Our orcas are running out of time
A handful of families on the coast live in appalling conditions. Heavy industry and traffic have taken over their neighbourhoods. They now live amid significant pollution, and endure high risk of accidents on the busy byways cutting through their communities.
Healthy food has become hard to find in their neighbourhoods and is costly to obtain. Pregnancies often end badly. Few babies survive their first years. Even adults face increased risk of dying early.
Researchers have monitored these families for years. They might be some of the most studied groups on the coast. They might also be subjects of one of western Canada’s longestrunning longitudinal population studies.
These kinds of studies are designed to pinpoint the cumulative effects that living in the modern world has on, well, living. Longitudinal population studies track groups of individuals over time to assess how, for example, nutrition, exercise or care experienced by youngsters influence physical, mental and emotional health later on — such as whether those early experiences predispose a person to developing cancer or depression.
Long-term health tracking has helped researchers determine that when kids experience prolonged acute stress, the stress leaves lifelong physical- and mental-health legacies. By tracking the health and environments of pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers and then following the children as they grow, researchers have pinpointed the effects of maternal experiences — nutrition, alcohol consumption, repeated exposure to tobacco smoke or environmental chemicals — on the next generation and even the generation after that.
The researchers extrapolate health information gleaned from these studies to the larger population. The results are used to help craft laws and regulations, set public policy, and even influence urban planning and school curriculum.
Here on the coast, researchers have followed the unfortunate families discussed here for decades. At every opportunity, they assess family members’ health and monitor their activity and environments.
If the researchers were studying people, the work would be much easier. Humans tend to show up for appointments, prepared and on time.
Conducting longitudinal population studies on wild animals, as these families are, is difficult. Scientists can’t persuade them to show up for scheduled appointments at the lab, willingly present limbs for blood samples, or document their food intake or exercise routines.
Long-term studies of family groups of marine animals are even more challenging. The three southern resident orca families in question here —J, K and L pods — spend much of each spring, summer and fall in B.C.’s and Washington’s waterways, but their winter movements are mysterious.
Without committed participation by their subjects, scientists rely on indirect sources of information to track and assess the endangered orca population. Satellite tagging, as well as reports submitted by whale-watching companies and mariners, help scientists track the pods’ movements.
Collecting floating orca poop from the sea allows scientists to analyze individual whales’ nutrition, stress and toxin levels, reproductive states and overall health. Annual fisheries counts help determine the abundance of chinook salmon, the pods’ preferred food. Water and surface-air samples provide information about pollution in the orcas’ home. Marine-traffic logs and underwater microphones indicate how busy, noisy and disrupted their home is.
Biopsies of stranded and dead orcas demonstrate how toxic chemicals flushed into the environment accumulate in the whales’ blubber, to be released back into the starving whales’ bloodstreams when they metabolize the fat. Breath samples captured from exhaling orcas as they surface reveal a host of infectious land-mammal respiratory bacteria, fungi and viruses such as salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus — including antibiotic-resistant strains — that might also be sickening the whales.
Despite happy news of orca babies in recent years, the picture remains grim. Babies have died. Breeding-aged males and females disappeared last year — a severe blow to the endangered population’s recovery.
In December, the Centre for Whale Research estimated the southern resident orca population totalled 78. More recent reports peg the number at 71 whales — the lowest in decades.
The long-awaited recovery plan for the endangered southern-resident orcas that was released by the federal government in March focuses on longterm research. Although such research is essential for creating the most effective legislation to protect the whales, our orca neighbours haven’t the luxury of time. J, K and L pods need protection now.