Soundwatch: eighteen years of monitoring whale watch vessel activities in the Salish Sea

The Soundwatch Boater Education Program is a vessel monitoring and public education outreach program. Soundwatch has been run by The Whale Museum (TWM) during the whale watch season (May through September) in the Haro Strait Region of the Central Salish Sea since 1993. Data collection has been in a consistent manner since 1998. The program compiles data on vessel types and vessel interactions with marine mammals with a focus on the Southern Resident killer whale (SRKW), Orcinas orca, which was listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2005. The primary goal of the Soundwatch program is to reduce vessel disturbance to SRKWs and other marine wildlife through the education of boaters on regional, local and federal guidelines and regulations and the systematic monitoring of vessel activities around cetaceans. Data collection by Soundwatch consists of: 1) Vessel counts within 0.8 km of large species of cetaceans (killer whales, gray whales, minke whales, humpback whales, fin whales, etc); 2) cetacean identification, location, travel direction and behavior; 3) recreational vessel contact information; and 4) vessel non-compliance with local, state and federal guidelines and/or regulations. Since 1998, the number of active commercial whale watching vessels dropped to a low of 63 in 1999, and then reached a peak of 96 in 2015. Overall the number of vessel incidents or violation of regulations and guidelines has increased in the past 18 years from a low of 398 in 1998 to 1635 in 2015 with a high of 2621 in 2012. The number of vessels has not significantly changed over the years while some incidents have significantly increased over time. This result suggests a need for further outreach for effective education and enforcement of whale watching guidelines and regulations in the Central Salish Sea