We’re excited to introduce you to Tara Craig and Brenna Normann—two fairly new supporters of SeaDoc Society who immediately jumped on board as engaged monthly donors. Their employer matches each monthly donation, meaning their support is not only sustained but also doubled! Does your employer offer to match your charitable giving? Ask them or search for your employer here!
Dive and Boat Safety Week for Team SeaDoc!
Our team spends a lot of time out on the water, especially this time of year. We always prioritize safety, and we have a great crew with varying degrees of responsibility, but those skills need tending, and we spent a full week in June doing just that with our friends at the UC Davis Boat and Dive Safety Program.
We’ve shared some photos below and some thoughts from our staff. Thanks to the team down at the Bodega Marine Lab for a great week!
Photos from the Field: Outplanting Endangered Pinto Abalone
Students Make 'Explore the Salish Sea' Short Film
Our Explore the Salish Sea Curriculum is being deployed throughout the region, and recently one classroom put together their own documentary based on what they learned. Check it out!
The State of the Salish Sea
Last week marked the release of the highly anticipated State of the Salish Sea Report, authored by Kathryn L. Sobocinski of Western Washington University. SeaDoc Society Science Director Joe Gaydos has served on the advisory committee for the project since 2016.
Joe’s involvement began when Bert Webber, who led the charge to name the Salish Sea, and Ginny Broadhurst of the Salish Sea Institute, invited him onto the 8-person committee.
Summer Reading: Homewaters, by David B. Williams
This spring, author, naturalist and educator David B. Williams published his latest book, Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of the Puget Sound.”
Our Science Director played a role in the scientific review of the book, which he called “a beautiful narrative that is not only entertaining but informative and will transform our understanding of the region.”
The book is an appealing way for newcomers and old timers alike to connect or reconnect with the place that they live.
Photos from the Field: A Surf Smelt Study in Motion
Surf smelt are small fish that play a big role in the food chain, serving as a key food source for sport fish, including the salmon that feed the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales. They spawn near the shore in areas most vulnerable to land-based pollution.
We recently funded a project that will study smelt habitat, which is being encroached upon by development. The results could help us better understand and protect shorelines.
The Silent Stressors that are Harming Scoters
Take a moment to think about a black-and-white animal that lives in the Salish Sea, depends on fish, and is threatened by human activities. Did you think orca, or did a certain marine bird come to mind? For Dr. Eric Anderson, he had birds on the brain.
Anderson, Program Head of the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s Ecological Restoration Program and researcher at Friday Harbor Laboratories, studies animals that are much smaller than the giant, charismatic toothed whales that traverse our inland waters. He studies scoters–specifically, white-winged scoters and surf scoters. Easily mistaken for a puffin, scoters are stocky sea ducks that spend winter and spring in the Salish Sea before migrating north to Canada and Alaska to lay their eggs and raise young. Once a common sight in this region, scoter populations have declined by over 60% in the past 50 years. And just like endangered Southern Resident killer whales, which suffer from three main threats, the decline of scoters can be linked to not one, but multiple human-caused issues.
Salish Sea Wild: Salmon of the Skagit River
Salmon are born in freshwater and migrate to sea, where they feed and grow before returning to their mother stream to breed and die. Along the way they feed everything from endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales to bugs, bears and the forest itself.
Salmon are the cornerstone of our ecosystem, but many runs are in grave danger, particularly the wild Chinook. In this episode of Salish Sea Wild, Dr. Joe Gaydos takes a swim up the Skagit River to get a close-up look at these amazing fish. Written and produced by Bob Friel and SeaDoc Society.
New SeaDoc Podcast Examines Endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales
Requesting Scientific Proposals For Needed Research in 2021
Donor Spotlight: Christina Koons, San Juan County Marine Resources Committee
Bringing the Salish Sea to Tacoma’s Fifth Graders
Tacoma Public School students are taking a big step into their local ecosystem.
While the pandemic has disrupted in-person schooling nationwide, Tacoma Public Schools is piloting a new Explore the Salish Sea science curriculum district-wide that adventurous fifth grade teachers at two Tacoma schools implemented last year.
Explore the Salish Sea is an education program of the SeaDoc Society — a marine science organization based on Orcas Island and a program of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis. The curriculum is built on the book of the same name, authored by SeaDoc Society Science Director Joe Gaydos and board member Audrey Benedict.
Planet Ocean: Why We All Need Ocean Health (BOOK REVIEW)
If more than 70% of the earth’s surface is ocean and we even call it the blue planet, then why have we so grossly understudied marine ecosystems from a conservation science perspective? It might be that not enough humans realize how the ocean creates the water we drink, the oxygen we breath and the food we eat. Afterall, if everybody knew how critical the ocean is for life on earth, we’d surely be taking better care of it.
SeaDoc Welcomes New Regional Director, Leigh Ann Gilmer!
We are excited to welcome our new Regional Director, Leigh Ann Gilmer! She started on February 1 and has hit the ground running.
Prior to joining SeaDoc, Leigh Ann served as Executive Director of Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds and Development Director and Chief Operating Officer at Conservation Northwest. In addition, she’s held key roles at the Museum of Pop Culture and Seattle University, where she completed her master’s degree while working full time in fund development.
Donor Spotlight: Judy Meyer & Gene Helfman
Judy Meyer and Gene Helfman – the Helfmeyers – taught and researched conservation ecology for thirty years at the University of Georgia. Judy’s specialty was rivers and streams, Gene’s the fishes that lived in them. They discovered the San Juans when attending separate conferences on San Juan and Orcas. Read our latest Donor Spotlight.
Iconic Sunflower Sea Star Listed as Critically Endangered
After years of collaboration across more than 60 organizations including the SeaDoc Society, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the sunflower sea stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides) as Critically Endangered. The listing effort was led by Oregon State University and The Nature Conservancy.
The designation comes following a marine wildlife epidemic that decimated the animal’s global population and indicates that the sunflower sea star, which plays an important role in maintaining the West Coast’s rapidly vanishing kelp forests, is one step away from extinction.
Donor Spotlight: Seattle Dive Tours
Seattle Dive Tours is a boutique scuba diving company providing dive tours, training, and travel across the Salish Sea and around the world. They are a 100% Project Aware and Green Star Award PADI Dive Resort. Seattle Dive Tours also built a distinctive PADI diving specialty ‘Salish Sea Diver’ featuring the Salish Sea books by the SeaDoc Society. We’re proud and honored that they reached out with a desire to support our work in the Salish Sea. Learn more!
Why do River Otters Die and What Can We Do to Help?
River otters are a fairly common sight along the coastlines of the Salish Sea. Cute and curious, we have a pretty good idea of what they eat, how they behave, and what role they place in the near shore ecosystem. Unfortunately, we don’t know a whole lot about why they die, which makes it hard to fix any of our actions that might contribute to their demise.
When studying mortality in marine mammals, scientists often depend on data gathered from stranded animals, but river otter carcasses are difficult to find. To put it plainly, river otters tend to move out of sight when sick.
What's Killing Killer Whales?
Orca Report Covering a Decade of Necropsies Identifies Threats
Pathology reports on more than 50 killer whales stranded over nearly a decade in the northeast Pacific and Hawaii show that orcas face a variety of mortal threats — many stemming from human interactions.
A study analyzing the reports was published today (Dec. 2) in the journal PLOS ONE. The study findings indicate that understanding and being aware of each threat is critical for managing and conserving killer whale populations. It also presents a baseline understanding of orca health.
The study was conducted by a team of marine mammal specialists led by a veterinary pathologist with the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and coordinated through SeaDoc Society, a Washington-based program of the University of California, Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine. The study received guidance and support from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the United States’ NOAA Fisheries, the two federal agencies that manage this species.
The whales include those from healthy populations as well as endangered species, such as the southern resident whales regularly sighted off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.
Of 53 whales stranded between 2004 and 2013, causes of death were determined for 42 percent. For example, one calf died from sepsis following a halibut hook injury. Another starved from a congenital facial deformity. Two whales died from the blunt force trauma of vessel strikes. Additional causes of death include infectious disease and nutritional deficiencies.
The 18-year-old male southern resident killer whale, J34, stranded near Sechelt, British Columbia, on Dec. 21, 2016. Postmortem examination suggests he died from trauma consistent with vessel strike. (Paul Cottrell/Fisheries and Oceans Canada)
‘We can do better’
Despite there being no singular common cause of death, the study found a common theme: Human-caused deaths occurred in every age class — from juveniles to subadults and adults.
“Nobody likes to think we’re directly harming animals,” said SeaDoc Society Director Joe Gaydos, a wildlife veterinarian with the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “But it’s important to realize that we’re not just indirectly hurting them from things like lack of salmon, vessel disturbance or legacy toxins. It’s also vessel strikes and fish hooks. That humans are directly killing killer whales across all age classes is significant; it says we can do a better job.”
Gaydos and lead author Stephen Raverty, a veterinary pathologist with the BC Ministry of Agriculture, co-developed a standardized killer whale necropsy protocol in 2004. Revised in 2014 with help from Judy St. Leger, a pathologist working for SeaWorld, this guide helped improve examinations of deceased whales.
“The results from systematic necropsies of dead killer whales in this review is unique and will establish critical baseline information to assess future mitigation efforts,” Raverty said. “This work contributes to a better understanding of the impacts that ongoing human activities and environmental events have on killer whales.”
The authors acknowledge the report is an incomplete picture of orca health and mortality. Necropsies can only be performed on whales found in an adequate state to receive them, and even then, the cause of death cannot always be determined. But the report offers one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the multitude of human and environmental threats affecting killer whales and can help inform strategies to better protect them.
Additional co-authors include scientists from a wide range of institutions including Cornell University, NOAA Fisheries, Alaska Veterinary Pathology Services, Marine Mammal Pathology Service in Maryland, UC Davis One Health Institute, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Cascadia Research Collective, University of Illinois-Brookfield, Portland State University, and Oregon State University.
Funding was provided by NOAA Fisheries and multiple grants from the John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program. Additional support came from Fisheries and Oceans, Canada; Vancouver Aquarium Research Program; SeaDoc Society; SeaWorld; Animal Health Center of the BC Ministry of Agriculture; Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife; and numerous First Nations, Alaska Native and Inuit communities.
Media contacts
Stephen Raverty, BC Ministry of Agriculture, 778-839-6916, Stephen.Raverty@gov.bc.ca
Joe Gaydos, UC Davis SeaDoc Society/Wildlife Health Center, 360-914-1083, jkgaydos@ucdavis.edu
Kat Kerlin, UC Davis News and Media Relations, 530-752-7704, 530-750-9195, kekerlin@ucdavis.edu
Dave Townsend, BC Ministry of Agriculture, 250-889-5945, Dave.H.Townsend@gov.bc.ca