Whale of a time understanding ailing orcas

There are mysterious and puzzling things happening in the Salish Sea. They may be new, but maybe they’re not. Maybe we’re to blame or perhaps what we are witnessing is nature at its most complicated and brutal.

Attention has been focused on this because of the recent unusual behaviour of a female orca carrying along her dead calf for days. It has triggered an overwhelming global predisposition to anthropomorphize and call it grieving.

The truth is that no one knows what that particular mother is feeling or why she is acting this way. No one knows whether what she is doing is unique or whether it’s that humans are only witnessing it for the first time — even though the southern residents known as J-pod have been studied for years as they range from California in the winter to the Salish Sea in the summer.

Another four-year-old female in the pod that numbers 75 (down from 98 in 1995) is emaciated, which has prompted some experts to suggest catching and releasing live Chinook salmon — their preferred prey — into the pod’s path or even catching, injecting with antibiotics and then dumping live, doctored salmon into harm’s way.

The story behind all of this is that J-pod is declining at a time when the northern resident pod is thriving with 307 members, the population of transient killer whales is increasing and J-pod’s preferred prey — Chinook salmon — have returned to its highest levels in 20 years.

Why? Nobody knows. In fact, what this all points to is how little we know at all about whales, orcas, their food sources and the oceans and rivers that feed them.

“We think we know all about them (orcas),” said Andrew Trites, director of the marine mammal research unit at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “But we learn more and more and we have to keep changing the book on killer whales.”

It has been reported that the calf was born July 24 off the B.C. coast. But Trites said most new orcas are born before J-pod arrives in the Salish Sea on its annual summer migration.

Another puzzle, said Trites, is why most of the recently born calves in J-pod are male. It may be like in human families where some have only daughters, while others have only sons. Or it could be the effects of some chemical or pharmaceutical pollutants.

But if the waters are contaminated, why is the northern resident pod thriving ? Why are there now more transient orcas in the area than ever before?

And when these others are doing so well, why are J-pod orcas so thin?

It could be that J-pod is losing out in the competition for salmon against commercial, First Nations and sports fishermen.

But Trites points to the institute’s own research and reporting by sports fishermen that Chinook stocks are more plentiful than they have been for two or three decades.

Despite that evidence, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has cut the allowable limits, reducing sports fishing catches, for example, to one Chinook a day.

It has also designated forage areas to exclude all Chinook fishing, although commercial crabbing and whale watching continue.

Some blame other pinnipeds and suggest a cull of seals and sea lions, but Trites points out that their numbers have been stable for the last 20 years.

Couple that with the increased availability of Chinook and it’s another unsolved puzzle.

Yet even if Chinook stocks were low — and heaven knows the cycles and habits of the five species of Pacific salmon are at least as mysterious as those of the whales — why hasn’t J-pod simply diversified its diet to include herring (like orcas in Norway do) or other salmon species abundant in the Salish Sea?

Speculation ranges from J-pod being specialized hunters unable to capture other prey to the possibility that they are picky eaters — like humans who would rather go hungry than eat tofu.

As for chowing down on seals and sea lions like the growing number of transient orcas, there at least appears to be a good reason for that. Over the millennia, Trites said the transients have adapted and through natural selection have developed stronger jaws to crush bones.

Finally, if J-pod isn’t thriving here, why doesn’t it expand its territory like others have? “There might be hell to pay with the other killer whales,” said Trites.

Do they fight among themselves? Do they kill each other? It’s another thing that isn’t known, Trites said. All that researchers are sure of is that these familial pods or tribes avoid one another, suggesting that their interactions in the past haven’t been pleasant.

Beyond all of these specifics, it’s fair to ask whether J-pod’s problems aren’t local. Maybe the problems are further south in California where the once huge runs of salmon in the Sacramento River have been decimated by the dams that sluice off water for agriculture.

Then there are the bigger questions about the effects of climate change, warming ocean waters and ever-increasing human activity.

But there is something else that we need to consider. No matter how well-intentioned we are, no matter what herculean efforts are made to save these few orcas, the bottom line is that these are wild mammals.

We may never know the cause of their problems. And we may not be able to affect the outcome.

“It may just be a series of bad luck — part of an ongoing tragedy,” said Trites.

“Nature may just be taking its course.”