Wildlife guide Tobin Sparling spots Cocos booby in Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet

The Story

Whale-watching tour guide Tobin Sparling photographed a Cocos booby in Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet on Sept. 23, an area where he says booby sightings are “quite unusual.”

The Cocos booby is a tropical seabird named after the volcanic Cocos Island off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. While the birds do not migrate like other birds, they may leave nesting colonies after breeding season, and their breeding timing can vary by island.

Sparling connected the unusual Vancouver appearance to warmer ocean conditions associated with El Niño, saying that although “El Niño is strengthening” with a “greater than 90 per cent chance” of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2026-27, the key change for boobies is indirect through their food.

In Sparling’s account, warmer waters shift fish and zooplankton behaviour, with fish dispersing because conditions are too warm for them and for the zooplankton those fish eat. “So that means that tropical birds are dispersing a lot more,” he said.

Sparling said the Burrard Inlet sighting was not an isolated case, adding that “several other individuals” have been spotted along the B.C. coast, with estimates around five or six. He also noted that ornithologists and birdwatchers have reported at least one juvenile and one adult, with juvenile and adult birds distinguishable by plumage.

Sparling, 26, works as a guide for Price of Wales, taking locals and visitors on whale watching tours out of Granville Island. He said the local humpback whale population has made “a tremendous comeback” and that “the transient orca population is increasing as well,” adding that more humpbacks contribute to an ecosystem that supports krill and fish.

He also said he was raised on Bowen Island and completed an undergraduate biology degree at UBC, and he has spent months in Africa taking wildlife photographs.