Nora Nickum is Senior Ocean Policy Manager with the Seattle Aquarium and author of the new book, Superpod: Saving the Endangered Orcas of the Pacific Northwest. We’re lucky to have her in the larger effort to save Southern Resident Killer Whales—both in her policy work and in writing a book like Superpod, which will no-doubt help shape and inspire the next generation of PNW conservationists.
“Full of scientist and activist heroes, including Nickum herself, Superpod will captivate readers and inspire them to become change makers,” said SeaDoc Society Science Director Joe Gaydos, whose field work is featured in an excerpt of the book below this short Q&A.
Superpod comes out on April 11 and you can preorder it now! Nora has a string of events lined up throughout the PNW this spring. To contact Nora about featuring the book, which is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, in your curriculum or having her speak to your students, visit www.noranickum.com.
Scarlet with her family on August 9, 2018. Taken under NMFS permit 18786. Katy Foster/NOAA Fisheries)
What is the origin story for the book?
I have a deep love for the whales of the Salish Sea, and I work on orca recovery in my job at the Seattle Aquarium. But the idea for this book started with a young orca who was known as Scarlet (J50). In the summer of 2018, she was not doing well. Joe Gaydos from the SeaDoc Society was a key part of the team that came together to try to help her. I was facilitating Governor Inslee’s Orca Task Force at the time, and I saw how Scarlet’s story, as it played out, made everyone feel even more motivated to act with urgency to help all three pods. I also found it fascinating to think about the challenge of finding and treating a wild animal as she freely roamed with her family around the region’s waters. Two years later, I interviewed Joe, an idea for a middle-grade book (ages ~8-14) forming in my mind, and then submitted a successful pitch to Chicago Review Press with that sample chapter. The book grew from there to include stories of other people, organizations, and Tribes that are also doing incredible things to help the endangered Southern Resident orcas, as well as tales of the whales themselves.
What did you love most in your research?
I loved taking field trips to interview scientists who are finding innovative ways to learn more about these wild whales—using everything from scat, aerial footage, and hydrophones to suction-cup tags that work like Fitbits—and being able to ask so many questions: Can a salmon sense the echolocation clicks of a hungry orca? Why do orcas breach? What can we learn about the orcas just by listening to them? What gives you hope that the Southern Residents will recover? I was also grateful to be able to talk to a Lummi Nation Tribal member about their connection to the orcas. And parts of the research process felt like a treasure hunt, like when I was finally able to dig up historical photos of the tragic capture era in a search through the Washington State archives.
Why did you choose to write the book for young people?
I still feel the same wonder and excitement when I see whales that I did when I was a kid, and there are so many fascinating things about these orcas that I thought would be fun to share with young readers. Southern Resident orcas play with kelp, share food with each other, and learn from their grandmothers. They have best friends, babysit, and recognize each other’s voices. Calves are born tail-first and they drink milk with 10 times more fat content than the “whole” milk humans drink. And it was fun to tell stories about individual whales in the population, from little Tofino to wise Shachi. I wanted the book overall to convey urgency but also playfulness and hope.
I was also inspired by knowing that so many kids care about endangered animals—and kids have tons of energy and can make real change! I hope the book will give them additional inspiration and ideas for action, and I can’t wait to see what they do. As they meet the experts profiled in the book, readers can also find inspiration for future careers, whether those be in science, education, art, or advocacy.
I’m continuing to write for kids, with picture books coming out in the future and stories published in magazines like Cricket and Muse. It’s just really fun!
The following excerpt is from a chapter called Whale Doctors and it follows the emergency response for Scarlet (J50). Why is that intervention significant?
Scarlet’s story is a great example of many people with different skills—and a lot of passion—coming together to save these whales. And that’s the reason I chose Superpod for the book title—when the three orca pods come together, it’s called a superpod, but all the people rallying around them are another kind of superpod, one that gives me a lot of hope. Scarlet’s medical team worked closely with government agencies and with other scientists who contributed scat sample data, drone photos showing body condition, and other information about Scarlet from their ongoing research projects. It was the first time a Southern Resident orca had been treated in the wild. Everyone learned so much, including the need to have consolidated health records readily available, which I understand is something Joe is working on now. I think the experience also made it even clearer that we can’t rely on interventions like this for individual whales if we are to solve the bigger problem. We need to create a healthier underwater world for the whole Southern Resident population by increasing the number of salmon, reducing disturbance from boats, and keeping pollution out of the water. And everyone can play a part in that, including kids!
J50 near San Juan Island, Wash., on Sept. 7, 2018. Photo by Katy Foster/NOAA Fisheries, under permit 18786-03.
Chapter 8: Whale Doctors
On a sunny day in late July 2018, a pod of Southern Resident orcas swam by San Juan Island. Watching from shore, I spotted a boat approaching one of the orcas, closer than regulations allow. Someone on the boat leaned over with a long pole. Who was it? A filmmaker with a camera trying for a great shot? Was that legal?
It turned out to be a team of scientists with a petri dish on a pole and a permit to let them get close. They were trying to help a four-year-old orca named Scarlet (J50) who was having a hard time swimming as fast as her siblings. She was too thin. Her breath smelled bad. But nobody was sure what was wrong.
Government agencies and organizations from the United States and Canada were tracking Scarlet’s condition. In the field, two veterinarians, Dr. Marty Haulena of the Vancouver Aquarium and Dr. Joe Gaydos of the SeaDoc Society, were her primary medical team.
“It was immediately obvious there was something wrong,” Marty told me later.
For the first time, the US government had authorized wildlife vets to treat a free-ranging endangered orca. And Marty and Joe desperately wanted to save her.
Joe notes that a healthy population isn’t about saving every single animal. “That’s not the way nature works. Animals get eaten; animals get old. But when you go out and see a young animal that’s really, really sick, and you’re worried it’s related to something that people have caused, it gives you that visceral feeling of Man, I really want to help.”
In a very small population like the Southern Resident orcas, the health and survival of individuals—especially young females like Scarlet who could grow up to have babies and help the population grow—is vital.
Joe and Marty went out on boats to observe how Scarlet was acting, looking through binoculars to give her as much space as possible. “It’s helpful for us to look at how whales breathe, how they surface,” Joe says. “It gives us clues about what is going on.”
Scientists collect a breath sample from Scarlet on July 21, 2018. Taken under NMFS permit 21368. Katy Foster/NOAA Fisheries)
But they needed more information than they could get by watching Scarlet swim. They studied drone photos from Dr. Holly Fearnbach and Dr. John Durban. Scarlet had always been small for her age. But now she seemed to have lost about 20 percent of her body weight compared to the year before. Scarlet probably wasn’t getting enough fish to eat.
Joe and Marty wondered if that was the only problem, or if she was sick too. To try to find out, they needed a sample to analyze in the lab. If the sample contained any bacteria or fungus, that could explain Scarlet’s condition. But they couldn’t take a blood sample from a free-ranging whale without running the risk of harming her. Instead, they collected a breath sample with the petri dish on a pole I saw from shore. Unfortunately, the sample was too small, and lab testing didn’t reveal bacteria pointing to a specific medical problem.
Other scientists tried to test her scat. A rescue dog from the Conservation Canines program was able to sniff out scat samples from Scarlet’s family group for researchers to scoop up. Of course, it was hard to know which orca the scat came from. But DNA tests soon showed some of it was from Scarlet’s mother, and it had parasites in it. Marty and Joe thought if her mother had parasites, Scarlet was likely carrying the same ones because they shared their food. While parasites probably weren’t the main reason for Scarlet’s deteriorating health, they might have been making it worse.Time was running out. Joe and Marty had to start treatment, even though Scarlet’s illness was still a mystery. In the past, when scientists studied other orcas that had died, they often found signs of bacterial pneumonia, a kind of lung infection. That made Joe and Marty think Scarlet could have pneumonia too, and so they decided to give her antibiotics. They would also give Scarlet a dewormer to help her get rid of any parasites. While they couldn’t be sure these medicines would help, they had to try.