We are hounding orcas to death

Dear Editor: Please imagine a safe and healthy life: shopping for food, raising children, courting a mate, welcoming a newborn family member, perhaps just taking a nap or chatting with your friends.

Could you live that life while being harassed from dawn to dusk by a crowd of strangers?

They watch your every move. They make such a din that you can barely hear yourself or your companions. Whichever way you turn in search of food, safety or simple silence, the noisy crowd turns to follow and block your way.

This is daily life for our southern resident orcas. We read daily that they are starving, that chinook salmon, their primary food source, is scarce, that their bodies are poisoned by toxins we dump into their waters and that they are deafened by the sound of passing ships. The recent death of a newborn orca was especially heartbreaking in the face of all this.

The other day, from a passing ferry, I saw a small pod of orcas — huddled together, surrounded on all sides by a pack of whalewatching vessels, at least eight of them. Many others approached at full speed to join the pack.

Numbers of private boaters raced in for a look.

At the risk of spoiling breakfast for whale-watching businesses and the tourist board, what I saw can only be described as animals being hounded to death for money.

Our supposedly beloved orcas are being hounded to death for money.

Period. Martin Hykin Victoria