A film crew learned through their pocketbooks that you should be very careful about specific regulations when trying to film wildlife.
The group in question, River Road Films, was handed a $30,000 (USD 22,000) Canadian dollar or CAD fine by the Canadian government after pleading guilty to capturing drone footage of killer whales illegally.
The whales, while swimming off the coast of Vancouver Island on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia, Canada, were practicing something called “beach rubbing”.
The River Road Films crew, shooting a Netflix documentary called “The Island of the Sea Wolves” about Vancouver Island wildlife, had previously applied for a license with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to film the orcas.
However, that specific application was denied and apparently, they filmed a drone video of the whales doing their beach rubbing anyhow.
Without a permit, it’s illegal to fly a drone within 1,000 feet of a killer whale under Canada’s Marine Mammal Regulations.
Making the entire issue even more delicate, the phenomenon of beach rubbing is particularly sensitive when filming killer whales and is only localized to certain specific places with specific whale pods, partly as a sort of inherited cultural activity passed on between generations.
Beach rubbing by killer whales literally consists of whales locating certain particular pebbly beaches with just the right slope and correct pebble shapes so that they can glide their bodies along these underwater near shore.
The activity isn’t evident in all orca pods, and even among those who practice it, their motives aren’t entirely known.
So far, beach rubbing seems to be part ritual, part massage, and partly a mystery that the whales also inherit as a habit.
Among the whales themselves, the activity is even thought to be delicate enough that they’ll stop doing it if they realize that they’re being watched by humans.
In other words, if the film crew had in any case broken Canadian marine mammal regulations by filming the orcas with drones, they also picked one exceptionally problematic context in which to do it.
This likely contributed to such a hefty fine gliding its way right to them.
In August of 2021, an NGO called OrcaLab, operating a remote camera at one of the beaches where the whales rubbed themselves, caught a drone flying too close to the giant animals.
According to one member of OrcaLab, Suzie Hall, in comments to the site Vancouver is Awesome, “We witnessed the drone being launched and hovering what seemed about 10 metres [30 feet] over the orcas as they were rubbing during the event,”
Given the nature of their work, the NGO reported the incident to Fisheries and Oceans and in due course, River Road Films got nailed with a double fine amounting to just over $22,000.
According to a Disheries and Oceans document posted to OrcaLab’s Facebook page, this broke down to CAD 25,000 for the organization and CAD 5,000 for the drone operator, Matthew Hood.
The video caught by OrcaLab of the drone flying over the killer whales can also be seen in the same Facebook post.
Hall of OrcaLab further elaborated about the incident and orca watching in general,
“There are very clear regulations around drone usage, but beach rubbing as a behaviour that we know happens up and down the coast… Currently, you can be standing with your feet touching the water, and not technically be going against any regulations, but you may still be disturbing them when they’re metres away. So I’d like to see that come into consideration for the next round of marine mammal guidelines.”
How Fisheries and Oceans would have reacted to a random civilian accidentally catching the orcas during their mysterious activity and spontaneously filming is hard to interpret. In the case of this film crew though, their conduct apparently created a context for a much more heavy-handed response.
Incidentally, despite what Hall mentions about not disturbing the whales, OrcaLab itself has closely filmed killer whales during their beach rubbing.
For what it’s worth in the case of the NGO, it used underwater cameras and had permission from Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
