Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American's Science fastI'm Kendra Pierre-Louis for Rachel Feltman.
If you're of a certain generation, you might be able to trace your affection for orcas to repeated viewings of a particular movie: the seminal 1993 film. Free Willie.
The film led to a herculean effort that eventually led to the US Air Force being involved in rescuing the film's star, an orca named Keiko, from captivity. It also reinforced the idea of orcas as intelligent and curious animals that deserve a life outside of captivity.
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Many of the orcas that end up in aquariums and zoos come from the area in the Pacific Northwest, near the San Juan Islands. This summer some members Scientific American The team went there to see how the animals were doing.
To tell us a little about what they found, we're joined today by Kelso Harper, senior multimedia editor and whale enthusiast here at science.
Kelso Harper: Oh whale fan, I don't know if I can claim that title, but the people I've talked to certainly can.
Pierre-Louis: You went to the San Juan Islands. Can you tell me a little about this experience?
Harper: Yes, definitely, which is why the San Juan Islands are a small archipelago off the coast of the Pacific Northwest located in the Salish Sea near Seattle and Vancouver, and people usually go there for outdoor activities and to see whales, especially killer whales. This is one of the best places in the world to see killer whales, in part because some resident populations frequent the area. And also because some special geological things happen, for example [on] On one side of the island you can go to a state park where the seabed drops to almost 1,000 feet right offshore. Thus, people can congregate on the shoreline and sometimes see whales just a few feet from shore.
This is a rare place where people and killer whales can gather quite close to each other. And of course there are whale watching tours and such, but you'll find a lot of orca paraphernalia in the small town of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.
Pierre-Louis: And in fact, you didn't just stay on the rock; you went out on a boat with researchers.
Harper: Yes, so a small group of us from Scientific American I need to go to the San Juan Islands and meet this researcher, Deborah Giles, who is studying killer whales – a special population: the southern resident killer whales.
And we're very lucky because this population typically spends most of the summer near the San Juan Islands; this is their historic summer home. But since everything changed there, they returned less and less often, and therefore they had not been there since April, and we were visiting in July. But we were very lucky: when we landed in Seattle, Giles called us. She said, “They're here. The whales are here. You need to get up here now,” so we scrambled up and were able to get out with them in the boat, which ended up being an incredible experience.
Pierre-Louis: I understand you had a special friend on the boat?
Harper: We had a special friend on the boat. Her name is Eba. She is a small rescue dog, a terrier mix, who actually works with Giles. We would call her a guard dog. (Laughs.)
Pierre-Louis: (Laughs.)
Harper: She has been specially trained to sniff out whale poop, especially whale poop found in the south, and this is actually very useful because it allows Giles to follow this group of whales at a slightly greater distance than if you were trying to find whale poop without a dog. And she'll take Giles straight to the whale poop so you can collect it. And then in the laboratory you can get ton information from whale poop, so it's really important for their work.
Pierre-Louis: Thus, killer whales can be found all over the world. Why is Giles studying this particular population?
Harper: So, technically all killer whales belong to the same species, but there are many different ecotypes that are sort of specialized groups that live all over the world because killer whales are found everywhere, in every ocean, but they are not all the same.
The southern resident killer whales that Giles studies are killer whales, which means they eat fish and they have, you know, certain characteristics like very high-pitched cat calls, which is what Giles describes.
Thus, this particular population does not interbreed with any other killer whales in the world. There are even nearby populations that they overlap with, but they don't interact with them. They don't reproduce with them. They have their own language, their own culture, different customs, habits and outlook, and they are a population in themselves. And there are only 74 of them left, which is not a small number – before their number was probably about 200 people.
Pierre-Louis: What caused this population decline?
Harper: This is essentially what happened to us, especially the Western colonizers in the Pacific Northwest. When they moved here, they saw these killer whales as competition for fishermen, or as a pest that needed to be exterminated, or perhaps as a threat to the people themselves, and many were killed. And then the problem changed but continued when it was shown that killer whales are gentle giants that can live in aquariums and perform in shows. And there was an era of capture, sometime in the late '60s and early '70s, when dozens of killer whales were taken from the Salish Sea and shipped around the country, around the world, to aquariums. Many of them were southerners, mainly due to their proximity to the people.
That was their initial decline, but at first they recovered, and by the '90s their population had grown from 80 to almost 100. But then their population dropped by about 20 percent in five or six years—such a sudden drop. And then the researchers thought: “Oh, something is happening to the southern inhabitants. What is happening here?”
So, over the last couple of decades of research, scientists have identified three main threats to this population: ship noise and interaction with ships, chemical pollution and lack of prey. So the Salish Sea has become one of the busiest waterways in North America, and its shorelines have been home to the metropolises of Seattle and Vancouver, so there are tons of people, tons of boats, a lot more pollution, and a lot more hungry mouths trying to eat the same salmon that the killer whales want.
The main species of salmon they eat are Chinook salmon, their populations have declined sharply since the '80s due to a combination of habitat loss, particularly damming of the rivers where they spawn, overfishing, as well as other changes including the same pollution that affects whales, and so on and so forth. So this is a widespread problem that ultimately affects whales because they rely on this type of salmon, in addition to other fish, as a major part of their diet.
Pierre-Louis: Because of these three factors you laid out, we know that killer whales themselves are endangered, but while you were there, you also learned that research is endangered. Can you talk a little about this?
Harper: Yes, definitely. So it's been a difficult year for many types of scientific research, including work on endangered species like what Giles and her colleagues, who are also studying southern resident killer whales, are doing.
Interestingly, the scientists I spoke with this year were affected in different ways by the changes made by the Trump administration this year. Giles, in particular, along with some colleagues, applied for a National Science Foundation grant and it was returned unopened, and she was told that about 50 percent of grants at that time were simply returned without being read, which is unusual, to say the least. And another one of her close associates, Amy Van Cise, works at the University of Washington. She's an early career researcher who relies heavily on funding from the federal government, and she's lucky that she hasn't lost any grants yet, but she hasn't received any new ones either, and those grants are starting to dry up, and she's really worried about her ability to even continue working in the field.
And then, of course, a lot has changed at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is actively involved in almost all endangered species research related to endangered marine species. And the people I talked to there said that this year has been chaotic to say the least: a lot of changing directives, a lot of unknowns and a lot of uncertainty in terms of having budgets and then not having them or being able to talk to certain colleagues and then not being able to talk to them, constant shifts and a lot of uncertainty about next year's budget. The White House has proposed cutting the budget by nearly 30 percent; Let's see what happens in the end. So there was a lot of uncertainty.
One person I talked to, Lynne Barre, she worked as a recovery coordinator in the south for over two decades. She wrote the recovery plan for the species and was actively involved in managing all the research and recovery efforts for the southern residents, and she actually decided to leave this year, to take early retirement when it was offered, because of all the chaos and uncertainty, she said. You know, endangered species research doesn't seem to be a priority for the current administration, it was worried about how much conservation work it could actually do, and it was also worried about maintaining its retirement benefits, so it decided to take early retirement and leave the administration. She said it was a very, very difficult decision for her.
Pierre-Louis: Yes, that's a lot. Where can our listeners find more information about this?
Harper: Yes, that's why I wrote an essay that just came out this week in our January issue, which you can find at our website or in the latest issue of our magazine. We also produced a documentary about these explorers and the orcas that will be released later this week.
Pierre-Louis: This is amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
Harper: Yes, thank you very much for having me.
Pierre-Louis: That's all for today! Be sure to tune in on Friday when we dive into another aquatic mammal, the Hawaiian monk seal, and the mysterious world of their communication.
Science fast I am producing, Kendra Pierre-Louis, along with Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViccio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck check the facts on our show. Our theme song was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more relevant and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American This is Kendra Pierre-Louis. See you on Friday!
