A penguin was captured on film escaping from a pod of killer whales by jumping into a boat full of tourists in Antarctica.
The extraordinary spectacle followed a dramatic chase in which the bird circled the tour boat and attempted repeatedly to leap out of the water to safety.
The frightened penguin was being pursued by a group of orcas in the Gerlache Strait as tourists on several dinghies watched on.
Mr Karsten said: “It was crazy to see in person. It was like watching a National Geographic episode on location. I imagine the penguin was very relieved to get away.”
The killer whales were in hot pursuit of the bird and it only narrowly made an escape on its second attempt to leap to safety.
The footage shows the penguin making it onto the rim of the boat, where it is helped onboard by tourists as the watching crowd cheers.
The boat, with the penguin inside, begins to move off but the orcas follow along behind. Someone in the crowd can even be heard suggesting the whales might also try to jump onboard the dinghy in pursuit of their intended meal.
The clip ends with the penguin standing proudly on the deck of the boat, safe from its attackers.
“After cruising for a little bit, the penguin said goodbye to the boat and hopped back into the icy water,” Mr Karsten said.
By Jonny TickleA leading Russian parliamentarian has proposed a new bill to ban the catching of marine mammals, which would eventually lead to the closure of the country’s many dolphinaria as collections could no longer be replenished.
Authored by State Duma deputy Svetlana Bessarab, of the ruling United Russia party, the bill would prevent the practice of taking mammals such as dolphins, seals, and killer whales into captivity, including for educational purposes. The aim is to stop the poaching of animals that have evolved to live in a large oceanic territory. Over time, as the animals currently affected eventually die, institutions with marine mammals would be forced to close.
As things stand, capturing marine mammals is already highly regulated, with purchasing from illegal poachers completed banned. However, according to Bessarab, there is now an absurd situation where state agencies seize animals from criminals and then hand them over to dolphinariums for ‘safekeeping’, despite these institutions not being equipped to rehabilitate the animals.
In 2018, activists discovered around 100 whales living in tightly packed aquatic ‘pens’ in Russia’s Far East. The animals were later declared as having been illegally captured, and the local governor said they would all be released back into the wild. In November 2019, the last of the captured whales were finally returned to their ocean home.
Female orcas are most thrown off from foraging when boats and vessels intrude closer than 400 yards, according to new research — troubling findings for the endangered population of southern resident orcas that desperately needs every mother and calf to survive.
The research, gathered by attaching suction-cup electronic tags to the whales, is a clear wake-up call to the protection endangered mother orcas need, researchers and experts say.
“Anything that takes food away from a mom trying to support a calf, that is something we should carefully consider,” said Marla Holt, lead author on the study, and a research wildlife biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. “We need females to produce calves if we want to move toward population recovery.”https://players.brightcove.net/1509317113/H1GHOkCo_default/index.html?videoId=6222300570001NOAA scientists affix a DTAG to Southern Resident killer whales in Puget Sound. Research conducted under NMFS-authorized ESA/MMPA permit #16163
NOAA declared the southern resident orcas in 2015 a Species in the Spotlight, an initiative to bring more attention to the most endangered marine species in the U.S. These latest findings, published Tuesday in Frontiers in Marine Science, are expected to help the agency align its guidelines for whale watching with rules already in place in British Columbia and the state of Washington to be more protective of southern resident mother orcas and their calves.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission recently adopted new rules that forbid commercial whale watching of a southern resident calf up to 1 year old, among other restrictions.
But NOAA has yet to update its own regulations, which are less protective than either the state or Canada. Boaters meanwhile are encountering a confusing three-way regulatory regime of a critically vulnerable species that goes back and forth across the border. Enforcement on the water is also crucial to the effectiveness of the rules.
What the new research shows
The new findings on vessel disturbance build on earlier field work that used temporary tags attached to southern resident orcas with suction cups.
The tags record the whales’ movements and allow scientists to observe the orcas’ lives underwater, as they dive, swim and pursue prey. It is those findings that revealed that male and female orcas alike change their behavior when vessels come close — females more than males.
Females will either stop foraging if they are, or not initiate foraging dives.
Female orcas also share their prey, usually at the surface. Noise by vessels or the presence of even kayaks at the surface where the orcas need to come up to breathe and to share prey all can hinder crucial prey capture and sharing. The effect is most concerning in pregnant and nursing mother orcas, whose nutritional needs are greatest.
Lactation takes more calories than any other activity, and orca moms typically nurse their baby for at least a year. The baby will depend on her for food as long as three years as it learns to hunt. Adult male offspring also often are partly provisioned by their mothers, so the females’ hunting success is crucial to the entire family.
Jennifer Tennessen, a research scientist at NOAA’s Northwest Science Center and another author on the paper, said as a mother with a 10-month-old herself, it is not hard to understand a mother orca’s challenge in feeding her calf.
“There is the potential for mothers to be more vulnerable to disturbance due to this need to be with the calves, they need more prime opportunities to forage,” Tennessen said. “If vessels are close, it may be that it is not worth it, you just wait until conditions are better.”
Holt, also a mom, likened the mother orcas’ dilemma to trying to ski with her young son while nearby skiers are bombing down the mountain.
It’s specifically close approaches that are the problem, Tennessen said. “These results don’t show whales can’t coexist with vessels, it just shows there is an effect when they are closer.”
The orcas are challenged not only by vessel noise, but also pollution and scarce chinook, their preferred prey. A new Washington state report shows Puget Sound chinook are in crisis, as their numbers continue to dwindle, making the orcas work harder than ever to get enough to eat.
There are only 74 southern residents left in a population unique in the world in its culture and affinity for the waters of Puget Sound. They need salmon to survive – and quiet water in which to hunt them.
Time is running out for the salmon orcas need and the southern residents that hunt them.
Scientist Alexander Morton was overjoyed the descendants of the northern resident orca families she used to see daily have returned to Fife Sound after a 20-year absence. She took this photo of members of the A5… (Alexander Morton) More
Whales return to previously hostile waters
But recent good news from up north also shows when conditions improve, orcas take notice.
Scientists were thrilled earlier this month when members of some of the northern resident families they had not seen in decades were documented in waters the families had fled, when a local fish farm turned on electronic pingers to scare away seals.
“I saw them traveling with their heads out of the water,” Alexander Morton, an independent biologist based in the Broughton Archipelago, said of the northern residents.
The pingers were turned off long ago, after the B.C. government banned their use. The fish farm was dismantled last year. Then, this winter, the orca families so long absent from Fife Sound, came back. They brought a newborn with them.
Morton said she had thought perhaps, in their long absence, the matriarchs that knew the way to the waters of Fife Sound, home to fat-rich king salmon, had died, and their mastery of the sound’s key fishing spots was lost along with them. “I was worried the knowledge of how they used this area was trapped in a human brain, mine, with no way of getting that back to them,” Morton said of the next generation of northern residents.
But apparently, the younger orcas were paying better attention to their elders than she thought.
JULY 28, 2020 / 6:32 AM / CBS/APhttps://www.cbsnews.com/embed/video/?v=a1868626732568dd7f4b07740245c7ea#1VZtb9xEEP4rliUQoGy8a%2Fv8clKFElpEoFShbZAgrk7r3fHdEr%2FhXSc5qvx3Zny%2Bu7T9UCgCCZ103peZ3ZlnZp7Zt74cXdfXcusv3TDCiX9rNHT%2B8q1vHDTWX16%2F9d22B3%2Fp33baP%2FGNxqGUsVBhFrKo4gsWi7xkZZZxJrlcaBULKOMQZZv%2B%2FiVUF6Rxddm03fYi%2FeXFj5CVP12cb%2F%2F49ffz1fflz6qUpVuhtK3HNUpCVXWDY65jG6h7pgbjjJJ1vWXQatmuYQDNukFJizrOuJpsezYpea7zSMk7KnlHJW%2BvpOEGVXBQjXX9SSco2XYtbb%2F%2BFG1nGrBONr2%2FFIsoSfIkTyPOOVo2DtKZrqWN8Dh9Lkuo8RYeLiPCtd7NWzQfA9LINViKmCWgN871dlkERaBK28KdFac4MHgfWnSquqYINmNZBKYIhiIIuciKgOdFIAR%2BkzjPhFCM50nK4oSnLJMxTiPF4ziCVHBeBG4zNmUrTV0ESczvowTXKimrUvCMR7zMJKR6IbRUEqIwVDIOQ7pDCEb29NJtmNqYtutumEgWizjlbD7o9Ld%2Bjf5t%2FnNHRJjx%2BzTExQRynkalSirgWpThIl6EsVJRleVRrjT8HU8eTvx%2BgFsDd1dD%2FY5Ltq%2BNglPZ1OtT0xWB7NGNW4RpKr8i%2BFi5FMF8cBH4h5p9dP7d3d3pDNsOqt0FCE1lanCdtej017YbBwVPTC81s24A2Zh2%2FTm59eSz8NsGtJH07e%2FxnwDGD8%2FxTwj6i0SaRyHPEeJ42hFitYdlNcOy2sGSrJws8d7TJhqzvcHh%2F8liLO9GOqK%2BnkI3lWUR3LOmh%2FXVy%2BcoMb4X4g8cmkP71%2Fltiq2xF03fWQeDv6xkbZGikbCNmiia6iSTUaqSRclUqWMWlwq5mOuEVSUHqcI0F2l2ZFeyiCrMwCAHtUHav96tvcFclQO07jWd%2FkI2RGvfnL968Vj6fLvbuN7tvMEEh97YTuOawDtAWiIvX9CFsG7wuN3G2GO%2BWntwAf09UwpXzutO3RyozF5ZGF6NpUVUStAHcdt3re2GvdwG7s%2BeQiXHmiLCT%2FDnT6vnx9UoP4kXJ4uc%2BHaQ6gbzhCDDSFjVDTCNMQORdxc8S5DS49nfOV7E8gkufUVX4qS1K%2BtWa0KFQrpbkf1Kkr8viuDMf0A0mvH%2Bcuh6GNz2B0Bw%2FTBOQctFgqmnxSLO41yEUSSjxH9AxBtwcmJuNNHBektjXNt0epdpmBHTsXPwKpBupPRQ1BiA2vHcm9FghIjgPvZEHGIN4eCQevcbZErV1TWoXf4e1LDK3jsbi83YVd2t16BXpn3Cic0eI2nss5ZKRO9fDnLARK7hbET7B2r6137EsQvoUrFEZpIJASHLtQgZx9KsIJOcl5wy7x3VfYrNxeN9sTFaQ%2BuV29q08OUj%2BellgU%2BRLOHRgqWZUixWeLzMS8F0HOWhSqXI09Q%2FqFyO5VN0jyLDQ86wMYSZJzj21SVPjmL7vk516N1tOk%2FJYTDYwzcweBqkxoW68rCSvQazyXMb2XriBJu41yBdWc9YDzN%2B3copJPtT98FqHWK%2BmlenF8kttoN5W4O9wRKfav8p3JKpPhXnei9AqKzoeUZVht%2FvDJHDtT9awoZWXu0CjLKjnYVmXaxCqiVzC94dlP5MJhOQVco1ZBHSRwjVLlgS33eMh8iTGaKc7qrpET9Mp9emMVhx8cHNVxNJ78iGeBxlykG2%2BrKWjnh0um2O7opsWx1dpul8%2BCxBV4KszdhQ1vVDR%2F3guE0KKAItAYW7mvL08D57v%2B9%2BQMo0KgIKM8MwsznMjELMKMQMXwqcTTFlxrJ9TCdqntrNZYcWINYzvjUqztH6V%2B%2BmC2ac%2FtlBEzV81NRP6V0PD38C
An orca known as Tahlequah, who raised worldwide concern when she carried her dead calf for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles almost two years ago, is pregnant, scientists said. Casey McLean, the executive director of Sealife Response, Rehabilitation and Research (SR3), confirmed the pregnancy, CBS affiliate KIRO-TV reported.
The southern residents frequent Puget Sound, are struggling to survive, and most pregnancies are not successful. Tahlequah’s baby was the first for the whales in three years. The southern residents have since had two more calves, in J pod and L pod. Both are still alive.
A baby orca whale is seen being pushed by her mother July 24, 2018, after being born off the Canadian coast near Victoria, British Columbia, in this photo provided by the Center for Whale Research.DAVID ELLIFRIT/CENTER FOR WHALE RESEARCH VIA AP
The current population of the southern resident orcas is 72.
A post on the nonprofit’s website says that the majority of recent pregnancies have not resulted in successful births, due to a lack of access to Chinook salmon prey. About two-thirds of all southern resident pregnancies are typically lost, researcher Sam Wasser of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington has found.
Boaters should respect the whales’ space and give them the quiet they need, Fearnbach and Durban said. Whales use sound to hunt, and boat disturbance and underwater vessel noise is one of the three main threats to their survival, in addition to lack of adequate, available salmon and pollution.
Young J54, covered in rake marks from the attempt to keep him alive, is held afloat between his sister, J46 (left) and a cousin in late October 2017. He probably died within hours of this photo.
Everyone in the San Juan Islands who watches the whales remembers the summer of 2016. No one wants to relive it.
That was the summer the Southern Residents lost seven members, including one of the J Pod’s elderly matriarchs, who scientists say are the acknowledged leaders of the pods and repositories of the stored knowledge essential to the whales’ survival. But it was the death of J28 and her calf that stirred people to action.
It was late summer when observers began noticing J28, a 23-year-old female known as Polaris. She had given birth to a male calf that spring, but as the summer wore on, it became clear something was wrong. One day in August was especially telling.
The scene unfolded in the waters directly off Lime Kiln Lighthouse, in Washington state’s San Juan Islands: Polaris’s 6-year-old daughter, J46, nicknamed Star, was swimming about actively in the roiling currents with her mother and her baby brother, who had been designated J54, but had not yet been named.
They were not, as is often the case at this lighthouse, merely frolicking in the nearby seas. They were pursuing the salmon that comprise most of these endangered killer whales’ diets, and there was a deadly serious intent to it.
J46 Star, left, and her mother, J28, playing in 2011, when Star was only eight months old.
A week or so before, researchers at the nearby Center for Whale Research had sounded an alarm of sorts about Polaris, who was in her reproductive prime, and by extension the dire lack of salmon for the Southern Resident killer whale population. Ken Balcomb, the center’s founder, had reported that another J Pod matriarch, J14 (Samish), was missing and presumed dead, and that several whales appeared to be struggling.
“Things are shaping up to be pretty bad,” said Balcomb. “J28 is looking super-gaunt, and I would say she is within days of her death.”
The “peanut head” condition that Balcomb had reported—a severe sunkenness in the flesh directly behind the orca’s skull, an indication of extreme malnutrition and often a harbinger of imminent death—was clearly visible in Polaris the day we observed her, about a week after the warning. However, the listlessness CWR had reported also was ameliorated somewhat: The orca mother appeared at times to be frolicking physically with her calf, and seemed to be fairly active, though at times she also was simply “logging,” laying still on the surface and drifting with the current.
The last known photo of J28 and J54 together, early October 2016.
The most striking aspect of the scene was Star’s activity. She swam constantly around her two companions, diving deep at length and doing percussive behaviors like tail-lobbing and pectoral-slapping, often pointing in her mother’s direction. At times, the three of them would go down into the deep currents and disappear for minutes at a time, evidently foraging. It appeared to my amateur eye that she was herding the salmon she could find toward her mother, helping her get the food she so desperately needed.
The scene also had a deep emotional resonance for me: Six summers before, when Star had just been a still-callow baby of eight months, I had encountered her with Polaris a little south of the lighthouse, along a cliff wall in my kayak. I had tucked into a cove, well out of their way, and began taking photos.
That too had been a deeply touching scene: The mother and little amber-toned calf had played in the still morning waters, nuzzling and wrestling about, reveling in the kind of contact that human parents and their bonded offspring know well, the joy of touching. Polaris also seemed to be feeding the calf, getting its first nascent tastes of fish as the mother dove and brought at least one healthy Chinook to the surface to show and share, as these orcas have been observed doing for years.
Six years later, the now-grown calf was doing her part, returning that love and care to her mother by helping her find and catch the salmon she clearly has not been getting. The familial bonds of killer whales are now a scientifically established fact, but they are profound things to observe, spine-chilling reminders of the deep connection that exists between humans and orcas, whom the Northwest Native Americans referred to as “the people under the sea.”
The afternoon feeding at the lighthouse was a bit of good news, at least—it appeared that Polaris was more active and feeding well. Orcas have occasionally recovered from “peanut head,” though rarely (in captivity, it has been a virtual death sentence). Still the worry remained, and was compounded by the reality that if Polaris died, it meant nearly certain death for her still-unweaned calf, too.
In some regards, the loss of J14 Samish—a 44-year-old female whose still-mysterious death can’t be attributed to malnutrition or a lack of salmon, since the last sightings of her just days before her disappearance showed her in robust apparent health—may prove even more devastating for the Puget Sound’s endangered orcas. Recent research has revealed that post-menopausal females play an essential role in orcas’ long-term survival, because they actively lead the pods in their foraging and represent long-term memory of prey-seeking routes. Without their immense brains leading the way, orcas have a harder finding the large of amounts of fish they need to eat daily to survive and thrive.
That year also saw the loss of a big, striking male once so large he was nicknamed “Doublestuff,” who died after being struck by some unknown vessel. There was also a mother who died after her developed fetus died and became necrotic. Another big male died after government scientists darted him, and the wound became infected.
The bad news regarding the two well-known orca females cast a pall over a multimillion-dollar whale-watching industry in the San Juans that had just endured the worst season (for seeing resident orcas, at least) in its history, and seemed to cast a cloud on the island’s whole community. As September drew to a close, it seemed everyone wanted to know how J28 was doing, as though the fate of the Southern Resident killer whale population seemed to hinge on the news. And in some respects it may have.
J2 Granny, playing in the kelp near Lime Kiln Lighthouse in 2012.
The orcas’ human advocates were not giving up, but the picture was becoming grim. “Right now, we don’t even have a sustaining population of Southern Residents,” said Deborah Giles. “We’ve gone backwards. There were 88 animals when they were listed in 2005. Now we are down to 82, and maybe fewer very soon.” As she said this, she looked out over the waters where we had all observed Polaris and her offspring a few days before, and a cloud crossed her face.
A month later, on Oct. 28, CWR scientists made it official at a press conference in Seattle: J-28 had disappeared and was now presumed dead. Her baby, J-54, they said, looked even more malnourished and was being supported in the water by his sister, J-46. They gave him only a few more days, if not hours, to live, and at the time of the announcement was also presumed dead.
“It’s a sad day,” said Ken Balcomb. “I’ve been to several funerals and that’s what this feels like.”
Something snapped. The agony of watching a mother orca slowly starve to death, followed by the spectacle of her unweaned baby’s path towards the same death, was like a final straw that kicked the region’s whale advocates into action.
Coordinating among several advocacy groups and the CWR, they organized a press conference at the Seattle waterfront focusing on the deaths of J28 and J54 as a tragic warning sign for the state of the endangered Southern Resident killer whale population. Even the normally reclusive Balcomb was persuaded to participate, and he delivered the message in stark terms.
“We know what we need to do—feed them!” Balcomb told the assembled reporters, and urged government officials to take immediate steps to begin removing the four Lower Snake River dams.
“Restore Chinook habitat, anywhere, anyhow,” he said. “If we don’t, we will lose our whales.”
The surge of publicity created immediate political pressure on the state’s politicians, though it eased off over the following year or so, but local lobbying efforts in Olympia, led by the Pacific Whale Watch Association and other advocacy groups, stepped up their intensity during 2017, culminating in Gov. Jay Inslee’s March 2018 announcement that he was forming an Orca Recovery Task Force to tackle the problem.
In the meantime, the bad news for the Southern Residents reached a kind of apex when, shortly after New Year’s Day 2017, Balcomb and the CWR announced a momentous death in the population: J2, aka Granny, the J Pod’s grand matriarch who was estimated to be more than 100 years old.
There was only one further death in the population in 2017: J52 Sonic, a 2-year-old male who disappeared in September. But 2017 also saw a significant change in the Residents’ behavior: Their presence in the Salish Sea waters became extremely scarce.
It may have been one of the effects of Granny’s death; matriarchs are known to be the leaders of the pods, calling the shots on where they go and when, and the change in J Pod leadership clearly affected its foraging patterns. However, the far more likely culprit in the change was the disappearance of Fraser River salmon.
The Chinook produced by the Fraser—which flows out of British Columbia just south of Vancouver—have long been the primary reason the Southern Residents have come to the Salish Sea in the summertime: Scientists estimate that 80 percent of their summer diet comprises fish from the Canadian river. And in the summer of 2017, the numbers of Chinook returning to the system, measured at the Albion Point salmon station, simply flatlined.
Canadian officials remain puzzled at how the returns simply fell off the table that year, but the trend has remained similar through 2018 and much of 2019, as well. The return of the J Pod to the San Juans this past week coincided with a marginal rise in salmon return numbers on the Fraser.
So for most of the summers of 2018 and 2019, the Southern Residents have simply been absent from the Salish Sea.
“It still feels very surreal that we’ve just had our first June on record with no Southern Resident killer whales in inland waters,” wrote Monika Wieland, executive director of the Orca Behavior Institute and the author of Endangered Orcas: The Story of the Southern Residents, at her blog. “June used to be a highlight of the year because of the abundance of sightings of all three pods on the west side of San Juan Island. Yet here we are, 58 days without any of them in the Salish Sea. The silence created by their absence is deafening.”
A humpback whale breaches in Haro Strait with the Olympic Mountains in the background.
The absence of the Residents, however, has not been the complete disaster one would expect both for land-based whale watchers and for the whale-watching operations based in the San Juans and Vancouver/Victoria area. That’s because the second population of orcas to use these waters—the mammal-eating population known as transients, or Bigg’s killer whales—have suddenly begun showing up in unusually large numbers.
The two populations—which geneticists have determined haven’t exchanged DNA in more than 300,000 years—are not friendly; when they have been observed in proximity to each other, the Residents have generally chased away the smaller pods of Bigg’s whales. So scientists have hypothesized that the Bigg’s whales may be taking advantage of the absence of the Residents to access the abundant numbers in the Salish Sea of their main prey: namely, seals and sea lions.
Additionally, humpback whales—which were absent from the Salish Sea after being hunted out near the turn of the 20th century—have begun returning as well, feeding on the large schools of herring and the semi-abundant krill that can be found here.
A pod of mammal-eating Bigg’s orcas catch and kill a Dall’s porpoise on May 25.
Certainly, passengers on the region’s whale-watching tours have had plenty to witness. On one tour I took this spring, we followed a pod of Bigg’s whales as they hunted a Dall’s porpoise at high speed, and then turned the waters around them blood-red when they finally caught and killed it. Even more common have been sightings of Bigg’s whales launching hapless harbor seals 50 feet into the air with their powerful flukes at the climax of a hunt.
A transient calf with its mother in Juan de Fuca Strait.
“The transients are fascinating animals, and it’s been great to have them here,” says Jeff Friedman, owner of Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching and president of the PWWA. “They are amazing to watch, especially when they’re hunting.”
However, the tour operators aren’t content with the new reality. “The fact is that our number one priority is the recovery of the Southern Resident killer whale population,” Friedman says. “They are the reason we are here. Even with the transients around, the picture isn’t right without the Residents.”
Friedman, like the scientists and advocates, has been heavily engaged in the Orca Recovery Task Force process. Even though his focus has necessarily been directed to warding off the would-be moratorium on whale watching, he says his primary mission remains getting enough fish in the water to return the Resident population to health.
However, many of the solutions under consideration by the task force—habitat restoration, vessel effects, toxins in the water, and dam removal among them—are all long-term solutions that do relatively little to help the orcas now. Even if the Lower Snake dams were all to be taken down within the year (not at all likely), it would be as long as another decade (though perhaps sooner, depending on which salmon scientists you talk to) before the Snake/Salmon river systems would produce numbers of fish appreciable enough to help the killer whales.
The pressing issue facing scientists is how to get enough fish in the water to feed the orcas right now.
J35 Tahlequah romps in the waters off Lime Kiln Lighthouse on Sunday, Aug. 25.
J35 Tahlequah, the mother whose mourning for her dead calf gripped the world last summer, thus sparking the wave of anger over the loss of the whales that finally drove the state’s politicians into action, was among the J Pod whales who returned to the San Juans last week. She looked plump and healthy, frequently playing with little J56, and tail-slapping and socializing.
“We have seen her foraging successfully a couple of times. She looked really healthy to me,” says Deborah Giles. “It made everyone happy.”
Both the condition and the behavior of J Pod made clear that they have, for now at least, figured out how to sustain themselves without enduring the paucity of salmon that has been their reality in the Salish Sea recently. “It’s so heartening to see these whales, and to see them together, see them playing, lifting each other up out of the water, breaches and tail slaps—it’s really amazing,” says Giles. “And it’s really, really good to see them looking as well as they do.
“But in the back of my head, I am thinking—where is K pod? Where is L pod? Are there more babies? Obviously K27 lost the baby she was pregnant with last September. She didn’t come back with a baby. K pod hasn’t had a new baby since 2011.”
While J Pod appears to have regained its health, there were nonetheless three deaths among the Southern Residents this year, including J17, a 42-year-old matriarch known as Princess Angeline. She was Tahleuqah’s mother, making J35 the matriarch of her clan at age 21.
So while Giles spends her time this month on the water collecting scat samples, she has been directing her political focus on getting more fish in the water sooner. For her, that means fisheries management.
The Northwest’s salmon harvest is carefully regulated by a treaty overseen by the Pacific Salmon Commission, an international body that includes both American and Canadian stakeholders such as commercial and sport fishermen, as well as Native American tribes. That body produces a treaty every 10 years—vigorously negotiated—in which the salmon harvest produced in Pacific waters is divvied up among those various interests.
The Southern Resident killer whales, however, do not have a place at that table. So their needs are left to whatever might be left over from the divided harvest.
“What we’ve all been screaming about is giving the whales a place as a major stakeholder in fisheries management,” says Giles. “We’re asking for an allocation of fish for the whales.”
The solution, as she sees it, is for much tighter regulation, if not an outright moratorium, on fishing for Chinook in the orcas’ home waters, which run the entire length of the Pacific Coast. “If not full on fisheries closures, we at least need to have targeted regulations for where and how we fish,” Giles says. “It’s past time we’re doing that. And a lot of that has to do with tribal rights, which is where it becomes very political.”
Recently undertaken studies aimed at identifying key orca-foraging “hotspots” in the San Juans could help provide the data needed to make such a plan a reality, Giles says. However, “the thing I am scared that if we don’t get a handle on these fisheries, there won’t be any salmon even in those hotspots.
The PSC itself has been resistant to these overtures, though its most recent news releases have indicated at least a sensitivity to the political pressure that has arisen around orca recovery.
“At the Pacific Salmon Commission, at that highest level, in the rhetoric around the most recent treaty, the dialogue was that ‘the needs of the Southern Residents would be taken into consideration,’ but if you look at the treaty itself, the words ‘whale,’ ‘killer whale,’ ‘orca whale’—none of that show up in the treaty itself,” Giles observes.
“So basically it’s just lip service. Those words ‘allocation’ and ‘Southern Resident’—they don’t want those to pass into reality. No way.”
However, an adjunct body of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, the Pacific Management Fishery Council, has proven more amenable to whale advocates’ overtures. It is holding public hearings of an ad hoc group in key cities around the Pacific Northwest, examining the impacts of mixed open fishing on Southern Resident killer whales.
“It is a start, and the more people that get involved in those hearings, and make comments leading up to the meetings” the better, Giles says, noting that the deadline for such comments is Tuesday.
Overall, Giles is mostly heartened by how the public has responded to the killer whales’ plight, and how the effort has drawn help from a variety of quarters. “There are a lot of people working in a lot of different arenas to help these whales in different capacities—like the Toxic-Free Future people, who are doing a lot of important work to remove toxins from our system, and to try to push legislation that reduces the use of chemicals as much as possible. I think that’s good, I think we need to keep pushing each other in our own areas of expertise. “
“And we need to be engaging with our political appointees, the people that we elect, and pushing them into continuing to address the issues and continuing to cut to solutions,” she adds.
At times, particularly back in 2016, Giles would confess that she feared she was doomed simply to document the demise of a once-great population of killer whales. These days, she is more hopeful—not to mention determined.
“We may well be witnesses to the complete loss of the Southern Residents,” she says. “But we know what can be done. It may get depressing at times, but none of us will ever stop fighting for them.”
Officials with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans inspect the carcass of killer whale J34 near Sechelt, B.C., on Dec. 21, 2016. (Graham Moore)
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The final report into the death of a southern resident killer whale over two and a half years ago confirms that it died from blunt force trauma, likely inflicted in a ship strike.
J34, an 18-year-old male nicknamed Doublestuff, was found dead near Sechelt on Dec. 20, 2016.
At the time of his discovery, Fisheries and Oceans Canada said initial examinations of the seven metre orca indicted that it was alive when struck and died sometime later.
J34’s necropsy report was last updated on May, 23, 2017, however, according to a DFO spokesperson, the report wasn’t made public and is only available upon request, as per policy.
“There were no requests for this information at the time the report was finalized. There had been significant media coverage at the time, reporting the cause of death was blunt force trauma, consistent with a ship or boat strike. The final report came to the same conclusion, ” said DFO’s Dan Bate.
The final necropsy report for J34 confirmed the original evaluation of researchers that the whale was killed by a ship strike. (Fisheries and Oceans Canada)
Shari Tarantino of Orca Conservancy, a Washington state non-profit, said there is a lack of transparency around the DFO’s reporting on J34.
According to Tarantino, her group and Washington state orca researcher Scott Veirs had been asking DFO for the final J34 necropsy report for months. Tarantino received a copy of the report late last week, but only after petitioning the office of Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson directly.
“It should not have taken two and a half years to release a report,” said Tarantino.
“There’s nothing new in this report. It’s basically what we had already been told. But it’s hard not to wonder if it was withheld because Kinder Morgan or because of Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (the proposed container terminal in Delta, B.C.) was waiting on comments.”
Fisheries and Oceans Canada media advisor Lara Sloan said the delays in sending the report were due to administrative problems and miscommunication within DFO.
“There was no intention not to provide that report,” said Sloan.
The precarious state of the 76 remaining southern resident killer whales is a major concern in the Trans Mountain expansion project which will increase tanker traffic through the animals’ territorial waters once completed.
A report released this year by the National Energy Board backed up those concerns, suggesting the project would have “significant adverse effects” on the whales.
The federal government approved the Trans Mountain expansion project last month.
FILE – In this Aug. 7, 2018, file photo, Southern Resident killer whale J50 and her mother, J16, swim off the west coast of Vancouver Island near Port Renfrew, B.C. The younger whale later died. (Brian Gisborne/Fisheries and Oceans Canada via AP, file)
AA
SEATTLE (AP) — Two conservation groups say the federal government is violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to consider how salmon fishing off the West Coast is affecting endangered killer whales.
The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity and the Washington state-based Wild Fish Conservancy on Tuesday notified President Donald Trump’s administration that they intend to file a lawsuit within 60 days unless officials reevaluate whether the fishing further jeopardizes orcas that frequent the inland waters of the Pacific Northwest.
The population “southern resident” orcas is down to 74 — the lowest number in decades. No calf born in the last three years has survived as the orcas struggle with a dearth of their favored prey, chinook salmon, as well as pollution and vessel noise.
The conservation groups note that commercial and recreational fishing claimed more than 200,000 chinook off the Pacific Coast last year.
By Richard ZussmanOnline Journalist based at B.C. Legislature Global News
Some B.C. First Nations and fishermen want the government to establish a new seal hunt on the west coast. As Jill Bennett reports, their reasons for the new hunt are being met with skepticism by opponents.
Members of the Tsawwassen First Nation are teaming up with commercial and sport-fishers on B.C.’s coast to call on the new federal fisheries minister to allow a West Coast seal and sea lion harvest. The group, called the Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society, says that growing populations of seals and sea lions endangers future salmon populations.
“If we want to see salmon around for our next generations, we have to go out there and bring that balance to the animal kingdom,” said Thomas Sewid, the director of the newly established society. “To go out, harvest those seals, utilize the whole carcass so the meats are going to markets in Europe and China, the fat is being rendered down for the omega 3s.”
WATCH HERE: Pod of hungry orcas hunt for sea lion between boats
The federal government has banned the cull of seals and sea lions on the West Coast since the 1970s, which still exists on the East Coast. The group is hoping to have a change in policy now that Jonathan Wilkinson, the MP for North Vancouver, is the new fisheries minister.
“I think we are going to see the balance to our oceans and our waters come back in place because of that minister,” said Sewid. “He understands. He has been out sport-fishing. He has seen big fat sea lions tear salmon off his hooks.”
Sea lions are known to be aggressive, not just to animal populations, but towards humans as well. Last May, a sea lion that swam near Steveston Fisherman’s Wharf snagged a little girl by her dress and pulled her into the water. There were multiple Steveston Harbour Authority signs posted at the popular tourist destination warning people not to feed the sea mammals that frequent the area.
But there is some disagreement on how large an effect seals and sea lions actually have on the fish populations.
Scientists at Ocean Wise say their research does not support the idea a harbour seal cull improves the abundance of Chinook salmon in B.C. The scientist describes the fish population as “complex” and that the seal population has recovered from historical culls, and is no longer increasing significantly.
“Studies show only four per cent of the harbour seal diet is salmon. Herring and hake are their primary prey, with hake making up about 40 per cent of their diet,” said a statement from Ocean Wise. “Hake is actually a big salmon smolt predator, so a seal cull could actually have the opposite of its intended effect: by reducing the number of seals, the abundance of hake would likely increase, resulting in decreased salmon numbers overall.”
We also have a healthy and growing population of transient, or Biggs, killer whales, which eat marine mammals like seals and sea lions. So harbour seals are already being culled very effectively without any human interference at all. Reducing the seal population in the Salish Sea would mean a reduction in food for transient killer whales.
Ocean Wise has also found that with an increase in transient killer whales, which eat seals, the population is expected to slowly decline over time.
But Sewid’s group has provided numbers from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans that show a massive population boom that needs to be controlled. According to those numbers, harbour seals in the Georgia Straight have gone up from 12,500 in 1987 to 45,000 today.
As for sea lions, those same numbers from the population grew on B.C.’s coast from 13,000 in 1984 to 36,140 in 1997.
The populations have slowed since the mid-1990s, and has been relatively stable since. One of the challenges Sewid says in convincing people that the animals should be culled is that they look “cute.”
“They don’t understand that seals and sea lions are eating hundreds of salmon fry when the fry are going out to sea, down the rivers and when the salmon are coming home to spawn, those overpopulations over seals and sea lions are eating all that fish,” said Sewid. “We have to bring that balance on.”
Southern resident killer whales are designated under the Species At Risk Act, which means federal prohibitions exist against anything that would harm them or habitat considered critical to their survival.(Valerie Shore/Shorelines Photography)
The court ruled that the National Energy Board (NEB) review failed to assess the impacts of marine shipping — saying it was so flawed, it should not have been relied on by the federal cabinet when it gave final approval to proceed in November 2016.
Activists, lawyers and academics say the decision demonstrates environmental corners cannot be cut when governments seek social licence for major infrastructure projects — especially in a case where increased tanker traffic and vessel noise are known to be key threats to killer whales.
“It’s very clear from this decision that environmental assessment considerations and Species At Risk Act decisions aren’t optional, and they need to be taken seriously,” said Dyna Tuytel, a lawyer with Ecojustice, who represented conservation groups that filed a court challenge to the federal government’s approval for a pipeline expansion.
“There’s a risk in taking shortcuts,” said Eric Taylor, a professor of zoology at the University of B.C., and the chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
“It’s going to come back and bite you, as it’s done here.”
Narrow reading of the law
According to the ruling, the shortcut, or “critical error” made by the NEB, was to define the scope of the project as only the pipeline and the marine terminal for the purposes of its environmental assessment.
So although the project looked at marine shipping during the review, it did not assess it to environmental standards, nor did it apply the Species At Risk Act to the effects of marine shipping on endangered species.
B.C.’s southern resident killer whales are considered at risk because of their small population, low reproductive rate and threats including marine traffic and lack of food. (Dave Ellifrit/Center for Whale Research)
“The NEB acknowledged that on the facts there were significant adverse effects of the project on southern resident killer whales — but the board, by defining the project narrowly, was able to say that the project was not likely to cause significant adverse effects,” said Tuytel.
Taylor called the decision to leave out the project-related tanker traffic in the review “unfathomable.”
“The oil is not going to sit there in barrels, it’s got to move out by ships. And ship traffic has clearly been identified as a threat to this endangered species. So it’s unconscionable that they ignored it,” he said.
Cutting corners
Tuytel called the ruling “fairly unusual.” But Taylor said he wasn’t surprised, given the threats to southern resident killer whales have been clear for over a decade.
“I think the court really had no other choice than to do this,” he said.
The whales, which are also threatened due to toxic contamination levels and low supplies of Chinook salmon, are designated under the Species At Risk Act, which means federal prohibitions exist against anything that would harm them or habitat considered critical to their survival.
In June, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans pledged measures to slow down vessel traffic, noting the population was facing an imminent threat to survival.
Fuel spills and underwater noise from tankers are just some of the threats that have endangered the southern resident killer whale population. (Michael Mcarthur/CBC)
Since the time the NEB reviewed the project, B.C.’s southern resident population has declined from about 82 to 75.
The project would increase capacity from five ships a month through Burrard Inlet to a maximum of 34 oil tankers capable of carrying 120,000 tonnes of diluted bitumen at a time.
According to the NEB report, Trans Mountain acknowledged the additional noise the project would create, but argued that the shipping lanes “will continue to host marine vessel traffic with or without the project, and that the impacts to the southern resident killer whales will continue to exist with or without the project.”
Killer whales a ‘flare’ for other issues
This is not the first time whales have played a role in halting a major Canadian infrastructure project.
Last year, energy giant TransCanada scrapped plans for a port for its proposed Energy East pipeline after protesters raised alarms about impacts on the calving grounds of the vulnerable beluga population in the St. Lawrence Estuary.
Taylor said the pipeline and its associated infrastructure are likely to have impacts on many species, but because of the popularity of killer whales, they tend to act as a “flare” for many of the issues associated with the project.
“If this was a lichen, many, many fewer people would be paying attention,” he said.
Michael Milstein, a spokesman with NOAA Fisheries, says researchers on Wednesday spotted the 20-year-old whale known as J35 carrying her dead young off the tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
The calf died July 24 and the image of the mother whale clinging to the dead calf has struck an emotional chord worldwide.
Milstein says researchers with Fisheries and Ocean Canada also spotted another member of the same pod — the 3 ½-year old whale J50 that is emaciated. The ailing orca was swimming with her mom Wednesday.
A team of experts led by NOAA Fisheries have been searching for the young whale to assess her health and potentially give her medication.
Exposing the Big Game 