Organizers originally predicted the site would be ready to receive whales in 2022. It would be as large as 50 football fields and about 300 times larger than the biggest captive whale tanks. The project, announced in February 2020, calls for construction of an enclosure that would include a ring of floating nets extending from the land. ![]() "We have not found any mercury above the levels that are concerning to the authorities." "This is pretty good news all around," Vinick said. As a result, any soil that might be disturbed by construction will be capped with a layer of soil, gravel or pavement, the group said. On the land, there were no concerning levels of mercury, but arsenic was found in an area around an old stamp mill that used machines to crush rock pulled from nearby mine shafts. Laboratory analyses of the water detected no traces of any heavy metals or other contamination. Previous studies of the bay were also encouraging. No clams were spotted in the bay, which is on Nova Scotia's rugged eastern shore, about 200 kilometres east of Halifax. "We have to be sure that we do not put any whales at risk."Īs for the mussels in the area, they were deemed acceptable for human consumption. "We have to dig further into this data and understand it better," Vinick said. Some of those studies have suggested the whales were not harmed by these contaminants. Some studies, he said, have examined whales in the Arctic, where Indigenous people have been affected by eating whale meat contaminated by minerals like mercury and arsenic, which can occur naturally in the environment. Vinick said his group is talking to toxicologists to determine whether there is any risk that the whales could ingest a level of arsenic that could be harmful. We're investigating with the best scientists we can find." "If they were consumed, would that be a problem for a marine mammal? There are no standards for whales. "With the rock crabs we have to investigate further," Vinick said from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. The testing revealed that arsenic levels in the bay's rock crabs were above Nova Scotia's guidelines for human consumption. "This meant we needed to study soil and water samples to see what mitigation measures might be necessary regarding heavy metals - specifically mercury and arsenic that are routinely found in those tailings." ![]() "We understood when we selected Port Hilford Bay as our location-of-choice for a whale sanctuary that there were remnants of gold mine tailings on the 30 acres of sanctuary lands," the group said in a statement. The concern was that the whales could be harmed by eating clams, mussels and rock crabs contaminated by arsenic and mercury in the submerged soil. The testing focused on the impact of potentially toxic heavy metals left behind by gold mining that ended long ago. "We have completed almost two and a half years of studies along this line," executive director Charles Vinick said in an interview Wednesday. The U.S.-based group behind the Whale Sanctuary Project confirmed Wednesday it had received results from a key environmental assessment of the site near Port Hilford, N.S., where the plan is to build a 40-hectare enclosure for orcas and belugas retired from marine parks ![]() An ambitious plan in Nova Scotia to build North America's first coastal refuge for captive whales has reached a critical phase involving environmental testing - and one of the findings is concerning.
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