U.S., Canada hook up in bid to help orcas
Experts will focus on improving killer whales’ toxic, food-short habitat so threatened pods can breed themselves out of danger
Louise Dickson
Times Colonist
Sunday, November 07, 2004
A team of Canadian and U.S. experts has begun the daunting task of trying to protect killer whales in their increasingly toxic environment.
The southern resident whales, found in waters around the Gulf Islands, southern Vancouver Island and San Juan Islands, are contaminated with high levels of cancer-causing PCBs and other chemicals that threaten their reproductive and immune systems.
Because of the combined impact of pollution, heavy boat traffic and reduced salmon stocks, the southern resident population has been labelled endangered and the northern residents are deemed threatened. The northern group is typically found around Johnstone Strait and Robson Bight.
The designation came in 2001 from the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and meant action was legally required under the federal Species at Risk Act.
“We’re trying to improve their situation,” said Dr. John Ford, a marine mammal scientist at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo.
“But it can’t be like marmots, which breed in captivity. That is simply not an option. We have to make the habitat better for killer whales so they can recover themselves.”
The killer whale recovery team, which was selected by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in January and includes representatives from the whale watching industry, wrapped up a two-day meeting in Victoria this week.
A big question the group faces is why the killer whale population declined after peaking in the mid-1990s, and what can be done to reverse that decline.
According to Ford, shootings and live captures kept the killer whale population artificially low in the 1960s and 1970s. The population levelled off in the mid-1980s, then increased again. But in the mid-1990s, the southern residents declined 20 per cent from 99 to 78. The population has levelled off this year at 85.
There are 225 northern resident killer whales but about half of the 16 calves born to that group this year are not expected to survive the winter.
The experts know they need to carry out more research. During the two-day session, they reviewed recent findings showing whales prefer chinook and chum salmon, so researchers will now focus conservation efforts on these species, said Ford.
But the big question — where killer whales go in the winter and what they eat in winter — still has to be answered.
“We may have to go out in deepest, darkest winter and try to find them acoustically,” said Ford.
The team wants to act quickly on the most immediate ways to effect change, such as mitigating the use of mid-frequency sonar — whales have been found to beach themselves and die after exposure to certain types of sonar –or working with the whale-watching industry to improve its operating guidelines to minimize the impact on whale populations.
Dr. Peter Ross, a scientist with the Institute of Ocean Sciences, said the main challenge is to protect the whales from pollution by reducing the impact of toxins that accumulate in the environment.
“There are 350,000 homes on the peninsula and each is intrinsically linked to the quality of the ocean,” said Ross. “Each time you flush the toilet or use chemicals in the sink, household or lawn, it has the potential to get into the water. You have not solved the problem by flushing it out of your house or by rinsing the driveway.”
A draft report on a recovery plan for the orcas should be finished by February and will go through a round of public consultation, said Marilyn Joyce, co-chairperson of the recovery team. The report will then be sent to the federal Fisheries and Environment ministers.
© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2004
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