Commercial Whale Watching Trips and Wildlife Viewing Events in British Columbia

British Columbia commercial whale watching data comprises two spatial datasets summarizing trips and wildlife viewing events from 2019 to 2021 during summer months. The data was generated by the University of Victoria's WAVE project using AIS vessel tracking and a Hidden Markov Model to classify viewing events. It is intended to inform marine spatial planning and conservation activities in Canada's Pacific region.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial patterns of commercial whale watching trips using the unique cell_id grid to identify high-traffic areas for marine planning.
• Model vessel behavior by correlating wildlife_viewing_events with trip data via the cell_id field to assess wildlife interaction hotspots.
• Compare seasonal and yearly trends in whale watching activity across the 2019-2021 time range to evaluate changes in vessel operations.
• Integrate the trip and event layers using the cell_id for threat assessments involving vessel activities in British Columbia waters.

Strengths

• Data covers three consecutive years (2019, 2020, 2021) of summer observations, enabling temporal trend analysis.
• Methodology is documented in a peer-reviewed thesis and uses a Hidden Markov Model for classifying wildlife-viewing events from AIS data.
• Two related data layers (trips and events) are spatially aligned using a common grid with a unique cell_id for integration.

Limitations

• Spatial coverage is limited to a bounding box around Vancouver Island and Puget Sound, not the entirety of British Columbia.
• Temporal coverage is restricted to summer months (June-September) only, missing off-season vessel activity.
• Trip and event durations have predefined minimum and maximum limits (e.g., trips 1-6 hours, events 10-60 minutes), which may exclude atypical behaviors.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada, derived from Oceans Network Canada AIS data and University of Victoria WAVE project research.

Collection Method

AIS positions from identified whale watching vessels were processed using a Hidden Markov Model to classify trips and wildlife-viewing events, summarized on a spatial grid.

Time Range

2019 to 2021, specifically June to September each year.

Freshness

Data last updated in March 2026, but the underlying observations end in 2021.

Geography

Bounding box including Vancouver Island and Puget Sound, British Columbia, Canada.