Watching Our Water Ways

UPDATE, FRIDAY, MAY 28, 8:25 a.m.

On Thursday, it appears the transient killer whales started the day in Poulsbo’s Liberty Bay, passed by Illahee and went out Rich Passage about 10 a.m. I heard from researcher Mark Sears that they had spent the day traveling around Vashon Island, ending up at 8 p.m. at the south end of Bainbridge Island. Check out my story in today’s Kitsap Sun for a few more details.
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I’ve been hearing about transient killer whales in Puget Sound all year. Dozens of these seal-eating orcas have been sighted in small groups here and there throughout the region. Check out Orca Network’s Archives for reports made to that organization.

Transients have come and gone quickly from Sinclair Inlet near Bremerton a few times this year. But, as far as I know, yesterday was the first time since 2004 that they made it all the way into Dyes Inlet.

It was a good chance for me to talk a little about transients with the help of Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research and Howard Garrett of Orca Network, as you can see in a story I wrote for today’s Kitsap Sun.

By the way, the last report we had last night was at 7:30 in Ostrich Bay, but an observer reported them at 9:20 p.m. on the west side of Dyes Inlet and posted a comment on the story. (Appreciation goes to “rgdimages#217099.”)

Howie informed me this morning that a group of four transients was seen coming out of Liberty Bay near Poulsbo at 6:45 a.m. We’ll try to report whether those are the same animals as the ones in Dyes Inlet and where they go next. To report to Orca Network, one can send an e-mail, info@orcanetwork.org, or call (866) ORCANET.

It seems to be a big year for the transients. Why this is happening is open to speculation, which is always risky, but I appreciate Ken’s willingness to think out loud sometimes and kick a few ideas around. I mean, if scientists are unable to come up with hypotheses, there is nothing to test for.

So one possible explanation is that transients are here because residents are somewhere else. Residents may be somewhere else because there aren’t many salmon here right now. On the other hand, maybe seals and/or sea lions are finding enough to eat, and transients are finding success in hunting the smaller marine mammals.

This whole notion raises all kinds of questions for me, and I’ll try to explore these ideas in future stories. For example, if there are fish for seals and sea lions, why aren’t the resident killer whales eating them? Maybe the smaller marine mammals are concentrating on smaller fish? If fish are in short supply, will the population of seals and sea lions crash, or will these animals go somewhere else, too? And, given the cyclic nature of salmon populations, what is happening to the entire food chain — from the forage fish that salmon and seals eat up to the largest predators, the killer whales?

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Excitement continues to build among killer whale observers, as seven newborn orcas have arrived in the past year. There have been no deaths during that time.

A newborn calf, L-114, is seen swimming with its mother, L-77, named Matia. The photo was taken Sunday in Cordova Bay on the eastern side of Vancouver Island near Nanaimo, B.C. (Click to enlarge)
Photo courtesy of Dave Ellifrit of the Center for Whale Research

He’s a story I prepared this morning for the Kitsap Sun Web site:

A new calf has been born into L Pod, one of the three groups of orcas that frequent Puget Sound and the Salish Sea.

The young whale was spotted Sunday in Cordova Bay on the east coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, by Ken Balcomb and Dave Ellifrit of the Center for Whale Research. The center maintains an ongoing census of the Southern Resident killer whale population.

The two researchers later confirmed that the newborn, designated L-114, is the offspring of L-77, a 22-year-old named Matia. This is her first known calf, though it is possible she has had one or more offspring that did not survive.

The mother and calf were traveling with another mother-calf pair, L-94, Calypso, and her calf, L-113, born last fall. Calypso is Matia’s sister. The four whales are part of a portion of L pod that often travels together. They have become known as the L-12 subpod.

Balcomb and Ellifrit reported that they observed the newborn calf Sunday afternoon while the whales were headed south in Cordova Bay. At about 5 p.m., they reached the southern shore and headed east toward open water. They appeared to be hunting for fish, with “lots of taillobs, cartwheels and pec slaps,” according to a report on the center’s Web page.

This is the seventh orca calf born to the three Southern Resident pods in the past year. There have been no deaths during that time. This latest birth brings L Pod’s population to 42 animals and the overall population to 89.

“This continues the streak,” said Howard Garrett of Orca Network. “I am at a loss for an explanation. I am just celebrating.”

“It’s great news for the population,” Balcomb said. “So far all of them are doing well.”

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Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research has announced that the newest killer whale calf, designated J-46, should be known as “Star,” because the young animal has garnered so much attention.

This newborn calf could become a poster child in the effort to save the Southern Residents from extinction.

Ken’s naming announcement came as a surprise to me, because he rarely uses names for our local orcas. Like most killer whale researchers, Ken and other staffers at the Center for Whale Research generally call the whales by the alpha-numeric system set up by researchers many years ago.
(more…)

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When the Southern Resident killer whales came south out of Canada over the weekend, all three pods were together for a time.

Biologists for the Center for Whale Research were able to identify all known members of all three pods on Sunday, which means that none of the whales have died the past few months. It also means that apparently no new babies have been born.

Here’s the report filed Sunday along with some great photos by the Center for Whale Research.

After watching several whales pass by the Center and receiving various reports of more whales up north, both Orca and Starlet (boats) departed. At approximately 4:10 p.m. both vessels encountered J, K, and L pods traveling in tight groups up Boundary Pass. It appears that all members of the three pods were present, totaling 86 whales. The encounter ended at 6:30 p.m. The whales were traveling tight in two groups and continued north up Boundary Pass.
Observers: Ken Balcomb, Howard Garrett, Erin Heydenreich, Emma Foster and Basil Von Ah

Howard Garrett of Orca Network informed me this afternoon that he had received a report that L pod, now intact with the L-12 subpod, had headed back out of the area. I haven’t yet discussed this with folks tracking salmon, but it probably means that the whales are not finding an adequate number of chinook to make it worth staying around.

If anyone has any new information about test fisheries in the San Juan Island area, please pass it on.

Orca Network remains the best single source of information about the movements of whales, because the managers of the Web site take reports from whale watch boats as well as research scientists. The organization posts daily updates, which are sent to anyone who signs up for the e-mail.

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UPDATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 12
I just read on Orca Network that Ken Balcomb has corrected the date that L pod was seen in Monterey Bay. It should have been March 5, making the trip two days longer than first reported.

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Here’s a short piece I just completed for tomorrow’s Kitsap Sun, after I talked with Ken Balcomb.

Orcas Travel Fast to California

MONTEREY BAY, CALIF.

A group of killer whales that frequent Puget Sound recently completed a nearly 1,000-mile trip to Monterey Bay, Calif., in 11 days — demonstrating just how fast orcas can swim.

“They were really scootin’,” said Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research after identifying photos of L pod, one of three groups of whales that frequent Puget Sound.

Members of the pod were photographed off South Kitsap on Feb. 20 and then again last Tuesday (March 3) in Monterey Bay, Calif. It may be a record in terms of documenting actual sightings at the beginning and end of their travels, “but we know they can 75 or 80 miles a day, even around here,” said Balcomb, based on San Juan Island. “They did in it one direction (to California). Here, they usually go back and forth.”

Given that the sightings in Puget Sound and Monterey Bay were about 1,000 miles and 11 days apart, the rate of travel would be about 90 miles a day without a layover.

The last sighting of L pod was Saturday in the Farrallon Islands, Balcomb reported. That’s about 100 miles northwest of Monterey and about 30 miles west of San Francisco.

In recent years, sightings of the Puget Sound whales have increased off the California coast, where whale watchers have been on alert to photograph orcas for identification.

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It was sad and disturbing to find out that seven Puget Sound killer whales have died so far this year.

We haven’t had that number of deaths since 1998 — the year after 19 orcas visited Dyes Inlet between Bremerton and Silverdale. To those who study these whales, the orcas aren’t just seven animals in a herd; they are individuals with unique characteristics; they are members of an extended family that stays together for life.

Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research believes the deaths are related to a shortage of chinook salmon seen this year from California to Washington to British Columbia. I went into some detail about this in a story in today’s Kitsap Sun. I also included a brief “obit” on the animals that died.

I would like to take a moment to remind myself and others that it is unlikely that the deaths were caused by a single factor. I have long been intrigued by the prospect of synergism in these animals, and I would hope that researchers will one day be able to accumulate enough data to support or deny this hypothesis.

What I’m talking about is this: Researchers have promoted three principal causes of the decline in Puget Sound whales, officially known as Southern Residents. They are toxic chemicals (such as PCBs) that have accumulated in their bodies, lack of prey (chinook primarily), and stresses caused by noise, whale-watching boats and other things. For more info, check out the recovery plan for the Southern Residents.

Follow this train of thought:

• PCBs and other chemicals are believed to damage the orcas’ immune systems and reduce their ability to fight off disease.
• If the animals are not getting enough food, they draw upon fat reserves in their blubber. Metabolizing these fats tend to release the toxic chemicals into their bloodstream, exposing their immune systems to more chemicals and further increasing their risk of disease.
• Although the whales seem accustomed to whale-watching boats, anything that causes them to use up excess energy to replenish their energy supplies by hunting for food cannot be a good thing, especially in times of a food shortage. Uninformed boaters sometimes interfere with the whales’ travel during foraging, and noise caused by boats is believed to decrease their efficiency in finding fish through echolocation (their natural sonar system).

In my mind, all of these factors tend to work together. What is often hard to sort out is whether an animal dies of starvation or disease. When food is in short supply, disease may set in before an animal literally starves to death. Also, especially for a hunting species, a disease can reduce their ability to get food, so the outcome is the same. For many species, a higher-level predator may kill an individual that is starving or diseased. But with an animal at the top of the food web, such as killer whales and humans, the dynamics may be different.

I guess I’m just trying to point out that it could be an oversimplification to say the whales starved to death, even if food were a certain factor.

With regard to news sources, I have to confess that this story of the seven missing whales has been in the wind since Oct. 8, but I missed it. Howard Garrett and Susan Berta of Orca Network put something on their Web site, but I overlooked it. Richard Walker, editor of the Journal of the San Juans had talked to Ken Balcomb about that time, but I missed his story until someone pointed it out to me.

Finally, several people have mentioned the coincidental stranding of a killer whale on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Diana Leone of the Honolulu Advertiser reported that the 18-foot female was emaciated and had “cookie-cutter shark bites” and whale lice, all signs that it had been sick for some time.

CNN posted a user-generated video about the whale.

I understand that researchers are trying to see if the female orca, who was euthanized, can be connected with previous sightings.

I looked up a 2004 Marine Mammal Stock Assessment Report (PDF 56 kb) for a little background. It says Hawaiian killer whales are rarely seen, but the best population estimate is 430. Minimal genetic data indicate that the animals may be related to Gulf of Alaska transient killer whales.

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The Center for Whale Research has reported a new baby orca in L pod, and researchers captured photos within a few hours of its birth.

Newborn calf born to L-47, “Marina.” Photo courtesy of Center for Whale Research

The calf, spotted Tuesday afternoon off the west side of San Juan Island, has been designated L-111, the next number in the sequence for members of L pod. The young animal is the sixth calf born to L-47, a 34-year-old female nicknamed “Marina.” She was one of the 19 whales that visited Dyes Inlet for a month in 1997.

The new calf joins sisters L-83, “Moonlight,” and L-91, “Muncher,” which were other Dyes Inlet whales. Moonlight had a calf, L-110, which was born last year, making Marina a grandmother. Marina’s previous calf, L-107, was born in 2005 but survived no more than a few months, according to researchers at the center.

Because the new mother was observed without a calf Monday evening, the baby could not have been more than a day old when the photos were taken. The orange coloration and “fetal folds” in the skin are evidence of a newborn orca.

The calf is a welcome addition to L pod, which may be missing two animals this year, researchers say. As of December, the population of L pod was listed at 43.

For more information and additional photos, check the Center’s “Encounters” page.

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