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For a handful of researchers surveying marine life off the B.C. coast — it was a whale of a tale.

This summer, a group of biologists and Canadian Coast Guard members became the first people to report seeing endangered sei whales in Canadian waters in more than half a century.

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“This was very exciting because we didn’t expect it,” said Thomas Doniol-Valcroze, a research biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

“People on my team had never seen them.”

The sei whale, one of the fastest marine mammals in the world, is part of the same family as blue and fin whales.

At one point, there were more than 60,000 sei whales in the North Pacific, but the population collapsed after whalers started targeting them. There hadn’t been a single reported sighting of a sei whale in Canadian waters since before whaling was banned in the 1960s.

A 2006 Canadian report says there were two confirmed sightings of sei whales in Pacific waters off the west coast of the United States between 1991 and 2001 but none in Canada. They are listed as endangered in Canada’s Species at Risk Act.