by Julie McIntire Corey

Contributor

The month of December brought the endangered Southern Resident killer whales sadness and joy.

It was a history-making few weeks. Putting the sad plights of the iconic SWKW in an international news story again. Online media was a frenzy of opinions, misinformation and speculation. On Jan. 2, NOAA Public Affairs Officer Michael Milstein, West Coast Region, facilitated the Killer Whale J-35 conference call. The speakers were introduced and shared their current information about J35 and J-61 and J-62.

During the conference call, Joe Gaydos, science director of the SeaDoc Society, was asked about grief in orcas. In his web-posted information report, he asked, “Is J35 mourning?” (www.seadocsociety.org). He shares his knowledge, documented observations and science about this heart-wrenching event.

He wrote, “Us humans are long-lived socially cohesive animals, and we exhibit the same epimeletic behaviors. We call caring for our sick ‘love’ and we call the sadness we feel at the death of a loved one ‘mourning.’ But scientifically speaking, can we really say what J35 is doing is mourning? Yes! Not only do I think we can call it mourning, I think we must call it mourning.”

He added: “It was Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research who first told me about epimeletic behavior. This is when a healthy animal cares for an injured, ill or dead individual. At the time, I couldn’t imagine this behavior could extend to whales, but in September 2010, 24-year-old Southern Resident L72 was seen carrying her dead newborn female calf on her nose and head for a day.”

The SRKW population is not moving in a positive direction. The most recent orca numbers are J-Pod at 25, K-Pod at only 15 and L-Pod at 33, totaling 73. The information shared was eye-opening. SRKW needs more females; there has been a decline in female calf births. Yes, inbreeding happens, and its effects on the population are still being researched. More tools are needed to help these struggling orcas — one is a better database based on SRKW with multiple national and organizational data. The Center for Whale Research is working on that significant project with all its partners. Think of it as an Ancestory.com for SRKW; experts know who the moms are, and more information is needed about every SRKW orca.

The number one thing they need is more food, specifically Chinook salmon. Progress was made in 2014 when the U.S. federal government completed the largest hydroelectric dam removal project in U.S. history. The Elwha River waterway only took six years to heal and thrive. It has a growing population of endangered salmon, including the Chinook, which proves that some changes are working.

Food is the number one reason the SRKW are struggling. When the two other species of orcas around the Salish Sea are looked at, the Northern Residents orca are salmon eaters, and the Bigg’s killer whales are marine mammal eaters. Their populations are thriving because both have abundant food supplies. What happened to the Salish Sea and Puget Sound Salmon? Years of overfishing ended the big Chinook run, which has never recovered.

Salmon start their life in freshwater streams and rivers, migrate to coastal estuaries and then enter the ocean when they are mature. They usually return as adults to the same streams/rivers they were born in to spawn and begin the cycle of life again. To help them, they need habitat restoration, barriers removed and abandoned hydroelectric dams removed. Another challenge is climate change. The weather and the waters are changing; these are factors too. In addition, San Juan County registers more boats than anywhere else in Washington state. The Be Whale Wise Guidelines are an excellent tool for anyone viewing orcas on the water.

This meeting reflected the ongoing effort to help orcas. Participants agreed that more needs to be done, things feel stalled and worries about the public not thinking enough is being done were expressed. The call to action was given: everyone needs to do more.