Outdoor Nova Scotia: Features ... an Indepth Look at 'The Great Outdoors' in Nova Scotia!

a majestic bottlenose whale (WWF Canada photo)

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a pod of bottlenose whales near the Gully, off the Nova Scotia coast (Whitehead photo)

Welcome to the Gully, a recently protected, underwater canyon 260 clicks off the coast of Halifax and 40 clicks east of Sable Island. Welcome to its great depths (1.5 km in spots), its steep slopes and its unique extension far onto the continental shelf, which geologists in the know refer to as the Scotian Shelf. Welcome to a larger abyss than the tourist-laden Grand Canyon. And while you're here, feel free to mingle with its inhabitants like the deep-sea coral, pinnipeds (animals with fin-like feet or flippers), Sperm Whales, seals and, most notably, the 230 Northern Bottlenose Whales that have leased the place for at least the last 30 years.

You won't find Northern Bottlenose Whales anywhere else around here; the next closest hangout is off Northern Labrador, a 1400 kilometre jaunt to the north. But there's more. Welcome also to what's being touted as one of the most lucrative oil and natural gas fields around, which coincidentally borders on and occasionally shares yard space with both the Gully and Sable Island.

Smell trouble? A clash of environmental and economic forces?

Not to worry, said the federal government, stepping in. In early December of 1998, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO)
designated the Gully as the east coast's first Marine Protected Area (MPA). Curious to know what that means? What will the future hold for the Gully? Eager for a closer look at the canyon's inhabitants? Care to meet one of the foremost Gully experts on the planet? Strap on your goggles, don your wetsuit, flippers and air tank and walk the plank with Outdoor Nova Scotia's look at the Gully.

Hal Whitehead, a biology professor at Dalhousie University is a veteran of more than a dozen ocean safaris to observe the Gully's non-migratory
population of Northern Bottlenose Whales. The whales, which are about 8-10 metres long and torpedo-shaped with the bluntly prominent foreheads of cartoon aliens and an unexpectedly small, narrow beak, are currently classified as Vulnerable on Canada's Species at Risk. Other unusual biological features of Northern Bottlenose Whales include: their maxillary (jaw bone) crests, their deep, long-lasting dives, the type of sounds they produce and their especially curious and social attitudes towards boats.

Whitehead's Gully research represents the only long-term study of any
beaked whale population anywhere in the world.

"There are no known locations at all comparable to the Gully in terms of
the natural behaviour of living, beaked whale populations," Whitehead wrote in Vol.111 of the Canadian Field Naturalist. "In the near future, most of what is known about the behaviours of living, beaked whales is likely to come from the Gully."

Thus far, thanks to his research, we know that unlike most whales, Northern Bottlenose Whales don't migrate; they are present year-round in a 160 square kilometre 'core area' at the Gully entrance. We also know the Northern Bottlenose Whales found in the Gully are smaller (by a couple of metres) than anywhere else in world. And we know that Bottlenose Whales have particularly weak social sounds, which makes them exceptionally prone to noise pollution, but more on that later.

But Whitehead admits there still isn't enough known about the Gully to
fully understand its importance to the aquatic life in and around it. He can only speculate when asked why the Bottlenose Whales have stayed in the Gully for so long.

"Our suspicion is that the slope sets up an ecosystem that the Northern
Bottlenose Whale is on top of," he explains. "We think that they're eating
a strange squid called Gonatus  found at the bottom of deep North Atlantic waters."

A lot of it is merely educated speculation.

Enter the oil and gas industry and the DFO's subsequent announcement.

Derek Fenton is a Communications Officer with the DFO's Oceans Acts
Coordination Office, which is overseeing the Gully. DFO announced in
December that the Gully would receive 'pilot protection,' the initial stage
on the way to 'permanent' scientifically- and- economically- assessed
protection. Right now, DFO is identifying Areas of Interest, (areas should
be protected), which areas should be developed. It's a lengthy,
tight-lipped task right now.

Fenton says the scientific data from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography have been collected, and right now, DFO is reviewing the economic impacts of the protection, a study coming from an independent consulting firm Fenton would say no more about. The information-gathering phase, according to Fenton, will probably wrap up towards the end of winter.

"We haven't gotten down to the questions of what will and won't be going on right now," he says. "It's a long process."

Oil exploration has been going on at the Cohasset-Panuke Field for more than a decade. The Cohasset-Panuke is located about 110 kilometres to the west of the Gully. In "Status of the Northern Bottlenose Whale, Hyperoodon ampullatus, in the Gully, Nova Scotia," (Cdn. Field Naturalists Vol.111) Whitehead et al. diplomatically suggested that "their exploration probably poses little threat to the Bottlenose Whales."

These days, environmentalists are teeter-tottering between jubilation at
December's announcement that the Gully would be protected and concerns that oil and gas fields might be developed too close to the protected area. For example, there's the Sable Offshore Energy Project's in-the-works construction of pipeline to Mainland Nova Scotia, about 30 km away from the Gully. And then there's the Venture Field (about 40 km away from the Northern edge) and the Primrose Field (a scant 5 km from the Shelf), a site which may or may not see the light of day depending on the final word from DFO.

Inka Milewski is the Atlantic region's coordinator for WWF Canada. She's been involved with the Gully for two and a half years, since the Sable Offshore Energy Project hearings began.

She says she remains optimistic about the future, about people getting
together and making the correct decision when presented with all the
information. Milewski refers to it as "raising the conservation bar," but
she realizes the Gully isn't out of the proverbial woods yet:

"It's unfortunately a little too open. DFO has identified this as an ecosystem that requires protection. And if you're going to have a policy of conservation, that has to be the imperative. It's not a policy of
conservation AND development, after all," she says. "The Scotian Shelf is currently wide-open for development. Setting aside a small,
ecologically-diverse area like the Gully is not much to ask. We hope DFO's decision will boil down to a clarifying of the conservation objective."

Whitehead says there are a number of ways the development might adversely affect the Gully's Bottlenose Whale population. Acoustic pollution, he says, could potentially disrupt how the whales communicate with each other, how they feed and how they mate. Many marine animals also get entangled in floating debris, like plastic bags and other discarded plastic packaging, which has led to calls for a zero-discharge policy for offshore projects, a policy industry says it is eager to adhere to. Chemical pollution, most commonly associated with commercial fishing and petrochemical exploration is another danger.

Whitehead doesn't mince words when he discusses the dangers: "The most important limiting factor for the population of Bottlenose Whales in the Gully is likely the pattern and method of development of these oil and gas fields."

"Ideally," he begins, "I'd like to see a larger buffer zone (at least 15 km) than the one being proposed for the northern section, close to the core
area. In the south, where there are no competing industrial interests, it
appears that a larger-than-requested buffer zone is being proposed."

Whitehead shares Milewski's friendly but guarded hope for a happy medium between conservation and development of the Scotian Shelf. "Industry people can be very slick," he laughs, adding that they generally have no shortage of public relations dollars.

"Most of this is going to be a compromise though, a very difficult
compromise," he says. "I'd like to see a fairly conservative set of
measures. It makes more sense to start with a large, protected buffer zone around the Gully and shrink it if we figure out that it's possible."

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