CSI: Whale Division

Stephen Raverty’s team of B.C. investigators reconstruct cetacean deaths— to prevent more from happening

- Larry Pynn

THE WHALE ON THE BEACH has a story to tell, and Stephen Raverty is here to extract it.

The veterinary pathologist has travelled to British Columbia’s remote central coast on this sunny Sunday in May 2019 to perform a necropsy on a male humpback that washed ashore on the surf-tossed west side of Calvert Island.

Raverty is a towering man, dwarfed only by the whale itself. He struggled to get here, navigating up and down shoreline trails lined with exposed tree roots, and refusing to relinquish his case of heavy necropsy tools. He concedes that getting to the mammals on which he performs a necropsy analysis along rugged coastlines can be his least favourite part of the job.

Raverty works for the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture in an animal-health centre in Abbotsford, a little over an hour east of Vancouver. Relatively mundane work on domestic animals, including the search for poultry and cattle diseases, pays his bills.

His real passion has been marine life ever since he volunteered at the Vancouver Aquarium at age 12, peering over the shoulders of veterinary staff as they investigated diseases in fish, frogs, reptiles and even the odd harbour seal.

Nobody takes pleasure in this humpback’s death. But whales die for all manner of reasons, and when they do, Raverty can only hope they wash ashore on an accessible beach. This particular carcass was spotted two days ago by staff from the Hakai Institute’s Calvert Island Ecological Observatory, a research institution that studies remote coastal environments in British Columbia. The observatory alerted Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and Paul Cottrell, the agency’s marine mammal coordinator, contacted Raverty. The necropsy team is rounded out by Taylor Lehnhart, a DFO technician.

I POKE THE CARCASS WITH MY FINGER AND IT BOUNCES BACK LIKE THE HULL OF AN INFLATABLE CRAFT.