Rare sighting: Grey whale spotted off Vancouver's Stanley Park

A grey whale was spotted off the shores of the Stanley Park seawall on Aug. 12, 2015. (Twitter/News 1130's @DangerOnAir)

Visitors to Vancouver’s Stanley Park seawall were treated to a rare sight when a grey whale appeared just off shore.

The lone whale was spotted in Burrard Inlet and stayed for just over an hour on Wednesday morning, entertaining tourists and locals alike.

Initial reports suggested the animal was a humpback whale, but Vancouver Aquarium scientists confirmed it was a grey whale. Grey whales typically show no dorsal fin and are a mottled grey in colour.

Marine biologists say this could be the same whale that has been seen feeding along the sunshine coast for the past 10 days.

Grey whales are bottom feeders, dining on small, shrimp-like animals called amphipods that live on muddy ocean floors. Because they prefer shallower waters, grey whales often travel close to the shoreline, but are more often seen on the other side of Vancouver Island, along Pacific Rim National Park.

Grey whales were once a common sight in Howe Sound but they all but disappeared between 1880 and 1900 due to intense over-hunting. After a multi-decade effort by local conservationists to rehabilitate the waters of Howe Sound, in 2010, grey whales returned for the first one in more than 100 years.

That year, a grey whale swam all the way into False Creek, and last summer, another spent a few days in the waters around Metro Vancouver.

Vancouver Aquarium researcher Meghan Moore says these visits are happening more often as marine restoration efforts continue.

"There's been a lot of recovery efforts in Howe Sound, so there's probably more food out there” for the whales, she says.