OC's Stance on Intervening to Rescue and Rehabilitate Southern Resident Killer Whales

OC's Stance on Intervening to Rescue andRehabilitate Southern Resident Killer Whales

Why Orca Conservancy favors intervening to rescue and rehabilitate Southern Residents. And why we understand others may feel differently...

Orca Conservancy played a leading role in the effort to rescue A73 (Springer), along with a coalition of other groups that created the Orphaned Orca Fund, in 2002. Although J50 (Scarlett) was obviously ailing for months, NOAA did not use all means at its disposal to save her life.  In A73's case, an assessment of her condition was conducted that led to the conclusion that it would be in her best interest to take her into captivity, treat her medical problems, allow her to gain weight, and return her to her pod in the wild.  This approach proved to be a resounding success, with the two year old whale's health and condition improving significantly during her brief time in captivity.  She reunited with her pod after at least six months away, survived to adulthood, and has two surviving calves so far, the youngest of which is two years old.  That is, the Northern Resident community has three more whales age two and above after 16 years than it would have had, if NOAA had not intervened.A73 was not the first time NOAA successfully intervened with free swimming whales.  In 1994, a group of Offshore killer whales became entrapped in a large tide pool in Southeast Alaska.  As with A73, they started with an assessment of the whales' condition.  One of the whales was found dead on day 1, so NOAA quickly approved a rescue plan after observations suggested the surviving whales were malnourished, but did not show any signs of illness.In this case, the plan did not include taking the whales into captivity. Rather, NOAA allowed Marine World, Sea World, and local residents to drive the whales to open water.  The drive successfully moved the whales out of the tide pool.  Within minutes, they began feeding.  Seven whales, including a pregnant female, were saved as a result of the intervention, and were sighted in good condition the following year.  Thus the Offshore population was 8 whales larger than it would have been, as a result of the intervention.Despite these successes, there have been interventions that did not result in whales returning to the wild.  In a couple cases, intervention did not occur until whales were on the beach, and veterinary treatment failed to restore them to health.  In a couple other cases, treatment succeeded, but the whales were held in captivity for a long time rather than being returned to the wild.The failure to return the whales raised concerns for many people.  This concern is especially strong in the Salish Sea, where the Southern Resident population was significantly reduced by collections for public display.  The resulting non-intervention bias has led to the deaths of Luna and Scarlett, and perhaps other whales whose illnesses were not as well publicized.We believe the key to seeing rehabilitated whales returned to the wild is being clear from the outset what the desired outcome is.  In the case of Barnes Lake, Marine World was actively seeking to acquire an adult male at the time, and one was there.  However, its president made clear that its participation was to do what was in the best interest of the whales (meaning living a long life in the wild, if possible), not what was in the best interest of the organization.  Marine World, Sea World, and Vancouver Aquarium also participated in the intervention with A73.  Again, the priority was on what was in the best interest of the whale, not trying to find excuses for how to take her into captivity permanently.We believe NOAA acted correctly in Barnes Lake and with A73 off Vashon Island.  It acted correctly by assessing J50's condition, and attempting to treat her without capturing her.  However, when it became apparent that treating her in the wild was not working, it should have followed the path it pursued with A73.  I.e., it should have captured her, completely diagnosed and treated her medical conditions, allowed her to gain weight, and returned her to her pod within a couple months.  As September rolled around, NOAA should have realized that even if medical intervention succeeded, J50 would not have survived.  By September, most Chinook would have been in freshwater, and J50 would have needed to rely on coho.  Most whales only break even on coho, rather than gain weight.  She might have gained some weight during the fall chum run, but the reality is whales tend to lose weight from September to April, and J50 did not have any weight left to lose.NOAA experimented with supplemental feeding from a boat.  That did not succeed, but even if it had, it probably would not have been a good thing.  Killer whales approaching boats for food is a major problem in Alaska, where fishermen shot them and used explosives to try to protect their catch.  Luna's friendliness with boats ultimately led to his demise.  Without such supplemental feeding, J50 had no chance to survive once the Chinook run was mostly finished, meaning taking her into captivity briefly was her only chance to grow up in the wild.Under the Endangered Species Act, it is illegal to take a whale into captivity for public display.  Thus, even if J50 had a disease which would have posed a threat to other Southern Residents and precluded her release, or she needed chronic medical care without which she could not have survived in the wild, she could not have been used in shows.  She could have been held in a research facility, or euthanized.  Therefore, the concern over her ending up as a show animal was baseless, and it was even less likely that she would have remained in captivity than was the case for A73.  It is unfortunate that NOAA received advice against temporary holding based on fear that it would become permanent.NOAA should take time to review drone images of condition, and see whether it can identify a point where condition is so poor that survival over the winter is unlikely.  Any whale approaching or past that point should have its condition assessed, and treatment based on that assessment should be attempted in the wild.  If treatment fails, the whale should be brought into captivity where high quality care can be provided.  Once restored to good condition, the whale should be returned to its pod.That said, we all need to be aware that such intervention is a learning experience rather than a population recovery step for a food limited population.  Even if J50 had been returned to the wild healthy, she would have competed with other whales for food.  If she succeeded, someone else would have failed.  If we want rescued Southern Residents to contribute to population recovery, as A73 has done for Northern Residents, and the Barnes Lake whales did for Offshores, we need to take significant action to aid Southern Residents as a whole.Chinook salmon populations are about 5% of what they were historically.  Hatchery supplementation has kept the numbers "up," even though many of these fish return at much smaller sizes than their wild ancestors did, aggravating the food shortage.  Some runs, like the Klamath Spring Chinook run, which is being considered for Endangered Species Act listing, has been between 0.1 and 0.01% of its historical run size of about 1 million in recent years, which helps explain the failure of K and L pods to calve successfully.  Perhaps 3/4 of mortality of outmigrating Chinook from the Snake River Basin is attributable to dams.  Large areas of spawning habitat have been damaged by logging, agriculture, and urban development.  Failure to correct prey availability issues will result in extinction of Southern Residents, regardless of intervention policy.Actions that can be taken to increase prey availability include dam removal, culvert replacement, restoration of freshwater spawning habitat and rearing habitat in both fresh and salt water, increasing hatchery production where appropriate and phasing it out as wild runs improve, removing artificial barriers to migration that make salmon vulnerable to other predators, and improved regulation and compliance with rules for habitat protection.It is difficult for Southern Residents to find the little bit of food that is still present due to vessel noise.  Studies show they give up on even foraging for food when too much noise is present.  While the commercial whale watch industry is taking steps to reduce noise, and commercial shipping is experimenting with ways to do the same, noise from other boat traffic such as sport fishers and other recreational boaters, also needs to be addressed.  Moving fishing not protected by place-based rights to places that minimize impact on Southern Residents would also help.The third major concern is toxins.  Some are acute, like oil spills, and we can try to prevent the consequences of these by increasing the use of rescue tugs and tug escorts.  Another important step is to phase out fossil fuel shipments.  This includes steps like preventing expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline to allow increased exports of tar sands from Alberta, reducing gasoline use to reduce imports of oil from Alaska and shipment of oil along the Puget Sound shoreline via rail, blocking port expansions for the export of coal and oil, and prioritizing the use of trains to transport agricultural products over fossil fuels.Other toxins are chronic.  These include flame retardants in stormwater, PCBs leaching from superfund sites, and legacy DDT.  Many of these toxins are already in biomass, so will be difficult to eliminate, but superfund sites could be capped or cleaned up as appropriate, and upgrading stormwater infrastructure to prevent hazardous chemicals from reaching whales would be an important step.  Likewise, consumers eliminating use of these chemicals at the source would help prevent things from getting worse.Disease is a fourth major concern.  Toxins impair the immune system, making Southern Residents more vulnerable to the pathogens they co-evolved with than they used to be.  Thin whales are less likely to survive an illness than whales with a healthy body weight at the time they became ill.  Emerging diseases, whether Southern California diseases like Morbillivirus, which could move north into the Southern Resident range as a result of climate change, or introduced diseases, like Cryptococcus, which came to Vancouver Island on eucalyptus trees, are pending threats.  Morbillivirus killed over 10,000 dolphins in the Mediterranean, and half the bottlenose dolphins on the East Coast, so is an extremely dangerous virus.  Cryptococcus was responsible for an unusual mortality event in harbor porpoises at the same time that several Southern Residents disappeared.The above issues should dishearten those who argued we should let Nature take its course with J50.  Since the middle of the 19th century, when we started destroying spawning habitat to pan for gold, blocking access to spawning habitat with dams, reducing salmon populations with overfishing made possible by the canning process, and degrading habitat with logging, agriculture, and urban development, Nature has been losing its power to take its course.  More of Nature's power was taken away in the middle of the 20th century when toxic chemicals like DDT and PCBs were unleashed to impair immune systems and disrupt normal fetal development.  The noise added to the Salish Sea in the late 20th century and early 21st century has made Nature even less relevant.Without action to improve the habitat of Southern Residents, how we respond to individuals in distress will affect individuals with a strong will to live, and whose deaths would be mourned by their companions, but won't help us recover the population. -Orca Conservancy