In the film, "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen," the protagonist and his friends were able to introduce farmed salmon into a man-made river and the salmon instinctively swam upstream against the current even though they'd never encountered one before. Maybe we can try something like that :)
3
Hey Canada, a little help here?!
11
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, in 2015 the National Marine Fisheries Service rightly concluded that to keep Southern Resident orcas from dying out, it was essential to protect coastal areas off Washington, Oregon and Northern California as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act.
But then the agency abruptly postponed a final rule protecting this habitat until 2018 or beyond, citing the need to gather more information. Scientific evidence, based on acoustic monitoring and satellite tracking, shows that the Southern Resident population uses these coastal areas for foraging during winter and spring.
The deadly threats of food supply depletion, maritime traffic, offshore oil drilling, coastal pollution, ocean noise and fishing gear entanglements could all be minimized by new rules.
Urge the Fisheries Service to move faster! "Species with critical habitat protection are twice as likely to be on the path to recovery as those without."
16
You omitted the "deadly threat" of human overpopulation and over-consumption.
16
The article didn't mention side affects of well meaning protection measures. Seals have overpopulated much of the west coast. Never in danger of extinction, they are a now major factor on the disappearance of the chinook. These orcas do not eat seals.
When the salmon numbered millions, they could sustain predation by indigenous people, orcas, seals and white settlers. But habitat destruction, over fishing and predation by predator populations gone wild are putting an end to many beautiful and iconic creatures of the northwest. There is little conservation management because orcas cannot hire the lobbyists employed by the commercial interests, the sportsmen and the tribes.
24
Whatever.
Tomorrow lots that read this will forget all about it and focus on buying a new whatever and planning for another child.
Sooner or later... X- that, rather: sad it's now too late. For the stresses are multiplying and the answers are nonexistent at the scale needed. We're seeing the massive decline of the planet before our very eyes. Everywhere. Sooner or later all the folks that agree we are actually have to really say it's an actual fact. Too many of us just worry about this stuff in a vacuum from the choices they make in their lives. They still want to consume more and more and more and more and have a baby and consume more and more and more and more and more and have another baby... and the Times is chock full of promotion of more consumption: travel!! Go here!! Go THERE!! buy a car!! How 'bout a new big house!! Hey! Howya gonna furnish that house?!! Food!! Food!! Food!! Love the new fashion showszzz!!!
And then, of course, the big imperative: politics, where all everyone tosses aside any notions of reducing the impacts of humankind as we fret over jobs!! Jobs!! We need folks to have jobs!! and make stuff! and we gotta buy it!! and we need more stuff!! cuz we need more jobs!! and more and more and MORE!!
When do we confront the disaster of too many of us wanting too much? Probably only when that becomes a stark, desperate struggle for survival. The clock is ticking EVERYWHERE.
37
We (humans) are making this planet uninhabitable for ourselves and other species; and for our children's children, if not our children. Despite George Carlin's view (look up George Carlin - Save the Planet) I think we should try to do better, even if idiots like Donald Trump think their money will somehow save them and their offspring, or don't care.
14
I'd say let the epa work on this problem. Oh wait, it all ready is, doing away with clean air/water policies. Meaning a few more years and the orca problem will be taken care of, they will all be dead! Who needs whales, salmon anyway when we can have oil pipe lines and oil tankers. They are fun to watch too. And we know spills, leaks, sinking won't happen. The oil industry has assured us of that and the epa seems to agree. Won't even mention the trumper and his thoughts on the matter.
13
How does the author ignore salmon fishing. Go Veggie!
2
Commercial over-fishing all Pacific species in past generations was a--perhaps the--key factor in their population decline to today's perilous state.
That is not is not the same thing as saying that commercial fishing is the key factor keeping these populations from rebounding: it probably isn't. Habitat degradation is now most certainly more significant, especially far upstream where loggers continue to largely regulate themselves. Until major efforts are made to restore salmon access to quality spawning grounds, vastly increased hatchery production is an absolute must. For the major fish-eating species, efforts to bolster the small fish they depend upon are also critical.
12
No Chinook no Killer Whales....
6
These creatures are the top of the food chain. We're next.
12
Is Victoria, B.C. still without a sewage system and dumping sewage directly into the straits?
12
“Live Simply So Others May Simply Live.”-- Gandhi
15
Interestingly the left claims to love the environment yet tells us that we need ever more immigrants in this country. Adding people to the u.s. Population, by any means, is the single worst thing you can do for the environment, locally and globally. You can't have a booming u.s. population (doubled in 60 years) and a healthy environment that supports other creatures.
4
This picture says it all: starving Orcas with a backdrop of too many humans eating all the salmon. I about choked on my smoked salmon on toasted rye with onion sandwich when I saw this. My salmon comes from the far north Atlantic, but, still... I took my kids out from Victoria to see these majestic animals cruise by at a fair distance (1/2 mile) and I'll never forget them. To hell with Sea World. Maybe I'll switch to sardines. Thanks for the story. Moral: too many humans! Stress R Us
8
"My salmon comes from the far north Atlantic..."
And therefore almost certainly is farmed in open pens in the sea by Norwegian companies, who are the dominant player out there, too.
6
We humans are about as dumb as it gets! If Chinook salmon are on the endangered list, it means we don't give a crap about anything other than ourselves. We're going to milk this cow until the last salmon is dead and then we will finally open our eyes...too late...realizing our dumb, moronic, selfish, egotistical ways! It is time to stop all commercial fishing (not sport fishing) and take a five year break to let the fish come back. I know, eating, rice, kale and spinach for five years sounds like hell in to pay but that is the hole we've dug ourselves into and it's a big one. We can't throw out the baby with the bath water and expect success in the future when the planet has 10 billion people. It doesn't work like that. Besides, we're fat anyway, time to go on a diet. What about commercial fishermen? Well, we all did it so we can pay them to patrol the waters for pirates who would break the moratorium and indulge in low-level sport fishing with guests (city volk who can only recognise a salmon if it's in Saran wrap!). Plus, there are countless streams with culverts where little baby salmon get traped when they spawn. They die when the ponds dry out. Send the fishermen up the streams to save these little guys. It's the least we can do.
11
There are a lot of bad things done to the oceans: pollution, the impacts of huge, invasive human populations, etc.
And I suppose some breast beating about these here is warranted.
But not about the decline of resident orcas in the NW, at least not directly. The exploding populations of other salmon-eating sea mammals with less selective tastes are obviously not being negatively affected by such factors: talk to the sea lions and seals about that. Neither are humpback whales much affected, as their populations have risen sharply over the years.
So concentrate: fewer Chinook = fewer orcas. There are a multiplicity of causes for there being fewer Chinook. A century of over fishing previously decreased the population to the point where it is now vulnerable to other threats. It is probably irrational to continue to commercially fish for Chinook right now, but that would not hold for recreational fishing. Appreciate that a single orca can eat more Chinook in a week than are caught by guests at a large salmon lodge.
The short term program to restore the resident orca population has to concentrate hard restoring Chinook, and that means focusing on on a few key things: increasing Chinook food stocks and ramping up hatchery production of Chinook. In the longer term: dramatic efforts at stream and river habitat restoration and either eliminating those disease-ridden open pen salmon farms, or else locating them all in a written off place on the coast away from salmon runs.
9
Simply heartbreaking. I hope Boeing is being punished severely for dumping PCBs.
16
My understanding is that orcas are pioneering in previously un-occupied regions of the northern seas, due to the melting of the ice. In the process they are cleaning out populations of indigenous species: https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/as-arctic-ice-melts-orcas-move-in
The Orca needs no friends. They are absolute predatory killers (decimating populations of all sea life wherever they go - kinda like people) and although their numbers may appear to be dwindling in the Pacific Northwest, they are spiking elsewhere.
2
You appear to miss the point that the resident population described in the article specialize in eating fish, particularly chinook salmon. Transient groups of orcas pass through the area preying on seals. The orcas venturing into the northern seas are no the same as the local population. They are not interchangeable.
6
They also believe that they don't have to worry about pollution and climate change because it is all God's will.
6
Different orca population with different diets.
7
Disappointing that the author did not mention the Center for Whale Research in Seattle. Ken Balcomb has been tracking the Puget Sound Orcas for over 43 years. https://www.whaleresearch.com/
5
I don't think that Washington State and its residents care much. If they did, they would ban Chinook fishing by tribes and commercial fishermen, they would control invasive sea lions from California and PNW seals, and they would expand boat free zones from Anacortes to the San Juans. Finally, they would fine Boeing bigtime for its excessive chemical releases from Renton and Seattle. Boeing does not need to do these to be successful. Act now or forever hold your peace for the friendly resident Orca pod.
10
All the large predators are dying off, and humans are to blame, one way or another: polar bears, lions, wolves, great whales, and now we have starving orcas. If it wasn't outright slaughter, it was/is habitat destruction, competing for the same food sources, and on and on. The world might recover if somehow the human population could be decreased by half.
I can't recall the last time I heard even a scientist discuss the need for world population control. I'm glad I'll be under the dirt before things get really bad. How depressing.
15
Incredibly sad. The implications of our human footprint are ominous - disease, starvation, toxins, noise stress, immune response. It's too much. Maybe the best thing we can do is study them intensively so what we continue to learn may be applied to other, more viable populations elsewhere.
5
"Hunting the Ghost Fleet" - a Reveal radio investigative report about the slave labor ships that trawl the ocean hunting fish with 50 feet of barbed net provides a chilling portrait of 'why' the world is losing its ocean inhabitants and destroying sea life. Weeping isn't enough. When will we learn and reduce our destructive ways?
https://beta.prx.org/stories/247846
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ghost-net-fishing-cari...
10
Why no mention of the toxic radioactive waste that has poured into the Pacific since the Fukushima reactor disaster? Or the chemical and medical waste, including opioids, that the US and other countries are flushing into the ocean. Add in the tankers, the warming climate, oil spills, etc., and it's a miracle anything other than jellyfish or algae can survive in our oceans anymore. Yet we blithely continue on as if we are the only species on earth (save our beloved cats and dogs), polluting, degrading, destroying our ecosystem, and hoping that we'll find some technological quick fix to patch up the messes we keep making. If we don't turn things around soon, our day of reckoning will be here before we know it. The magnificent, dwindling orcas are only the most recent fellow creatures on this earth to suffer until that reckoning day arrives.
19
The naive yet surprisingly callous Justin Trudeau bowed to the North American oil industry and bypassed British Columbia's decision to forbid construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. And for what? To prop up the confidence of foreign investors? He'll have to live with the destruction he's wrought for the rest of his life, but that won't help the wildlife who will be obliterated by his actions. Devastating.
25
We never used to see Orcas in the Monterey Bay and now the whale watching boats are seeing them almost daily. I wonder if it’s related?
7
Very interesting comment about the increased orcas in Monterey Bay. The Monterey Aquarium has some of the best marine biologists in the world, so they probably have a theory about that trend.
2
The only threat for which there is any evidence is lack of nooChik. Yet commercial fisheries, including the tribes', continue to fish Chinook to extinction. We need a ban on commercial Chinook fishing--including the tribes--until the population comes back. Rather than spend the money the way the governments have--which is to fund study after study and conference after conference--they could pay the fishing compnaaies to stay on shore or fish other species.
14
"Boeing disclosed this spring that over the past five years it had discharged highly toxic PCBs into the Duwamish River, which flows into Puget Sound, thousands of times over the legal limit."
Has this stopped? If not, why not?
Humanity, or homo not-so-sapiens, continues to do things like this. We foul our nest at our own expense and to our own danger.
41
It’s crazy that we even let this kind if thing happen at all.
4
Recently, a Humpback whale beached itself on a beach in Oceanshores, WA. It had been struck by a boat and injured. I see boats speeding at high speeds all the time, without an ounce of care of the life beneath our beautiful Puget Sound!
We haven't seen any Orcas this year, so far. We are killing off our Planet.
43
And meanwhile on the eastern seaboard, the Atlantic Right whales are suffering, near to extinction. No new calves this year.
Whales are our canaries of the ocean, as are the dolphins. About 25 dolphins washed ashore on the Outer Cape Cod in Wellfleet today.
48
Lack of prey, pollutants, too much noise... is there some reason this article is afraid to clearly state the root cause of orca decline, human behavior?
Just one animal species of many that our human arrogance, indifference and neglect is pushing to extinction.
31
Please read more carefully. Virtually the *entire* article focused on human behaviors as root causes.
1. OIL PIPELINES. The “Trans Mountain Pipeline would multiply oil tanker traffic through the orcas’ habitat by seven times, according to some estimates, and expose them to excessive noise and potential spills.”
2. SEA WORLD. “In the 1970s and 80s, theme parks like Sea World captured nearly 4 dozen orcas from the region, possibly shrinking the pods’ gene pool.”
3. NOISE. “The underwater world in the region is also getting noisier... “add in commercial vessel traffic going to Vancouver, recreational boaters and whale watching operations”
“Just the presence of boats can cause the whales to spend less time feeding,” said Lynne Barre, of NOAA Fisheries, recovery coordinator for the orcas. “And it’s harder to communicate. They have to call longer and louder when boats are nearby.”
4. POLLUTION. “Another factor is the pollution in Puget Sound. ... municipal and industrial waste, and the occasional spillage from wastewater treatment plants into the ocean. Killer whales carry some of the highest levels of pollution of any marine animal.”
“Of most concern are the lingering effects of chemicals and pesticides, including the now banned DDT, as well as PCBs and PBDE, widely used in flame retardants and found through the world. The pollutants accumulate in salmon as they feed, and when the whales eat salmon they also ingest PCBs at even higher levels.”
7
Perhaps a combination of actions might help. We could pass a law banning the capture of orcas and requiring their release, preferably to a food-rich area like the Great Banks off the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland. There, they could munch on cod and swordfish and settle down to a happy life as Canafians
7
hahahahaha, yeah why not?
hahahahaha, yeah why not?
No, that's stupid, please don't give the "other side" fuel that seems to make environmentalist a bunch of idiots. However, some concern about radiation from Fukushima is warranted.
It is the collapse of the Salmon. Think Hydraulic energy. Removing dams would be a good start.
20
Yes, it would. A dam was taken down on the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington a few years back and the salmon returned and the river has roared back to life.
There are tens of thousands of unnecessary dams in this land, yet little is being done to remove them.
11
The PNW resident Orca population has in recent times been small and hence vulnerable. The collapse of the Chinook salmon population is the main cause and not all of the collapse is attributed to human activities. The PNW seal and sea lion population has been steadily increasing and these two groups also eat Chinook. WA is now starting a culling action for seals and BC is contemplating doing the same.
12
Agree that the impact of sea lions on Salmon populations is under-reported in this article. Here in the Columbia River basin, it is painfully obvious to any reasonable observer that sea lions are crushing the salmon and steelhead fisheries. These migrant predators have no effective natural control. Sea lions must be culled and driven back toward their native waters off California if the Northwest Salmon are to be saved.
9
I grew up seeing orcas regularly in the harbor of my hometown, Seattle.
Until a few years ago, my relatives on the other side of Puget Sound or Hood Canal would sometimes interject during phone conversations: " Oh, an orca is offshore,"
The orcas are a major motif in the Native American Indian art from the Pacific NW.
One of the San Juan Islands, Orcas Island, is so named because of the abu dang numbers that used to be in those waters.
A beautiful creature, they added to the majesty of the Pacific Northwest.
13
"But experts aren’t sure what is raising their mortality rate."
Could radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant be causing problems for sea life on the west coast of the U.S? The Fukushima issue disappeared from the media, so maybe scientists aren't including it in their theories.
9
The local argument seems to be that one tribe is overfishing the salmon. They run a salmon cannery and are grabbing everything they can under an old treaty.
But the salmon are not dying off from radiation.
If you check the local Orca sites, they talk about how aquariums took about half of the population back in the 60's and 70's and the numbers never recovered. It had nothing to do with salmon, PCB's ship noise or anything else, just SeaWorlds grabbing the animals.
7
Mr. Robbins has missed a very important part.
The population of harbour seals and sea lions has exploded and they are competing with the orcas.
what is needed is a very significant cull or seals and sea lions.
13
I was on a sea-kayak tour once in the puget sound area, and we saw the J pod swimming by. Orcas come through Puget Sound occasionally too but I have only seen them once in the city. I remember the guide on the kayak tour said the migratory orcas will eat mammals like seals and sea-lions, but the "local" pods referred to in this article only eat salmon. The guide said this in a reassuring way as we wojld not have to worry about becoming a meal for the pod!
I wonder if the local pods will adapt and change their diet based on the change in populations. Orcas are so beautiful and awesome to see I do hope they will not become a casualty of environmental change and we can find a way to promote their healthy existence as we continue to affect the planet with our own growth.
4
J, K, and L pod will not. They are absolute specialists, to the point that they eat salmon— period. No other type of fish. They’ll deign to eat chum when Chinook aren’t around (like right now), but the population will starve without salmon.
I’m pretty surprised this article didn’t mention or interview Dr. Ken Balcomb with the Center for Whale Research— he’s known to be the expert on the resident orcas around these parts.
3
They have not proved to adapt to new prey, for whatever reason
Humans are rapidly destroying this planet. The planet will/would be better off when/if we are gone. Our current actions on the international front regarding the non-control of nuclear weapons, conservation, global warming, agriculture and so on show that we are rapidly heading towards our demise.
17
The planet won’t care one way or another. It makes no judgements. Concepts of “better” or “worse” are ours alone and die with us.
2
It would be a shame to lose this particular cluster of orcas -- they seem to be well loved as a local symbol of something.
This article at least makes it plain that we have simply no idea whatever what had affected this particular group, dropping their total population from 100 to 75 or so.
It will be interesting to see what it turns out to have been -- once enough data is collected.
Read the article once more and see how many "guesses" you can count -- quite surprising.
4
Catastrophes are always the result of a cascade of events, some of which take a lot of investigation to identify. There won't be one cause, but a series of inter-related causes - a chain of causation - that we will forever have imperfect knowledge of.
7
Human population is booming. Much of that is along the coasts and all that human activity has local effects as well as global. As more and more of the planet is used to grow and sustain the growing human population there will be by necessity, a decrease in most other creatures that used to need much of those same resources. I'm not sure why this comes as a surprise. The planet is finite. There is only so much of it to go around. If we use it, other creatures can't. They will dissapear.
35
...And on the east coast, where are the bluefish this Summer? This too is an ominous sign for future collapses.
17
ALL the animals are starving and disappearing. and given the environmental-hating government we now have, they will be gone sooner rather than later so it may be up to the people (some of whom are haters as well as I see more and more crushed birds and other animals on the roads) to step forward. I'm now giving out about 10000 mealworms weekly to a small group of birds that can't find enough to feed their chicks, at least those that survive. I go to the shore a few times a week with food for the seagulls who pace back and forth along the waterline looking for something to eat. They crowd around with tongues hanging out. and 15 pounds goes in less time than it takes to walk back to the street. Pruitt may be gone but his legacy lives on.
20
We are in sad shape here on the east coast as well. Shore birds are becoming a rarity and species of woodland birds I saw regularly 20 years ago have disappeared. It's very depressing.
17
We can all help by stop having children. There are too many people!
4
Yeah, but we got lots of deer and ticks, so it's all good..right?
1
Some say salmon , wild salmon will disappear by 2050.Ive been around salmon runs my entire life, parts of Northern California dont have them any longer, or runs have dwindled from thousands to a few . Humans are a flood, a stain, a disease. We do not just soil our nest, our home, we utterly destroy it for future generations. Cars , all cars need to be illegalized. Children taught gardening, horticulture, wilderness survival. There is no science fiction future with an earth smelling like a latrine, looking like pandemonium. We are in for a cruel future of want and pain. Heed Pentti Linkolas words .
28
People who choose the childfree life, or adopt rather than have their own, should be praised and encouraged. Every person who chooses not to reproduce helps to save the planet.
15
Many Christians will easily dismiss any writing that contradicts the Bible's "instruction" that animals were made to serve us and nothing more.
4
The plight of the orcas of Puget Sound is echoed to the north in Juan de Fuca Strait and nearby Canadian waters. In Victoria, BC, whale-watching excursions are hugely popular with tourists and on a sunny summer day you can stand on Victoria's Beacon Hill, with its commanding view of the Strait, and see anywhere up to a dozen or more fast, inflatable, tourist-packed boats at a time, futilely speeding about, looking for Orcas and (in season) grey whales. The boats are not supposed to get closer than 200 metres to a pod but many disobey this rule. On a recent sojourn in BC's Gulf Islands we were told of a recent incident in which two whale-watching boats cornered a grey whale and a small Orca pod in a small bay and held them there like so many sheep, buzzing back and forth while the tourists snapped pictures-- from considerably less than 200 metres. There is no seagoing, quick-response law-enforcement body easily available in the region to prevent such flagrant abuses and punish perpetrators.
This has to stop. The article outlines the negative effects boat traffic has on Orcas. Between the dozens of whale-watching boats and industrial marine traffic in Puget Sound, the San Juans, Juan de Fuca and the Gulf Islands, the whales haven't a chance. There needs to be a bi-national effort made in the Northwest to more heavily regulate whale-watching in particular and bring an end to this abuse... now.
54
I have gone whale watching - maybe twice - in my life, but after reading this article I, and hope many others, would know to give up this unnecessary sight seeing. This heedless President only makes all the negative effects worse with little care for what our planet endures. There is a lot that could be done, but unless we have a sea change,pun intended, there is no hope.
9
What makes you think the left is advocating mass immigration? There could be a plan to allow enough immigrants to work for our farmers as well as enjoys that Americans shun. We could also arrive at a reasonable number to admit. One of the problems, however, is that undocumented people are doing from failed countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, countries that cannot solve their drug "industries" and murderous consequences. Wait til the desertification in places like Ethiopia, Sudan, etc, increases. We have no plan, only living in the now and plundering our future.
8
Not a word about the Navy? Perhaps the largest concentration of nuclear weapons in the world is in the Puget Sound.
(https://crosscut.com/2016/07/reminder-puget-sound-nuclear-weapons-naval-... The Navy (and there are several bases in the area) conduct sonar etc experiments throughout the Puget Sound, and with the Canadian Navy in the Strait of Georgia, and the subs and gunboats are frequently encountered by everyone.
33
Do you have any basis for suggesting that nuclear weapons (inside missiles, which are inside submarines) have any effect on the orcas? And those submarines spend most of their time at sea.
3
Yep, high levels of sonar are indeed a key negative issue regarding whales and dolphins etc; you know it is so because every time an activist questions a “marine biologist” about it who deeply relies on the government grant dollar they clam up and stop talking. It appears that the sonar often causes the sonar equipped mammals extreme pain and disruption in their receptor bones so they try to evade it by seeking shallow water, hence the massive beach standings of the species. You’d think the gov’t would be at least interested in the subject but they appear not to be. Maybe a new type of sonar outside the mammal’s range of reception would solve the problem but that’s not the kind of thing world powers share around.
4
I am usually not drawn to NYT environmental articles as they tend towards the alarmist spectrum of reporting. But whales are important as they are fellow mammals and, like dolphins, exhibit signs of intelligence beyond the animal norm. We should expend resources on their behalf, as they could be the closest thing we have to company on the planet.
9
You can’t have whales without all the other organisms in the complex ecosystem they depend on. Whales can’t survive on their own. If we want to save them we have to save all the things that may not immediately strike you as important, before it’s too late. We don’t have much time.
26
Is it okay to let the salmon and other creatures die then, since they are cold-blooded and not as intelligent? Do they feel less pain as well?
1
The Orca and the salmon we see as representing our Pacific Northwest. To loose either is a devastating blow. Orca are sentient beings who live in matriarchal families. The overfishing is by us not the tribes. Who have fought the white people to protect both species. We are at fault and this really hurts
15
The earth is infected with a planet killing bacteria. It's called the human race. It has no respect for any other form of life other an its own. I have a feeling the planet will find a way of helping it get rid of itself though, Shouldn't be too hard since it's the only species that enjoys making its own kind suffer poverty, degradation and disease and death even though the wealthiest have the means and control to prevent this from happening and still have plenty left over for themselves But greed is the worst facet of this bacteria and once exercised and enjoyed it takes complete control and there's no cure for it. Just ask DJT, one of its chief practitioners.
As a member of this disgusting bacteria all I can say is. Good riddance.
23
I used to encourage people to join VHEMT, the voluntary human extinction movement, but I've come to realize most people have been on that rtrain all along, they just don't realize it.
8
Kayaking in Haro Strait surrounded by a pod of resident orcas is a most memorable experience.
Orcas are highly intelligent mammals with a brain more complex and five times larger than the human brain. Orcas have been on the planet for 20 million years but are now likely to go extinct as a result of the greed, stupidity, hubris, violence, rapaciousness & ugliness of humans who have been evolving their small brains for a mere 200,000 years.
Many factors contribute to the demise of the orcas: too many humans; too much pollution & toxic chemicals; overfishing of salmon; fish farms; too much boat traffic; SeaWorld kidnapping & killing orcas in the 1960s-70s to stock their animal prisons for the amusement of bored cruel human$; men shooting at & killing orcas; oil tankers in the Salish Sea; oil refineries at Anacortes; humans trashing the ocean.
Humans are a parasite on the planet, human numbers are out of control, humans do not care about their planet or the future, most humans are narrowly selfish caring only about I, me, mine, and are too stupid to think about how the way they live harms the world.
The reality is that if the orca whales do not survive, humans will not survive either. A world too toxified to support whale life will not support human life either. It being unlikely that humans will grow conscious enough to save the planet from their predations, one would hope humans would go extinct first and give the rest of creation a fighting chance.
35
Yes, please let all "parasite" humans go extinct--except for thee and me. And I'm not too sure about thee.
1
Need to know the difference in a trout (pictured) and a Chinook salmon.....
7
Trout and salmon, as well as arctic char, actually are genetically related.
Hence, a ruby trout, for example, and a salmon have similar color and flavor.
8
too many people!!
13
The US is vacuuming the ocean to plunder its' wealth. There will come a time when there will hardly be any fish or mammals left in the oceans of the Pacific. Up here in Canada, specifically Newfoundland, the famous explorer in 1497 noted that:
"the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets".
Overfishing by Canadian fishermen and countries outside the 200 mile boundary simply depleted the ocean for its fish. Nowadays there are hardly any cod left to plunder!
24
Habitat destruction (urban/suburban sprawl in Puget Sound) is wiping out Chinook salmon production, and seals and sea lions are outcompeting the Orcas for the salmon that are around.
And then on top of that each Orca is toting a pound or two of PCBs as well as other contaminants in its blubber so that doesn't do them any favors either.
15
At the root of all of this is human overpopulation, of course, and all of the cumulative factors that would influence the whales and their food supply. One thing of interest to me is that killer whales are known to be very plastic in their eating behavior and assuming they are starving for lack of large salmon also indicates there is no locally viable alternative food in adequate abundance (for example, pinnipeds, otters, or other marine mammals). These local extirpations are happening everywhere as attributable, broadly, to the anthropocene mass extinctions. Very sad; I hope they survive in more remote areas!
26
Our human species has overpopulated the planet and we are consuming and polluting it at rates that are not sustainable. Unless and until overpopulation becomes a normal topic of discussion and society's planning, we will continue to degrade and destroy the very environment we depend on as much as these whales who are suffering from contact with us.
As for Boeing, did they just pay a little fine or did they just make a deposit into Scott Pruitt's bank account?
33
OK, so pollution of the seas really sucks.
But as the article title emphasizes, resident orcas are starving. They are not starving because they swim in polluted oceans. They starve for lack of their preferred food (really large) Chinook salmon. In turn, globally speaking, neither Chinook salmon nor the herring they would like to feed on are scarce primarily because of pollution.
So do fight ocean pollution. Just don't use the fate of orcas and Chinook as a justification for doing so. There are plenty of more scientific justifications available.
7
Two reasons we read about in local papers are that Native fishermen are overfishing the salmon and that someone decided having Atlantic salmon in net-farms was a good idea....until the operation went haywire and the Atlantic salmon got out and they in turn take over.
4
I haven't seen any local papers singling out tribal harvest especially considering that a) they harvest less than non-tribal people and b) if not for tribal defense of habitat there would be even fewer salmon than their presently are.
1
Without a doubt, that's a trout.
3
Again we notice that the supposedly care about wildlife, vetted by the NY Times as "liberal" authors were too cowardly to indicate the fundamental cause of the many potential threats to killer whales they reeled off - the fact that the human population in that area is simply too high now. There are just too many humans killing the fish the whales feed on, creating a need for more boat traffic and polluting the water and other prey the whales live in and on, for the area to be habitable for many native wildlife species. Interestingly the area apparently has a too high human population to be sustainable for humans as well as recent reports detail the lack of housing and too high home prices and rents that cause many to be homeless. But our 1% dictate that we will have mass immigration, not deport illegals, do just say no sex ed (conservatives) and say that minority teens having babies is a 'viable alternate lifestyle' (liberals) and so keep the population rising at 30 million per decade so they can make ever more money off the additional "bodies" that economists continually demand. But again the "majors", the main environmental groups are too cowardly or bought off by 1% donors to advocate for US population stabilization.
19
Thank you. I couldn't agree more. We have opted for quantity over quality when it comes to human existence. And as you pointed out, it is the unholiest of alliances between the left advocating our booming population (mass immigration and no limits on the number of kids) and the right and their need for cheap docile labor, zombie consumers and opposition to birth control and any regulations on business. The planet and it's other inhabitants are caught in the middle and bring squeezed out.
6
Tx. I quit the Sierra club over this very issue. You cannot be an environmental organization and have no stance on human population. There are only two components of our effect on the environment. The way we live and the number of us living that way. To ignore 1/2 the equation is dishonest and a waste of time.
1
An accurate response. I'm surprised the nytimes published it. The nytimes usually just omits or censors this perspective.
I moved to Puget Sound in 1986 and have lived on it's shore ever since. I remember the drag netters - commercial fishing boats that simply raped the eel grass beds near-shore scooping up anything and everything - until they were banned in the early nineties. Four or five years later our crab fishery returned and has been bountiful for commercial and recreational fishers alike. As an individual I have discontinued my use of pesticides, weed killers, paint thinners - anything that goes down the drain or out in the yard - out of sight and out of mind - eventually into our sea thirty yards away. (or for some of you - 100 miles away)
But also I notice the cycles of nature......how one year a super abundance of yellow jackets......or star fish.....or barn swallows. And some years the huge die-off of mussels, their shells littering the beach. Over the past few years we've seen very few sea stars or red rock crab.....but this year a return of both but a decline in Dungeness crab.
13
Is it any wonder? WE are the ones who are killing them. First there is the little matter of our using the oceans as trash cans. Giants islands of non-degrading plastics afloat, as well as plastic micro-beads that are ingested. Then there is the matter of our need to provide each and every member of our household with their own hairdryer, computer, TV, etc...mostly fueled by fossil fuels. Ergo, Climate Change. So it's hotter and we have more violent storms -- and how does that all affect the whales? Well, the polar ice cap and Antarctica are losing their glaciers and ice-packs at an alarming rate, which alters the salinization balance of the water as fresh water is introduced. Apparently, our global climate patters are also starving parts of the ocean of oxygen, and there are actual "dead zones" where sea flora and fauna cannot survive. Introduce also the behemoth pleasure cruise ships that have just gotta provide people with closeup views of these 75 remaining Orcas. Additionally, military operations and modern fishing vessels using sonar kind of clutters their communications. So, if we want to have our grandchildren and great grandchildren not equate Orcas with dinosaurs, maybe we should change our habits...and soon!
behemoths
21
Your article identifies an important issue on the west coast - damage being done to Salmon and Orca habitats. However, there are few biases that I would like to point out. Much is made of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion and its terminal in Burnaby, B.C. A picture is even included. Not a word about the Puget Sound Refinery and the over 100 tankers annually that plow through the sound bringing Alaska crude into the refinery! As a Canadian I am so tired of the hypocrisy of pointing north to Canada and wailing about our infra-structure while giving a pass to the significant polluting problems within America's borders.
Finally, the picture in your article of a "Chinook Salmon" is clearly a trout.
32
Good move!
2
I can't click "recommend" enough on your post. I still expect facts from the NYTimes, and the KM pipeline has nothing to do with Orca population demise. Many tankers from Alaska that cruise down the same coasts into Puget sound and no mention of that, or the huge US navy presence with sonar...Canada still has environmental rules, we are't removing them like the US is...
7
Well, at least it is a picture of a good sized trout!
13
It is a tragedy and a shame that these orcas are basically extinct already. They are not breeding fast enough, their environment is being destroyed, their food source is vanishing. Within a few decades at most, the orca of the Pacific Northwest will be gone, just like the Vaquito in Baja was exterminated by us last year.
It's obvious that nothing can be done to save them, because nobody is stopping humans from eliminating them. More oil tankers have been approved, more humans are moving into the area, more plastic is being dumped into the sea. People may be angry at Sea World now for capturing orca, but soon enough they'll be lauded for preserving members of the species so we can see what they were like.
And this is why stories of the week, like the Thai cave campers, just don't matter. Mass shootings don't matter. Everything where humans are the only ones suffering truly does not matter, because there is no shortage of humans at all, and humans are the cause of every problem on earth today. Really it's unfortunate that those campers were saved from a cave that they had no reason to enter, because now they will live to have too many children, pump too much plastic into the environment, use too much resources, and be part of the vast extinction of large mammals, and other species, that we are generating.
20
Let me follow your logic. More mass shootings would be good. Letting children die in caves would be good. I hope the Orcas will appreciate the sacrifices you're willing to make for them.
3
From the article:
"And while much of the pollution is from the region's industrial past, Boeing disclosed this spring that over the past five years it had discharged highly toxic PCBs into the Duwamish River, which flows into the Puget Sound, THOUSANDS of times over the legal limit."
[My emphasis.]
"...thousands of times over the legal limit."
I see.
And?
No link was provided, no information on what they were fined, or who went to jail. Is someone out there picking up roadside trash, dressed in bright orange, to work off this crime?
Odd, "poor Americans" who are qualified for food stamps or qualified for medical care are on the block to "work it off" if they want to get assistance for help they are already qualified for..... but let BOEING casually admit that they have been committing a crime for over five years..... and what?
This article breaks my heart.
Please help me feel better by telling me that someone at Boeing is being forced to pick up trash.
60
I wonder if our species is the only species to know a devastation and do nothing about it. Educate yourselves. Stop eating salmon - of any kind. Stop having babies. Consider yourself a virus. Get active: http://www.orcaconservancy.org/?v=7516fd43adaa
10
We're next!
10
Good God Almighty. Not only are we screwing up the place for ourselves, we're taking everything else down with us.
Some days its hard not to be a misanthrope.
30
Why are there so many orcas still left. This is outrageous and must be addressed immediately. Contact the president directly. He'll send the military to wipe them out. Damn wildlife!
9
Face it: we screwed up. Badly. Indeed, let's not understate it: we seem to insist on screwing up to the point that our fisheries are being decimated as we destroy ocean ecosystems. Wake up, people, this is the century that will either make us or break us. And from the looks of it, we ain't gonna make it.
15
We don't need more people (cross-reference illegal immigration). We need to preserve all the ecosystems of the world.
I lived in Seattle for 15 years. The orca is an icon and its loss is unacceptable. Stop looking at the quarterly profits of corporations and start saving what little we can of nature.
21
This is just heartbreaking. I feel deep sadness when I look at the earth. We humans are a terrible species.
40
Killer whales live as long as humans and populations may recover if we stop dismantling EPA regulations.
We can afford to save the planet. What is the alternative?
36
Thank you, Canada!
3
What’s up with Boeing? Did they get caught, or confess to five years of illegal toxic waste dumping? They, of all companies, should know better. They are always saying they are a green company. Shameful. And in their own front yard, so to speak.
35
They deserve better. But they are not known for the vegetables that they eat nor the land that they walk. But our DNA mammal fellow travelers problems threaten to endanger all of us much sooner rather than later.
9
Meanwhile, the white Christians of America are supporting the destruction of the Garden of Eden as the environment is given short shrift in the Bible - as it was written by men who never knew anything but a flat earth. There are, however, the warnings of plagues, infestations, and floods should man not respect the creator. And that, indeed, is coming to pass - promoted by the blasphemous, Judas Christians of the Churches of the Republican Way.
16
Many of them think the world is theirs to exploit and that God will take care of things if they go too far. And it certainly is the case that there is nothing conservation minded about what passes for modern conservatism.
13
Don't you find it odd how quickly the Canadians have decided to expand the oil pipeline to Vancouver following the recent trade negotiations with America.
3
Awful, and awfully sad. Kinder Morgan won't budge, that's not how the world works. So we better hope the orcas can adapt and/or move away.
4
This currently is a non-pipeline: one to perhaps be built someday. It has nothing whatever to do with the current perilous state of the resident orca population.
7
As a scientist working for the City of Seattle, I am very pessimistic. We are the largest source of pollution in Puget Sound and people here are more focused on traffic and parking than the degredation of our environment. Our government leaders are good for sound bites, but lack the will to make the choices that will reverse these trends. I appologise for my contribution to this failure.
100
Open net Atlantic salmon farming is spreading a disease called piscine reo virus to the wild salmon. This disease has been proven to explode the blood cells of the very food source the orcas eat. Chinook salmon. In order to save the wild salmon these magnificent mammals survive on we must get the open net salmon farms out of the water. The companies themselves have admitted that 80% of the Atlantic salmon they are farming are indeed infected by this disease. This is the one thing we can control and the faster the better. Time for the farms to get out of the water.
70
I wish locally headquartered Costco would quit carrying farmed salmon. It's very bad for the environment.
20
The ocean needs a global fishing moratorium for at least a year, then a sustainable plan for future health.
29
Please point out even one national politician of any party who will even be in a room where the word "population" is mentioned. There isn't one. The democrats can't get more people here fast enough and the right thinks birth control is a sin. The destruction of the planet and human misery caused by both positions is of no concern at all. At a time when true visionary leadership us needed we get the gutless half men that run this country. Disgraceful.
1
I grew up in Seattle, and one of my favorite memories to this day is a pod of orcas following our ferry to Victoria Island. While I knew the ecosystem has deteriorated and the salmon are mostly lost to us, this increases my grief. Stop the pipeline. Build a wall between Washington and Canada. Sending in destruction and death is infinitely more regrettable than sending in a willing workforce. (While we're at it, a wall between us and the rest of the US could only improve things.)
9
Growing up in Seattle I learned early on that Victoria is a city on Vancouver Island. Victoria Island is in the Canadian Actic Archipelago. Washngton is doing it's bit by getting rid of fish farmng. Time for B.C. To do the same. And about that pipeline.......
6
Oops, thanks. I read the story this morning and wrote quickly. If I could figure out how to edit these comments, I'd correct the name. I'm obviously not serious about building a wall (though it makes as much sense there as anywhere.)
Thank you NYTimes for covering this tragedy in the making. Locals in the NW have only limited control over the issue, as you so accurately point out. Indigenous nations are fighting hard as are many of the rest of us, but we need help from the rest of the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. and Canadian Navies continue to ignore pleas to address the problem, as does the Federal government.
29
This article is spot-on in identifying a range of factors affecting the Orcas. Among them, habitat degradation caused by the growth of Seattle and Vancouver and the corridor in-between. One of the easiest ways to address this is to control population, and one of the best ways to do THAT is to stop immigration--legal and illegal. I get the pushback against the current administrations policies, but if you consider yourself a true environmentalist, you have to see that with less humans coming in, there is more room for Orcas...
8
Brian your comment is looney. This article is about orca whales. Immigration if stopped tomorrow wouldn’t affect orca populations any time soon. Let’s leave it at that. Your infatuation with trump suggests you don’t care much about the environment anyway.
16
Fewer American tourists and American business people coming into B.C. would be an excellent step toward protecting the environment. All wildlife and humans in our waters and on our land would benefit.
4
I think the presence of the navy and sonar is a huge factor in the loss of whales in the NW. Also the increase in boat and ferry traffic. We are not kind to our waters.
28
I have been fishing for salmon in BC for many years and have to point out one critical omission from this article: starving orcas are just the end point of a food chain disaster in the making.
Resident orcas need Chinook salmon (by the way, little was said here about transient orcas, who prefer to dine on other sea mammals). It seems manifestly true that Chinook salmon are facing huge challenges right now. At one lodge in far northern Haida Gwaii Chinook salmon have been shrinking in size year by year.
Basically, they are smaller because their key local food is itself disappearing: herring. Huge schools of herring used to populate the whole West Coast from Alaska down into Oregon. No longer. From the Salish Sea right up to the top of Haida Gwaii they are either absent or around in far fewer numbers. It is anecdotal, but I have not seen a single herring on my last three fishing trips.
So Orcas starve because Chinook starve, the latter essentially because eco-folk love to hug 'noble' whales, but couldn't care less about herring.
If resident orcas are to survive, the cry here should be "save the herring"!
184
Thank you for the information! Just want to note, I don't think all "eco-folk" fail to care about herring. I know a lot of people who love animals don't skim below the surface (beyond the whale) but plenty of people also read broadly and deeply about the environment and know that the apex predators are intrinsically linked to the health of their environment and their prey, and care deeply about that. I doubt there will ever be a "save the herring" rally...but a deeper understanding is reflected for example in the common bumper sticker out here that says "Habitat is the key to wildlife" or something along those lines. I agree that "hugging whales" doesn't go far enough in saving whales (and, by extension, a healthy world for people).
17
Thanks for the reply. Of course I over-stated the case. There are some very sophisticated people out there that know the score. It is just that I am a bit miffed by the way eco-NGOs so cynically use huggable animals to gain support and money. It is just as crude as use of pictures of the starving children to gain support for overseas charities. Both profoundly distort the real priorities out there...
2
I agree Norm. Can't we, as a society, get a win-win here? I suggest governments fund massive herrings and Chinook re-population efforts, with half of the edible fish going to humans (with commercial interests thereby helping to support the process), and half going to the sea. I realize there are disease issues with farmed fish, but surely we can do better than the present effort.
I hear ads frequently for whale watching trips, one company claims "their trips don't harm whales" or something on those lines, but I've seen these trips close up for years off Santa Barbara.
Near UCSB there's a spot where natural gas leaks from the sea floor. Hydrogen sulfide was a component of the leaks and these spots promoted the growth of bacteria followed by krill which consumed the concentrated bacteria.
Nearly every spring I'd see a mother gray whale and her calf diving one of the seeps. It was obvious she was teaching her calf to feed, then a whale watching boat would arrive and the two whales would leave.
It amounts to harassment of the whales.
Researchers here in the PNW have found that salmon smolts can survive insults like pollution until fecal bacteria gets added to the mix, then the combination becomes too much.
Many people, like the whale watchers, think they're protecting the environment but in places like Malibu they don't have sewers so their effluent ends up in the coastal waters in high concentrations. It's the waters along the coasts where most of the world's production of food occurs yet our numbers and concentration along the coasts are detrimental for wildlife.
People like Gov Inslee use their authority to protect orcas but the decline of symbolic, charismatic animals like killer whales appears to be impossible to stop. It's likely this population will disappear soon but we have to keep trying to save them and ourselves.
49
Mankind has destroyed one of the biggest salmon generating nurseries in the world: the Columbia River watershed. Chinook salmon must cross 8 dams between Astoria, OR and Lewiston, ID. This is no mystery. It’s the Holocene Extinction Event and it’s chief cause is Mankind.
204
Worse still, it isn't just the Columbia, and it isn't just dams that are the problem. The Fraser River and many of its tributaries are not dammed, yet the populations of young salmon of all five wild species returning to sea via the Fraser are down precipitously. Habitat destruction along these rivers--especially of spawning grounds--is having a major effect.
14
Cape Cod once had so many cod that it was said that a person could walk across the bay stepping on the backs of the cod. Washington State rivers once had so many salmon that it was said a person could cross the river by stepping on the backs of the salmon. In the US and around the world, environmental pollution and climate change are degrading the air, land and water upon which all life - including human life depends. There is no amount of power, money or love that can provide today’s children with a decent, healthy future that even remotely resembles today. By 2100 the best the Koch, Murdoch, Bezos, Putin heirs can expect is to be living inside heavily guarded, luxury enclaves and unable to venture out because unmitigated climate change and a saturated environment have collapsed the world’s economies and civilizations leaving the masses desperate for life’s necessities.
I wish this were an exaggeration but it is not.
14
The greed of Kinder Morgan, in the name of shareholder profits, is well known. With the current administration, the company's environmental destruction will only increase.
Vote in November!
5
It always seems to come down to too many people causing too many problems for wildlife. Orcas are beautiful creatures, and I hope that they manage to hang on in this overpopulated world of ours.
51
The oceans will be technically dead in the lifetimes of those now living. A thousand miles inland, I get fresh halibut , shrimp, shark, set to my local grocer, at prices high enough to ensure most of the meat goes in the trash. Progress.
16
Call me a pessimist! I believe it is over for Mother Nature. There’s no way she or the orcas can win or even maintain. Homo sapiens are the most bloodthirsty, cruel, narcissistic species ever to populate the earth’s surface, and they will not be satisfied until they dominate every living thing in the world, even if this domination means killing off every living creature and plant that gets in its way. It is sad; it is sickening; it’s depressing; it’s capitalism and consumer comfort; and there is nothing that will stop Homo sapiens’ oil tankers, bulldozers, pipelines, ocean warming, rhino extinctions, chain saws buzzing, Pacific Ocean Garbage Patches, out-of-control forest fires, honey-bees are missing world from becoming our new world. Oh, maybe Starbucks stopping using plastic straws will save us from this lifelessness, this cold sterile robotic machine future.
95
I hear you but disagree. Mother Nature will win in the end. We will pay the ultimate price for all the ills you point out in your writing. the process has already started. I am rooting for her
12
I was part of an Earthwatch study over two decades ago at Friday Harbor WA assessing the impact of pleasure boats and nets on the residents J,K,L orcas at Haro Strait.
t was not unusual to see a group of whales, led by Granny, swim by our study site daily during our research into how the pods were faring.
It saddens me to learn that we have allowed this to happen to an incredible species by our own misguided hands.
48
And with this, our POTUS & Co. can seal the fate of so many species we value. All for some more polluting oil:
The orcas are also facing a new threat. The recent agreement between the Canadian government and Kinder Morgan to expand the Trans Mountain Pipeline would multiply oil tanker traffic through the orcas’ habitat by seven times, according to some estimates, and expose them to excessive noise and potential spills. Construction is set to begin in August, despite opposition from Governor Inslee and many environmentalists.
Shame on we humans!
42
Yes, shame on us! How many of us though, only shake our heads and say "what a pity" but do nothing to change our lifestyles or pressure politicians and corporations to stop what is killing off our planet?
5
I guess we won't stop until the only animals left on earth are cows, pigs, chickens and us.
14
Well it won't get that bad. The bottom of the ocean is safe from us, too vast, too much pressure, we don't eat anything from there. The insect kingdom will survive us too. And naturally, the one thing that is nearly certain to take care of the human problem at some point, is a bacteria or virus. Something like airborne Ebola will evolve sooner or later and remove us from the environment.
13
Sorry Dan, the oceans and insects aren’t safe from us, we not only pollute the waters, we discard all our plastics there and kill off insects with pesticides.
Right now as I sit looking out my window, the fireflies are far and few between. A few years ago, they were bumping into each other vying for a mate. And I don’t have as many bees buzzing among my flowers. I don’t use pesticides trying to grow my small meadow.
My sadness after this story is so monumental I cant even describe it. Shame on our wretched species. (I know, many many people are working hard to improve the situation - I've worked with some of them. But it's bad, really really dire.
We have ravaged our wild world, and not enough people care to turn this hellbound ship around.
115
This might sound radical, but there really is only one way to save the world's ecosystem: reduce the world's most invasive species.
Yes. Humans.
Every problem the orcas face - lack of food source, oil spills, underwater noise, pollution - are human based. Are we ready to do something radical to save the planet? To save all living things, including humans?
Then vote. Vote for leaders who put Earth and all of its inhabitants first, who support human population control, who understand the implications of climate change. It's a matter of life and death. We can no longer ignore it.
172
@T
Yes, it is the population explosion (7.6 billion, annually increasing 80 million). The population explosion drives everything, including the topic of this article. We are not even going to admit this, much less do anything about it. So yes, it is all over for this species (us).
1
Correct, humans, by our lifestyle and hyper-consumptive capitalistic economic system are causing systemic environmental degradation. As the old Pogo cartoon stated, " We have met the enemy and he is us." We may be on the path to polluting ourselves out of existence.
The killer whales may be the tip of the iceberg.
How do you propose to reduce the human population, T? Which human sub-populations would you pick for "reduction"?
"We humans are a disastrous species, as bad for the earth as a meteor strike," writes essayist and Dark Mountain Project founder Paul Kingsnorth. One thinks, oh wait, maybe not that bad!--but the evidence for the truth of the statement keeps rolling in. If humans ever vanish as a species, the only animals that will mourn our passing are dogs, and as an animal shelter volunteer I can tell you ... not all of them, either.
31
Humans are just a little bit more slow motion than a meteor strike. But not much.
Resident pods eat salmon, notably chinook, and salmon have declined drastically due to loss of access to spawning creeks and rivers. The four dams on the Snake River should be breached immediately and efforts made to begin restoring the Snake River as the important spawning area it was. These dams are earthen and could be breached in a few hours with bulldozers; the dams are not efficient nor essential for irrigation or power. The dams also compromise Indigenous treaty rights, which is both shameful and harmful. Dam Sense has good reading material for those who want to read more.
47
Many people believe that breaching the four Lower Snake River dams needs to be done immediately to save the orcas. But this article outlines many reasons why these orcas are in jeopardy that have NOTHING TO DO with these dams: pollution, noise, too much marine traffic, overdevelopment, riverine habitat destruction around Puget Sound, overfishing, and more. Breaching the dams is not a silver bullet to save the orcas. All these other problems have to be addressed to make the Puget Sound watershed more orca-friendly and people-friendly as well.
Three Federal agencies are working up an EIS around managing the Columbia and Snake River watershed. One of the objectives is restoring fish runs, and the EIS includes looking at breaching the lower Snake River dams. See http://www.capitalpress.com/Water/20180531/feds-study-options-for-managi..., and also the Columbia River Systems Operations website www.crso.info for details.
If the Snake River were pristine today, then probably the economic case for building the lower Snake River dams would be weak. But they were built under different conditions in a different time, and we now have to deal with them today. A lot has been invested in them to make them fish-friendly as possible, and a huge power grid has been built around them. Why walk away from these investments?
Best to wait until the EIS is completed in 2021 before advocating either removing or keeping the Snake River dams.
2
Unless chinook numbers return to their old, seemingly immeasurable levels J, K and L pods are doomed. I hate to say that, but the outlook just doesn't look good.
Maybe the Elwah chinook will return to their 100lb glory and save the day, but that watershed is in the earliest post-dam stages of renewal.
What with salmon habitat destruction, environmental degradation in its entirety, and a number of other human-caused factors there just isn't enough King salmon for both us and the resident Orcas. Maybe we could try not eating any for a couple years and see if that helps them rebound a bit.
A pipe dream I know. I LOVE salmon, and the only king I've eaten in the last few years has been caught by friends. I only buy wild caught sockeye in the store. Cheaper, just as tasty (I think more) and more sustainable that Chinook currently is.
For the record: Killer Whales aren't whales at all. Orca are from the delphinidae family, and are really dolphins' huge cousins. Not whales.
63
"I only buy wild caught sockeye in the store."
And yet there are problems on that front, too. Sockeye populations were once so large that virtually every substantial island along the BC coast once had a cannery on it. 100 years of gross over fishing put the population at risk of such things as salmon farm spread disease, unusually high river water temperatures and the like. Local populations are not really in trouble.
Making it worse still, a lot of sockeye in stores is Russian sourced, even if it does not say so on the package. Much of that in turn is the result of poaching and completely unregulated fishing.
6
Sorry, I meant "now really in trouble".
Actually, the orcas are the largest of the toothed whales and from the delphinidae family. It is correct to call them orcas or killer whales.
1
Attention should be paid to those who harvest local salmon beyond their own needs. Trapping salmon in the streams feeding the Sound is rampant, but is defended by treaty rights composed long ago. An updated appraisal of this commercial fishing arrangement is necessary.
14
The orca is an intelligent creature, maybe the endangered group discussed in this article, will adapt to the situation and move northward into more promising waters. Their current home sounds hostile on multiple levels, in ways that humans are unlikely to change.
6
“We humans, as species, are interested in communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Would not a good beginning be improved communication [and respect and understanding] with terrestral intelligence, with other human beings of different cultures and languages, with the great apes, with the dolphins, but particularly with those intelligent masters of the deep, the great whales?" — Carl Sagan
127
Too many whale watching boats are permitted to operate in both Washington and British Columbia. They consistently violate the rules about how closely they can shadow (pursue) the whales. We watch this commercial activity from the shore in the San Juan Islands and the noise for the whales has to be a serious problem since some of the boats are incredibly noisy judging from how they sound to us above water. Weeding out the excessively loud boats might help - and enforcing the whale protection rules also.
Oddly, this resident orca population won't add marine mammals to their diet as do the transient orca populations. There is a nuisance population of seals around here.
If they die out, we'll miss them. They're graceful and impressive when they do go by our window.
73
I completely ageree. These tourist whale watching boats are constantly swarming the pod. From our gulf islands cabin we see 5-6 boats pursuing the pod each day. It's a lucratuive business i guess - beautiful BC... Imagine trying to do your day to day job with a small crowd following you around. This is pure exploitation of a dwindling population that needs to be left alone to recover.
9
I have done whale watch for many years in this area. The resident orcas are a very rare sight anymore. However, the transient orcas( which eat mammals) are doing very well. Pollution, decimation of the salmon run, increase in seal population( competes for salmon) have all contributed. Resident orcas are one of life's most magnificent treasures. It's entirely our fault they are leaving the Salish Sea.
69
When you consider how badly we are polluting the Pacific ocean it wouldn't surprise me if the orcas and other species disappear within a generation or two, especially with the current EPA that we have.
141