North America’s first whale sanctuary hit a milestone in the project last week.
They Whale Sanctuary Project opened their visitor an operations centre in Sherbrooke.
The centre is just 20 minutes from Port Hilford bay in Guysborough County, where the sanctuary will eventually be built.
Executive director for the project, Charles Vinick, says the sanctuary will be funded entirely by donors — and that the financial burden wouldn’t fall on taxpayers.
“We received a grant in fact for this house from CN Railway — that’s a corporate grant. So there will be corporate grants, there will be private individuals but we’re not looking for government support from the province or the federal government to do this,” he says.
Vinick estimates the cost of building the sanctuary at $12 million dollars; annual operating costs will likely be around $2 million, he says.
The visitor and operations centre will be open three days a week while the sanctuary is constructed and will have information about whales, the project. In addition, it will also act as staff quarters while construction takes place.
The sanctuary needs to secure approvals from several government departments before work can begin on the site.
“We look to be doing on-site construction in 2022 and realistically at this stage I think early 2023 would be a reasonable goal for bringing the first whales to the whale sanctuary.”
The approximately 40-hectare whale enclosure will be 150 times bigger than the largest performance tanks in the world.
