that can be either on the ground or on the water. Examples would be Project Disentangle, on the water recording of traps and buoys that can be problematic for animal entanglement, and on the ground, our newest initiative to assist with feral cat population explosion on Texada Island. To read more about our WOWs-Meows initiative click here.
Our team of volunteers (99.9% of us), quite often run into delays with updating websites, other than publishing our Sightings Reports and Maps. Please bear with us, operational funds are used for the operation of what we do, not salaries. Your Donations are instrumental to keeping us going. Thank You !!
To read more about our programs and other society work, please go to our Wild Ocean Whale website
