In the latest video in SeaDoc Society’s series called “Salish
Sea Wild,” veterinarian and all-around marine life expert Joe
Gaydos goes on a quest to observe herring during their annual
spawning ritual — an event Joe calls the Salish Sea’s “most awesome
spectacle.”
In this drama, there is a role for nearly all the players in the
Salish Sea food web — from plankton that feed tiny fish to killer
whales that eat marine mammals. As the story plays out in the
Strait of Georgia, commercial fishers harvest herring at the peak
of the spawn. These herring are sold overseas, often becoming sushi
in Japan.
“This is the only major industrial herring fishery left in the
Salish Sea,” Joe says in the video. “Our other herring populations
are already too depleted.”
Canadian herring fishers are allowed to take up to 20 percent of
the estimated herring run, which has triggered a debate over
whether to reduce the quota, change the management system or cease
fishing for herring altogether, as outlined in a story by Jolene
Rudisuela of the
Vancouver Island Free Daily.
A recent story by Randy Shore of the
Vancouver Sun describes an ongoing effort by environmentalists
to end the herring fishery. Randy raises the prospect of at least
setting aside a protected herring reserve, as suggested by Andrew
Trites, a marine mammal researcher at the University of British
Columbia.
In another “Salish Sea Wild” video, released in October, Joe
Gaydos goes out on Puget Sound with Brad Hanson, a federal marine
mammal biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center to
collect scat and fish scales left behind by our southern resident
orcas. These samples can provide clues about what the killer whales
are eating at various times of the year as well other aspects of
their well-being.
It appears that the southern resident killer whales have begun
to travel into Central and South Puget Sound for their annual fall
feast of chum salmon, according to past experience and dozens of
reports from shoreside observers.
The northern section of the
proposed critical habitat for southern resident killer
whales.(click to enlarge)
Map: National Marine Fisheries Service
Meanwhile, the federal government has proposed extending their
designated “critical habitat” beyond Puget Sound to the outer coast
of Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
The critically endangered orcas have mostly been away from Puget
Sound this summer, as their frequency of visits has declined in
recent years. During the spring and summer, their primary prey is
chinook salmon. But they tend to follow schools of chum salmon in
the fall, and it is possible that recent rains got the chum moving
a little faster toward their many home streams.
It appears the whales came in and traveled as far south as
Seattle and the southern end of Bainbridge Island Thursday and were
headed back north today. They could make another loop of Puget
Sound, or they could head out to sea and return later. Check out
Orca Network’s
Facebook page for ongoing sighting reports.
Kitsap Sun reporter Jessie Darland describes their arrival.
The expanded critical habitat, proposed by the National Marine
Fisheries Service, totals 15,627 square miles along the continental
shelf of the Pacific Ocean. When finalized, federal agencies will
be required to protect the orcas’ habitat as well as the orcas
themselves.
Photo: Capt. Jim
Maya
By 2014, scientists at NMFS had been gathering data for several
years in support of such an expansion when the Center for
Biological Diversity filed a petition (Water
Ways, Jan. 19, 2014) urging the government to finally take
action. The agency agreed to move forward but continued to delay
until after the group filed a lawsuit, which led to this week’s
proposal.
Notably, the proposal does not include the Center for Biological
Diversity’s idea to include safe sound levels as an important
quality of the killer whale habitat. The group wanted to make sure
the whales could hear well enough to use their echolocation to hunt
fish, and they wanted to keep the animals from experiencing sounds
that could cause partial or total deafness.
The agency looked at the issue but concluded that it does not
have a way to establish a threshold sound level that could be
considered harmful, although non-quantitative noise levels have
been used to protect Cook Inlet beluga whales and Main Hawaiian
Island false killer whales. For now, NFMS kept the essential
habitat features for killer whale habitat to three things:
Water quality to support growth and
development,
Prey species of sufficient quantity, quality
and availability to support individual growth, reproduction, and
development — as well as overall population growth, and
Passage conditions to allow for migration,
resting, and foraging.
Based on experience, NMFS said its biologists could already
address adverse effects of man-made noise under the habitat
categories of prey and passage. If noise were to affect the whales’
ability to hunt, for example, the problem could come under “prey
species.” If noise were to discourage them from traveling to or
resting in a specific area, it could come under “passage
conditions.”
The Navy’s Quinault Range Site, where sonar and explosives are
used in testing and training operations off the Washington coast,
was excluded from the critical habitat designation following an
evaluation by NMFS. Also excluded was a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile)
buffer around the range.
“The Navy argued that there would be national security impacts
if NMFS required additional mitigation that resulted in the Navy
having to halt, reduce in scope, or geographically/seasonally
constrain testing activities to prevent adverse effects or adverse
modification of critical habitat,” NMFS noted in its findings.
The Navy has developed operational procedures to limit the harm
to killer whales and other marine life, as required by the
Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and court
rulings. While NMFS agreed to exclude the Quinault Range Site, it
did not extend the exclusion to other Navy operational areas on the
Washington coast.
Julie Teel Simmonds, an attorney with the Center for Biological
Diversity, told me that officials in her group will carefully
scrutinize that proposed exclusion area.
“Their decision to exclude is discretionary,” she wrote in an
email, “but we will be evaluating their analysis during the public
comment period, particularly given the plight of the orca and the
concerns we have with some of the Navy’s activities, particularly
certain harmful sonars.”
Brad Hanson and other marine mammal biologists at the NMFS’
Northwest Fisheries Science Center spent years evaluating where the
orcas traveled in the ocean and what they were eating. They tracked
the whales by attaching satellite transmitters, recorded their
sounds on hydrophones along the coast, and collected sighting
reports from a variety of people.
Duration of visitation to
various areas by K and L southern resident pods. Darker coloration
represents longer durations.
Model output: National Marine Fisheries
Service
They learned that when the three pods of southern resident orcas
were on the coast they spent more than half their time off
Washington state, often between Grays Harbor and the Columbia
River. Their travels often corresponded with an abundance of
salmon.
While K and L pods have been observed in coastal waters every
month of the year, J pod ventured to the coast infrequently and
only in northern waters. All three pods spent nearly all their time
within about 20 miles of shore and in waters less than 650 feet
deep.
Through the years, I have written extensively about these
studies. Here are a few blog posts:
Although the southern residents frequent the waters of British
Columbia, the proposed critical habitat was limited to U.S. waters,
because of the extent of U.S. jurisdiction. A single confirmed
sighting of southern residents in Southeast Alaska in 2007 was not
considered adequate to add any area to the north.
As a result of the expanded critical habitat, a number of
activities will come under federal review with respect to
protecting habitat as well as animals. They include salmon fishing,
salmon hatcheries, offshore aquaculture, alternative energy
development, oil exploration and drilling, military activities, and
onshore activities that could create pollution.
NMFS was unable to identify any specific construction projects
or maritime activities that would be affected significantly beyond
the existing reviews required by the Endangered Species Act. The
total additional cost of reviewing permits and analyzing potential
impacts of projects was estimated at $68,000 a year.
Trying to understand what motivates Puget Sound’s killer whales
is difficult enough when the orcas are nearby. But now that they
have abandoned their summer home — at least for this year —
researchers are not able to easily study their behaviors, their
food supply or their individual body conditions.
L-84, a 29-year-old male named
Nyssa, was thought to be in good health when he went missing.
Photo: Center for Whale Research
Not so many years ago, we could expect the orcas to show up in
the San Juan Islands in May, presumably to feast on spring chinook
returning to the Fraser River in British Columbia and to streams in
northern Puget Sound. Those chinook have dwindled in number, along
with other populations of chinook in the Salish Sea, so it appears
that the orcas may not come back at all.
Apparently, they have decided that it isn’t worth their time and
effort to set up a summer home in the inland waterway. They have
gone to look for food elsewhere, such as off the west coast of
Vancouver Island, where it is harder for researchers to tell what
they are eating and exactly where they are going.
Four orca deaths and two births over the past year brings the
official population of southern resident killer whales to 73 — the
lowest number since the annual census was launched in 1976.
L-84, a 29-year-old male named
Nyssa, is among three southern resident orcas newly listed as
deceased. Here he is seen catching a salmon. // Photo:
Center for Whale Research
This evening, the keeper of the census — Ken Balcomb of the
Center for Whale Research — sadly announced the deaths of three
orcas who have not been seen for several months.
In past years, Ken waited until he and his staff have several
opportunities to search for any whales that appear to be missing.
But this year the whales have stayed almost entirely away from
their traditional hunting grounds in the San Juan Islands, where
they once stayed for nearly the full summer.
In an unusual move this year, Ken relied on reliable observers
from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans as well as
other biologists along the west coast of Vancouver Island. The
missing whales were not seen during multiple encounters with the
Canadians, Ken told me.
The reason the whales have not spent any time in Puget Sound is
fairly obvious, Ken said. Their primary prey, chinook salmon, have
not been around either.
The killer whale J-17, known as Princess Angeline, seems to have
made a remarkable recovery since December, when the 42-year-old
female was diagnosed with “peanut head” — an indicator of
malnutrition that almost always leads to death.
Princess Angeline, J-17, in
Admiralty Inlet Sunday
Photo: Ken Balcomb, Center for Whale Research
Federal permits: NMFS 21238 / DFO SARA 388
Now Princess Angeline looks much better and shows few signs of
that dire condition, said Ken Balcomb, director of the Center for
Whale Research who got a good look at her Sunday when J pod came
into Puget Sound.
“Since New Year’s Eve, J-17 has fared much better than we
expected,” Ken told me. “They must have found some winter food up
in Georgia Strait.”
At one point, Ken had said it would be a “miracle” if she were
ever seen again.
Members of the governor’s orca task force this week expressed
hope and a bit of surprise as they discussed their recommendations
to help the orcas —recommendations that were shaped into
legislation and now have a fairly good chance of passage.
Over the years, some of their ideas have been proposed and
discussed — and ultimately killed — by lawmakers, but now the
plight of the critically endangered southern resident killer whales
has increased the urgency of these environmental measures —
including bills dealing with habitat, oil-spill prevention and the
orcas themselves.
Puget Sound’s endangered killer whales are becoming fully
integrated into annual planning efforts that divide up the
available salmon harvest among user groups — including sport,
commercial and tribal fishers.
An orca mother named Calypso
(L-94) nurses her young calf Windsong (L-121) in 2015.
Photo: NOAA Fisheries, Vancouver Aquarium under NMFS and FAA
permits.
The southern resident killer whales should be given priority for
salmon over human fishers, according to a fishing policy
adopted for 2019-2023 by the Washington Fish and Wildlife
Commission. The new policy calls for “proper protection to SRKW
from reduction to prey availability or from fishery vessel traffic
…”
The problem with allocating a specific number of salmon to the
orcas is that the whales cannot tell us when or where they would
like to take salmon for their own consumption. The result, now in
the planning stages, is to limit or close fishing in areas where
the orcas are most likely to forage during the fishing seasons.
As revealed yesterday during the annual “North of Falcon”
forecast meeting, fewer chinook salmon — the orcas’ primary food —
are expected to return to Puget Sound this year compared to last
year, but more coho salmon should be available for sport and tribal
fishermen. The challenge, according to harvest managers, is to set
fishing seasons to take harvestable coho without unduly affecting
the wild chinook — a threatened species in Puget Sound.
Concerns about the endangered southern resident killer whales
seems to be spurring legislative support for new enforcement tools
that could be used to protect shoreline habitat.
Bills in both the state House and Senate would allow stop-work
orders to be issued by the Washington Department of Fish and
Wildlife when shoreline construction is done without permits or
exceeds permit conditions. If passed, the law would require that
Fish and Wildlife officials first work with contractors and
property owners to achieve “voluntary compliance.”
Working with property owners is the key, stressed Jeff Davis,
deputy director of Fish and Wildlife in charge of habitat
protection. Under current law, property owners who commit serious
permit violations are charged with criminal misdemeanors. That’s
neither good for the agency nor for the property owner, who may end
up battling each other in court, said Davis, who once worked as a
Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist in Kitsap County.
The criminal approach may work well with “egregious violations
of the law,” Davis told the House Committee on Rural Development,
Agriculture and Natural Resources, “but it’s not an appropriate
tool for the vast majority of noncompliance we see out there. We
would rather work with people so they are in compliance and there
aren’t impacts to fish.”
Nearly a decade in the planning phase, it appears that the
International Year of the Salmon couldn’t come at a better time for
Northwest residents.
More and more people are beginning to recognize the importance
of chinook salmon to the long-term survival of our Southern
Resident killer whales. Legislation designed to improve the
populations of salmon and orcas has gained increased urgency as
these iconic creatures continue to decline.
Many countries throughout the Northern Hemisphere have joined
together in a campaign to raise public awareness about salmon this
year and to increase the support for scientific research and
restoration projects that might save endangered salmon from
extinction.
One exciting aspect of the International Year of the Salmon, or
IYS, is a scientific expedition involving 21 researchers from five
countries. This international dream team will depart Sunday from
Vancouver, British Columbia, to engage in a month of research into
the secrets of salmon survival. I described this long-anticipated
endeavor in an article published today in the
Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.
The ongoing shutdown of the federal government has kept federal
marine mammal biologists and administrators from paying close
attention to the critically endangered Southern Resident killer
whales. The folks I know at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science
Center must be going crazy over their inability to do their jobs,
which have always been central to the survival of our beloved
orcas.
To take a breath sample, mist
from an orca’s blow is collected at the end of a long pole then
tested for pathogens. // Photo: Pete
Schroeder
But now a coalition of non-government orca experts plans to step
in to at least conduct an initial health assessment of two orcas
showing signs of “peanut head,” an indicator of malnutrition that
frequently leads to death. Initial plans for taking minimally
invasive fecal and breath samples were developed during a meeting
of the minds on a conference call yesterday. Further efforts, such
as medical treatment, would need special authorization from federal
officials.
I won’t go into further details here, since you can read the
story published this morning by the
Puget Sound Institute.
Treaty rights related to orcas
After all my years of covering killer whale issues, it is
interesting to see the emergence of the Lummi Nation as a major
participant in the orca discussions. Kurt Russo, senior policy
analyst for the Lummi Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office,
told me that tribal members have a spiritual connection with the
orcas that goes back thousands of years. The inherent right to
commune with the “blackfish” or “qwe i/to! Mechtcn” was never
superseded by treaties signed between the tribe and the U.S.
government, so these rights still stand, he said.
