The SeaDoc Board is instrumental to our mission here in the Salish Sea. Scott, Barb, and Jeff bring unique expertise, passion, and dedication to our team and we’re so excited to have them! View the whole board here and learn more about Scott, Barb and Jeff below.
Drones can be powerful tools in gathering important health data about wildlife, including marine species like the Salish Sea’s endangered killer whales. Scientists have already established the benefits of collecting breath samples to monitor orca health, but we wanted to scientifically understand if it is less invasive than previous sampling methods–namely the use of a long pole with a petri dish extended from a nearby boat toward the whale’s blowhole.
A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Marine Mammal Science, led by SeaDoc Society Research Assistant Catherine Lo, answered that question by analyzing more than 1,000 drone-collected killer whale breath samples.
This summer, our brilliant Scientific Advisory Committee gathered in Seattle to assess and ultimately determine funding for five new critical research projects here in the Salish Sea. You can read about those here.
Our Science Advisors are a vital part of our mission, and we’re excited to introduce two exciting new additions. They are Caitlin Magel of Puget Sound Institute and Phil Bloch of Confluence Environmental Company. We asked them a few questions so you can get to know them a bit better.
Welcome Caitlin and Phil!
We're excited to announce that SeaDoc Society will fund five new scientific research projects aimed at improving the longterm health of the Salish Sea. Each project was carefully reviewed and selected by our Scientific Advisory Committee and funded through your donations from people like you.
We look forward to sharing more about each of these as fieldwork ramps up, but here is a brief look at the newly funded projects:
As I write this, sitting in The Woods taproom where Southern Resident is brewed, Two Beers has donated more than $15,000 in support of the SeaDoc Society’s collaborative work to save Southern Residents.
Not to mention the story they’ve helped tell on thousands of boxes and cans sold throughout the Pacific Northwest over the last five years. In that initial creative design phase, their team was insistent that the whales’ story and SeaDoc’s mission be clear and prominent on the packaging.
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. She’s an extremely valuable person to have in the larger effort to save this species, both in her policy work and in writing this book, which will no-doubt help shape 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.
In early August, three Southern Resident killer whales were declared dead by the Center for Whale Research. That brings the population down to just 73. Each of the dead whales are from separate Southern Resident pods.
“There is nothing good about losing three animals in a population that was numbered at 76,” said SeaDoc Science Director Joe Gaydos. “In no way can I find a silver lining to this news.”
By Joe Gaydos. For more than a week, a female Southern Resident Killer Whale has been carrying her dead calf around the Salish Sea.
J35, the 20-year-old orca also known as Tahlequah, gave birth on July 24th, but the baby girl died just a short time later. Since then, people around the world have watched as this young mother has appeared to grieve.
Primates, including Gelada baboons, Japanese macaques, chimpanzees and mountain gorillas have been shown to carry around dead babies even though, as one researcher commented, it "is a waste of energy and seems to be of no benefit to the mother."
By Bob Friel
On March 6, the SeaDoc Society together with the National Marine Mammal Foundation and NOAA Fisheries assembled top U.S. and Canadian marine mammal experts for an urgent consultation on the nutritional condition of our Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW), the fish-eating orcas that have historically "resided" in the Salish Sea.
After 2015’s encouraging “baby boom,” 2016 was a disastrous year for SRKW, which suffered seven deaths, reducing the total population of our three pods—J, K and L—to just 78 individuals.
Along with dangerously low numbers and wild swings in their reproductive success, another troubling sign is that instead of staying organized in their full pods, the killer whales have recently been observed fragmenting into smaller groups, most likely because they’re having a harder time finding prey, especially the large Chinook salmon that are their most important source of food.
Concerns about our Southern Residents have led NOAA to declare them one of eight “Spotlight” species (out of 1,652 on the Endangered Species list) considered most at risk of extinction unless immediate action is taken to stabilize and recover their populations.
With the pressing need to act butting up against science’s necessarily slow, painstaking process of collecting, analyzing, challenging and retesting data and hypotheses, SeaDoc and collaborators jumped in to help move killer whale conservation forward as quickly as possible.
We asked the gathered researchers to share their most recent data—work that may not be published in peer-reviewed papers for several years—to see if we could find the answers needed right now to expedite recovery actions.
To ensure the proceedings maintained the greatest scientific validity, SeaDoc also convened an independent panel of three world-renowned marine mammal experts: Craig Matkin, founder and Executive Director of Alaska’s North Gulf Oceanic Society; Michael Moore, Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and Frances Gulland, Senior Scientist at California’s The Marine Mammal Center.
This prestigious panel was charged with overseeing the workshop, reviewing all materials, and producing a review paper that is already circulating among U.S. and Canadian regulatory agencies.
A full day of presentations and sidebar meetings offered a fascinating look at cutting-edge research along with a sobering view of the state of our Southern Residents. After a second day of discussion and deliberation, the panel was able to conclude that multiple lines of evidence indicate poor body condition in SRKW, a state that is “associated with loss of fetuses, calves and adults.” They also determined that although the overall causes are complex and complicated by random tragedies like ship strikes, “food availability, contaminant burden, and noise and vessel stress would all appear to be acting in concert causing the decline of this population.”
The bad news is that things are not looking good for our Southern Residents. The good news is that the issues impacting them are all caused by human activities and thus are in our power to remedy. We can help our beloved, iconic killer whales recover—if we have the will to act.
The US and Canadian Federal Agencies tasked with managing Southern Residents are actively reviewing management options for their recovery. Thanks to private donations, SeaDoc and collaborators will continue to develop an electronic medical record keeping system for killer whales that will enable us to tease out complex relationships between threats like nutrition, contaminants, sound, and disease.
Forty-three scientists took time out of their busy schedules to make this killer whale workshop a success. The SeaDoc Society gratefully acknowledges them and their sponsoring organizations, including the Center for Whale Research, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, National Marine Mammal Foundation, NOAA Fisheries, North Gulf Oceanic Society, Sea World, Sealife Response, Rehabilitation and Research, The Marine Mammal Center, University of British Columbia, University of Washington, Vancouver Aquarium, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Banner photo: southern resident killer whale L41 surfaces. Courtesy of the SeaDoc Society.
