Rare sighting of Canadian navy sub in B.C.’s Howe Sound caught on video

B.C. residents and tourists are sometimes fortunate to see killer whales and even grey whales surfacing in West Coast waters but John Buchanan saw something even more rare last week: a working Canadian navy submarine.

Buchanan, caretaker with the Squamish Environmental Society, was driving down the the Sea-to-Sky Highway that runs along Howe Sound north of Vancouver when he spotted the sub.

"It was just the freakiest thing. I’ve never seen a submarine before in my life," Buchanan told the Vancouver Province. "I looked over at Anvil Island and there’s this bloody submarine. This thing is huge, eh?"

Buchanan pulled over to take some photographs and video, which shows crew members moving on the vessel's sail (aka conning tower), as well as its radar rotating and the periscope retracting.

The sub has been identified as HMCS Victoria, one of four diesel-electric Upholder-class boats (yes, it's big enough to be a ship but subs by tradition are referred to as boats) that Canada purchased from the Royal Navy back in 1998 or $750 million to replace our navy's obsolete Oberon-class boats.

Renamed Victoria-class, the second-hand subs were considered a bargain, but like anything used, it turned to be a case of buyer beware. The vessels had been mothballed for years at a moorage in Scotland and a myriad of problems quickly surfaced, so to speak. The subs have spent more time being refurbished than in operational service.

[ Related: Canada 'daft' to buy problem-plagued subs from U.K., British MP says ]

According to the Canadian Armed Forces' web page on the the sub fleet's status, the aim is still to have three out of four hunter-killer subs available for operational use at any one time.

The Victoria, which displaces 2,200 tons surfaced, has been one of the better performers. It was the first of the group to successfully sink a ship — a decommissioned U.S. Navy vessel — with a torpedo during a training exercise off Hawaii last year.

The navy confirmed the Victoria, based at Esquimalt on Vancouver Island, was out on a training exercise.

"When she goes out like this, if it’s not a specific exercise, it’s for training," Capt. Annie Djiotsa told the Province. "A lot of members of the public have seen her lately because she was in Howe Sound and she’s been out there doing her thing."

But Buchanan, a conservationist, wasn't crazy about the massive warship skulking around Howe Sound, a 42-kilometre-long, 250-metre-deep fjord dotted with islands and often busy with ferry traffic.

"I don’t want them out there every day with their sonar, do I?" he said. "But I don’t know enough about them to know what the environmental consequences of what their manoeuvres may be."

Environmentalists have complained the use of sonar has an adverse impact on marine mammals such as whales and porpoises.