VANCOUVER—Former Vancouver Canucks defenceman Willie Mitchell and Tofino, B.C. photographer Jeremy Koreski caught a rare glimpse of an endangered leatherback sea turtle off B.C.’s coast on a recent whale watching trip.

The two shared a photo of the sighting in an Instagram post Wednesday through the Tofino Resort and Marina account, which Mitchell owns.

“To the surprise of many, this turtle is in British Columbia waters, after travelling all the way from Indonesia in search of jellyfish,” the post says.

Jessica Torode, the co-ordinator of the BC Cetacean Sightings Network, said it is indeed rare to see a leatherback in B.C. waters.

“They’re usually quite far (from) shore and they’re quite hard to spot, so we don’t get very many sightings of them,” she said.

Leatherbacks, which can grow to be 900 kilograms or the size of small car, are “critically endangered,” she said.

The turtles travel from their breeding grounds in Indonesia all the way to B.C. to forage for jellyfish.

Along the way they risk entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with boats, and the threat of plastic pollution.

“They’ll mistake plastic bags for jelly fish, they can look quite similar in the water,” Torode said, noting one study suggested about 35 per cent of leatherback turtles had died from plastic ingestion.

“They’re really, really unique looking animals and they’re just absolutely massive,” she said.

Instead of a hard carapace — the upper part of a turtle shell — they have a “leathery carapace with these ridges down their backs.”

They are ancient animals that lived even before the age of dinosaurs, according to the Vancouver Aquarium.

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