Finale: Our Shared Home, with Lynda Mapes & Joe Gaydos

Justin Cox (00:01):

Welcome to the finale episode of Pod of Orcas. I'm Justin Cox, and I'm here with SeaDoc society, board member, Kevin Campion. Kevin, how's it going?

Kevin Campion (00:08):

So good man, having a great morning.

Justin Cox (00:11):

Also today with us, we have SeaDoc Society Science Director, Joe Gaydos. Joe, how are you?

Joe Gaydos (00:16):

Hey Justin. Hey Kevin. I'm doing great. Super happy to be here with you. I'm looking out over the Salish Sea right now. It's a beautiful day and I'm filled with hope. So, I appreciate it.

Justin Cox (00:26):

What I want to talk a little bit about is, so Lynda Mapes is our guest today. Lynda Mapes is the Environment Reporter for the Seattle Times. She feels to me like an extra special person to have on this beat. You know, like Joe, what do you think is the value of having someone like Linda on this beat?

Joe Gaydos (00:42):

I agree with you completely Justin, telling stories is the way that we move science and information into action. We're moved to act through stories. We always have been, always will be. And Lynda has a gift. She loves this place, she knows the place, she knows how to tell a story, and stories make citizens want to act and it makes legislators want to act. And so having her address issues like Southern Resident killer whale recovery, it's huge. It's a gift for all of us.

Justin Cox (01:09):

Kevin, how about you as someone who's lived in Seattle for some years, what's been your experience with Lynda Mapes writing?

Kevin Campion (01:14):

First thing that pops into my head, when I think about her is watching someone read a front page article in the bar, like my local bar in Ballard. And they're, you know, sitting at the bar, reading a story about Orcas and which it wouldn't be unusual if it was me doing that, but it was pretty cool to just see like the guy, you know, the guy next to me, drinking a beer, doing that which is exactly who you want to be reading those stories. So,

Joe Gaydos (01:42):

Yeah. Think about how many stories are in the sports page during March Madness, and then one story comes out by Lynda Mapes- front page, everybody's read it, everybody's talking about it. That's a huge thing for the ecosystem.

Kevin Campion (01:55):

Joe, I know that the focus of this is obviously talking about Lynda and her reporting, but I think, I'm pretty excited to have the opportunity to have you on the line here with me. And I'd love to know just a bit about what Seadoc's been doing as far as the science around Southern Resident killer whales. I know you and SeaDoc have been working on it for a long time at this point. Can you let us Justin and I, know a little bit about what's been going on?

Joe Gaydos (02:25):

Right, almost 20 years now, and it's important to remember that its some of the best studied cetaceans in the world. There's a whole ecosystem of researchers out there and as wildlife veterinarian, our science niche has been that ecosystem is really health, health of individuals, health of the population and when we spent the last couple of decades learning about, you know, what are causes of morbidity and mortality for killer whales, and then how does that affect conservation? And so those range from oil spills, to vessel strike, to fisheries interaction and that's really been the focus of science that we do in-house. Of course we funded some science. We funded Donna Colin and Peter Ross' important work showing how PCDs move through Chinook into Southern Residents. And then like all the things we do as far as translating science, we've been out there as much as possible working with the two federal agencies, DFO in Canada and NOAA and in the U.S. Providing science when they need that, especially on health stuff, but also commenting on roles and rules and things like that. Being on the governors killer whale task force. And then we have frequent conversations about killer whale recovery with state and federal legislators. Sometimes those calls come in Sunday morning, 10 o'clock here, you're out with the family on a walk and you get a call from the governor's office. And you know, it's a little, sometimes a little bit inconvenient, but it's a huge honor that they're reaching out to say, okay, tell us about this. What does this mean? Does this fit the science? You know, should we do this? And that's a great position to be in.

Justin Cox (04:06):

Something that you talked a lot about early on, was like how many organizations are involved. And I mean, it's literally two countries, British Columbia and Washington, kind of built into the idea of trying to tell the story was like, we need to hear from other people about all the work they're doing as well. And something I'm super aware of is that we had six shows with six guests on it and there are so many people we didn't get to talk to. Right?

Joe Gaydos (04:31):

Yeah. So many, that's the sad part. But the reality is, by doing those six different shows with all the different people you showed it's a collaborative effort and that's the beauty of Southern Resident recovery. It's complex. You need a lot of people, you need a lot of groups and you showed that well. I think you both did a great job with that.

Justin Cox (04:52):

So cool to talk to people about the specific work that they're doing, but just know that everybody out there doing this work, we see you as well and we tip our cap to you.

Joe Gaydos (05:02):

Yeah. We're so grateful for the work that you're doing. It's important to keep it up.

Justin Cox (05:06):

So Lynda Mapes, this conversation with Lynda Mapes I had last week and it was just amazing. It was really good. It felt to me like after having six conversations that were very much like taking a microscope down into the toxins inside whale blubber and the sounds killer whales hear underwater, to kind of step back and hear from a person who has a, not only a wide angle view on just all the issues they face, but also kind of neutral, like her job as a journalist is to document these things and look at the political implications. It was a conversation I think I needed, like to step back and just really like size all of this up and think about what it might mean for the future and I became very much more aware because I came up to the Salish Sea about three years ago. So about a year after that is when Tahlequah and J50 happened and I know those were huge stories, I don't think I appreciated them as a thing that really reinvigorated energy into this subject matter. Did you feel that way, Joe?

Joe Gaydos (06:11):

I did. You know, I'd been here 15, 16 years already and people had talked about it, but it really wasn't until those two big stories hit that people not just locally, but internationally were focused on the Salish Sea or focused on the Southern Residents, and that provides a huge impetus for people like governor Inslee or Fisheries and Oceans Canada to say, Hey, we're going to step up to the plate in a way that we didn't feel backed to step up to before but now we're going to do that because people are demanding that. It was a real pivotal moment.

Kevin Campion (06:45):

That experience really humanized the Southern Resident killer whales for a lot of people that you know, obviously if you're paying attention to science, you have some understanding of it. But if you just are like peripherally aware of Orcas, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's a mother carrying a dead calf around for weeks at a time and man, it really put their specialness on the radar of a lot of people that likely weren't paying that close attention before.

Justin Cox (07:15):

Her book comes out June 1st, it's available for pre-order now, you're about to hear a lot more of that in this conversation and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you all for listening through the series, you can find SeaDoc Society's newsletter at seadocsociety.org. You can also make a tax deductible donation there or follow along in any way, Joe and Kevin, thank you so much for joining us.

Kevin Campion (07:39):

Thank you, Justin.

Joe Gaydos (07:40):

Yeah, thank you both for having me.

Justin Cox (07:44):

This series is made possible by our amazing sponsors, Shearwater Kayak Tours, Rainshadow Solar, Two Beers Brewing Company, Deer Harbor Charters, and the Averna family, Betsy Wareham, and West Sound Marina, the San Juan County Marine Resources Committee, and Apple State Vinegar. Thank you also to an anonymous donor who sponsored in the memory of Nancy Albac. We are a science-based organization on Orcas Island, and we are part of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Justin Cox (08:14):

Lynda Mapes, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Lynda Mapes (08:17):

Thanks, Justin. Just great.

Justin Cox (08:20):

Awesome. Well, I am really excited to have you on this final episode of this series. I had the privilege of getting into your book over the last couple of days, and I'm going to start by reading your, the first lines of your preface back to you because yeah, I'm going to read it back to you. Why another book about Orcas? Even a casual count on my own shelf numbers about 20 Orca titles. So I feel the need to explain this one. And then you proceed to get into the story mainly of Telequah the Orca who carried her calf, who died shortly after birth around for 17 days, over a thousand miles and quite honestly, you answer your own right there for me. I want to sort of get into your head. Why write this book?

Lynda Mapes (09:00):

You know, the story of Telequah winds up being the way I start the book, because she's what started the whole conversation or rebooted the conversation in our region about the Southern Resident killer whales. I mean, they have been listed and protected for quite a while, but yet they somehow had slipped out of the foremind consciousness in our region. They were just one more struggling species and until she, with her incredible demonstration of grief caught our attention. She was a mother who happened to be a whale, and anyone who's ever lost anything they cared about a pet, a family member, a loved one could understand what she was going through. And so she was this boundary crashing, arresting demonstration of what is going on with these families of the losses that they're enduring, of the grief that they're feeling as emotional, culturally bound tight families, just like our own, you know, she was the Orca who changed the conversation.

Justin Cox (10:07):

Wow. So can you remember, so this ultimately goes for 17 days and you cover it almost daily in the Seattle times. Can you remember the moment it connected with you as a human being that way? Cause I assume that's kind of what you're getting at. Is it like, it's so easy to empathize and understand as just a human being with that story and that's why it got global attention basically.

Lynda Mapes (10:28):

Right. So I remember getting this press release from the Center for Whale Research about this mother Orca that had lost her calf within half an hour of birth and that she was doing something that scientists have witnessed before in that she was carrying this calf and basically refusing to let it go. And you know that just hit me hard and I just felt like this was witnessed that we needed to bear witness to as a newspaper. I mean as reporters, we are basically information first responders when there's an emergency in the community, we're there, that's what we do. That's our calling. That's how we're wired. So when I heard about this, it just, I just instantly knew this is something we needed to roll out for full court. Every day, stay with her, stay with the people who were staying with her and I had a lot of assistance in that for which I'm profoundly grateful, people like Taylor Shedd from The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor who's out with her every day, was in constant contact with me by text. Center for Whale Research got me out on their boats to be with her. You know, it, it was a rollout be there with her, for the people moment because people needed to know what she was going through and you know how it is at newspapers. These days we have metrics, we track what people are reading. If they're reading online, we know to very granular detail, what people are reading, how long they stay with the story before they drop. We know a lot about what is connecting with readers and this story, I mean, it was an absolute banger as we call it from the very beginning. I mean, it was, it was insane how many people were reading this story. And so it was clear to us that there was enormous interest in Telequah and what was happening and so we stuck with it and by the time she dropped the calf and I don't, by the way, I believe she ever let it go, I think it just fell apart, there were 6 million people around the world reading that story, and I can confidently say, we've never seen that much interest in any story ever at the Seattle Times since we've had the ability to track it. And I think I know why, you know, it was because she was a mother who happened to be a whale who crashed through all the detail, all of the kind of blah-blah-blah to make clear what this is really about, which is survival of these families and their family bond. You know, she also made it clear to people that this isn't just random black and white wildlife swimming around out there. These are families like our own. These are, this is basically a society of great antiquity and enormous sophisticationwith very close bonds with one another. I mean, all the other members of J pod knew that she was pregnant. They'd watch that pregnancy over 18 months and they knew the loss and they knew her loss and so, gosh, who wouldn't and couldn't connect with that and understand it? So at the newspaper, you know, we understood early on how important this was. We stuck with it every day and it's very interesting to me and I'm profoundly grateful to the Seattle Times for their response because they understood that she would be a beginning, but not an end to this story, that she would open the door to ongoing in-depth coverage about the ecological and environmental roots of this extinction crisis that the Southern Residents are facing. We made a decision at that time to go deep and produce what came to be the Hostile Waters series five parts over 18 months that dug deep into, well, why is this happening? Why do we see these families loss after loss two thirds of their calves, never pregnancies, never coming to an actual successful birth. So few animals at this point, why is that happening? And so we dug in, we went into the coverage from every possible angle, and we brought out this series of stories that ultimately led to the book to blow it up into an even bigger examination. So that's in a nutshell what happened, she started it and we stepped in to try to explore the story into its many dimensions of our relationship with these animals and the ways that we have both celebrated and failed them.

Justin Cox (14:56):

So something I want to get into, like the, all right, you have this commet of a story burning through for 17 days.

Lynda Mapes (15:02):

That's so well said.

Justin Cox (15:03):

And so when you talk about a comment it's gone, right? And so you talk about the metrics and the analytics, and I'm so glad you, you put it that way. It's like a very quantitative way to measure how much attention is on a thing and in order to affect change, you need attention on a thing. So do you feel like the story that played out in front of everybody has carried momentum and has changed the conversation from what it was prior or that it was a thing that happened that summer, and now we're back to trying to get people to pay attention.

Lynda Mapes (15:32):

You know, honestly, I think it's both. I think that since that story happened, it is never, again, going to be the same conversation in the sense that she put a face on that collection of families that is so kind of dryly called a population. You know, we can never think of them again as just a population, this is a group of families and we understand that now in a way that popularly,I don't think was understood before and that's very important. It's a huge shift in the way we think about them. We think about them as individuals and as families with connections between one another and relationships between one another, just as we do our own human families and we've also come to appreciate, you know, the deep intelligence and very present culture of these animals and I just think that that makes a big difference so I'm sure that that is still the case and I think as well, that there's a sense of needing to do right by these families and understanding that this is an extinction risk, that is not random. In fact, it's directly connected to us. These animals have been around since the ice melted in our region and, you know, they were doing fine until we showed up and in fact, they were doing rather well until about 50 years ago, and we'll come back to the connection between our prosperity and their, and the depolarization of their environment. It's been a direct transfer of the natural wealth that they relied on to the natural wealth that we have taken advantage of. So, she changed our ability to see that clearly and see the connection with our own behavior. On the other hand, I do think that we still combat an enormous amount of inertia with the profound changes that we actually need to make. If we really mean it about keeping these animals in our lives here in the Pacific Northwest.

Justin Cox (17:38):

Yeah. I mean, you have, you quote, a lot of scientists in this book and one early on is Deborah Giles and her quote is, "What is killing me? When is it going to be the last time?" And she's talking about when the mother is diving down to get her calf, cause she would carry it and then release it and then swim down to get it and then come back and then she says she has to make the decision at some point not to go get it. And you like said, maybe that decision was made at some point after just sheer exhaustion and mourning, or maybe the calf was just no longer in tact to be carried anymore. I mean, regardless, that's a scientist speaking like a person mourning the death of a mother's child.

Lynda Mapes (18:19):

Correct.

Justin Cox (18:19):

Just impossible to not be affected by that.

Lynda Mapes (18:21):

I totally agree with you and I really appreciated that a scientist of her caliber was not afraid to talk about this in the right way and just acknowledge what this clearly was, which was animal grief and Joe Gaydos at the SeaDoc Society similarly said, look, you know, we know that these animals do this and other sophisticated animals do this and it's so funny how people are, you know, we have to somehow say, well, that's like us so could they possibly do that? It's like, well, you know, it doesn't have to be similar to the way we would grieve to understand that there is a kind of grief that's going on there and it's.. Whenever people say to me, oh, they're just like us. I think to myself, don't flatter yourself. You know, these animals, whether you're talking about their diplomacy or their family ties or their ability to live in peace and share space is so superior to our own it's hilarious to say, oh, they're just like us. I mean, I wish. We wouldn't have the problems we have or so many of them, if we could manage the level of sophistication that this species has managed andI actually do think that she never dropped that calf. I mean, the pictures I saw of the calf on the last day, which we didn't run because they were so gruesome, show the animal coming apart, you know, I mean, it was literally coming apart. So, and then to everyone's great relief, she swam right on, you know, she picked up and went on. She, there was a lot of concern hat she was endangering herself with this behavior. Was she getting enough to eat? How exhausted was she becoming? After all this is a large animal. This is like a 400 pound calf that she's carrying around and it wasn't easy. I mean, I watched her and she would sometimes push it on her rostrum, her head, she would sometimes carry it ever so carefully just by the corner of one of the little tiny fins, pectoral fins and you could barely see the calf then, but then you'd see something along her side that clearly was not her body, but her calf. And it was a lot of work for her and her breathing was different. It was labored. The rhythm was different. Her diving in the arch of her back was different. You know, this was a big effort for her and there was a lot of concern. Would we lose her too? And this is a mother whale who was in her prime and hopefully will bear more young. So, you know, scientists like Giles were very concerned about what this loss meant. Not only for a calf, that was a female, which is exactly what we need, but also, gosh, would we lose her? And I appreciated that she was so expressive of her concern and her sentence, what is beyond grief? That's where she is. I'll never forget that.

Justin Cox (21:16):

A lot of times the things that will inspire people to care or make changes is their ability to identify with them, and the idea of doing anything for a sustained amount of time over 17 days is just, you can just identify with the exhaustion that would come with that, and then place that in the context of having just lost a baby. Like it just, I don't know, did you have a sense of, like, you talk about the intense attention that the story got, how much of that was here in the Pacific Northwest and did it transcend beyond and go way beyond this area?

Lynda Mapes (21:48):

I can tell you a funny story about that. One of the stories that we did in our series, Hostile Waters, involved going up north to BC to see how the Northern Residents are doing. So let's just briefly recap. The Northern Residents are the same animal. They just live in a different place. They also eat only salmon. They have the same cultural structure, same family structure, and they're doing great. They've been growing in population steadily year by year. So they're really kind of a perfect control group. You ask yourself, well, they're doing fine and they're the same as the Southern Residents, so what's the problem? So we decided to go up north and go visit with scientists up there and ask that very question. And so we find ourselves one afternoon on a very, very remote platform, literally on a rock over the Johnstone Strait, visiting with these two volunteers for Paul Spong, who runs fantastic work, has a research group up there. And these two volunteers are literally on this rock in basically a little tiny shack watching for Northern Resident killer whales from up on their platform to log their behavior and presence and so forth. And I'm introducing myself to them for the first time, and one of them looks at me with this sort of startled look, she says, you're a Lynda Mapes with the Seattle Times? I was reading you on the London Tube all about Tahlequah. I thought, okay, that's it, that truly submits this as the story that I will identify with and will be identified with me for probably the rest of my life. And you know what? I take that as a high honor.

Justin Cox (23:26):

I think you absolutely should. Well, that's actually a very good transition. I want to.. I had the privilege of spending a day out on the boat with you about a month ago, while you were reporting a story about a lot of.. Its something I'm going to circle back to in a minute, but, success stories and conservation really in the idea of like the Salish Sea springing back to life and during this time of year and everything. So my background is in communications and media and things like that, not necessarily science. So this is a little bit like me, selfishly asking you questions I just want to ask you, how did you land at the Seattle Times on the nature beat? And I don't know, how did you end up in this position you're in that ultimately led to the Southern Resident killer whale book?

Lynda Mapes (24:09):

You know, newspapers are probably a lot like emergency rooms at hospitals. We kind of do what needs to be done at the time that absolutely has to be done right now with the people who are there to do it. So it is with this, you know, I, at the Seattle Times started out as a political reporter, which is a very good background as a matter of fact, if you want to cover the environment, it's very helpful to know how budgets work and how politics works. And from there, I moved on to covering tribal governments and tribal cultures full time, as a matter of fact, for more than 10 years, which is very unusual at a mainstream American newspaper. And that happened because the Makah Nation was about to start hunting gray whales again for the first time in a generation. And they needed somebody who could go out and live at Neah Bay for the duration, you know, however long that was going to take, and it was well, get Lynda to do it, so off I went and that began my, one of the most fortunate things that's ever happened in my career, which is beginning to learn about Indian country. I mean, I'm from Westchester county, New York. I had no experience with that and it was a great gift to me in learning the true history of Washington state, through the gracious education that tribal members from all over the state shared with me about who they are and where, and how they live in and how they've had to contend with living with the arrival of the colonizers settlers. I always try to make sure my environmental coverage is culturally informed from the tribal coverage. I went off on two fellowships back to back, which says a lot about the Seattle Times that they would allow me to leave for two years and even cover my health benefits while I went off to take a Science Journalism fellowship at MIT, and then a fellowship at the Harvard forest in a forest for science and botany, and a book emerged from that as well called Witness Tree about the importance of forest ecosystems. I studied one tree for a year and I got this call while I was away on my fellowship from the Seattle city editor at the Seattle Times. He said, "hey, Lynda, Craig is leaving." This is Craig Welch, whose gone on to the National Geographic. "Would you please take on the environmental beat when you come back to the paper?" To which I had a one word answer, sure. So since 2015, that's been my full-time job at the paper and so that's how it goes. You know, at newspapers, they, they need things done, you're available, you know how to do it, you want to do it, and you step in and give it your all. And I have to just say a quick few things about the Seattle Times, it's, a locally owned family owned paper since 1886. This is very rare in our country anymore and you know, it's a wonderful place to work. It's reporter driven journalism supported by editors and a whole staff of people who can take an idea like the Southern Resident killer whale story, and bring to it videographers and photographers and designers and engineers, and all the support you need to go big on a story, and I guess can't even tell you how grateful I am for the support of the Seattle Times for this work.

Justin Cox (27:22):

I think on the boat you told me, they've never said no to a story you've pitched, is that right?

Lynda Mapes (27:25):

I don't think they have. I really don't. And not only do they not say no, they go big. You know, the story we did about the Nez Perce people and their commitment to taking out the lower Snake River dams and the cultural imperative of that. They provided, I think, three blanks for that story and a photographer to go spend a week with the Nez Perce people in Idaho. This is during the pandemic. And similarly, the story we just brought out on Sunday, about the rebound of marine mammals in the Salish Sea, I think they gave four blanks to that story. It was enormous display. They provided an artist to do natural history drawings, a photographer, two photographers, all the time and space we needed to tell that story. What a glory, what a wonderful thing. I'm grateful to the blood and family and the Seattle Times for really giving these stories of the natural world in the Pacific Northwest native cultures, native ecosystems. And that's what they allow me to cover and I'm very grateful for that. And readers love it. I hear from readers constantly grateful to be brought into what we discover when we work with scientists about the natural world.

Justin Cox (28:34):

Yeah, that story last week was gorgeous. And same thing for all the Hostile Waters pieces, which now I'm super happy to find versions of those in this book so that they, because they were, I mean, it wasn't just a written out story that got a lot of space in the paper, the online versions of these stories were immersive and which is hugely important if like you're saying someone's reading it on the Tube in London, it's cool that it's going to have this other life in the form of the book.

Commercial (29:07):

Junior Sea Doctors is SeaDoc Societies online marine science lab for kids, and a gateway to science resources for teachers, such as the Explorethe Salish Sea curriculum. Given a Salish Sea mystery, teams of student nature detectives set out on an evidence gathering quest to solve it, then take actions on their own science and traditional knowledge based recommendations to help heal the sea with help from community partners. All this at juniorseadoctors.org.

Justin Cox (29:40):

It's about impacting policy and basically affecting change and a lot of that's built on science. And so, I don't know, I'm curious to your mind, where does storytelling fit into that kind of effort toward changing things? Because it alone doesn't change things, but I know it's a part of the puzzle and it's, everything that I do in my role here at SeaDoc Society, I try to think about it and this is me picking your brain.

Lynda Mapes (30:06):

Yeah, I mean, I think it's all about hearts and minds and storytelling is as old as the campfire, it will never go away. It will always be central to how humans experience and share their world. And we've seen a lot of change in how we share stories with the coming of the internet and all the platforms we have now in journalism. It's a spectacular time to be a reporter because we do everything now, we make documentary films, we do podcasts, we write up stories that when they come up on your screen online, give you the immersive experience of hunting with a killer whale. You hear their sounds, you hear their clicks, you hear their voices, you hear the crunch as they get that fish. How exciting, you know, journalism isn't what it used to be and in some ways I think we're doing the best work we've ever been able to do. And, with the Seattle Times are very intentional about this cross-platform storytelling. We really, really work hard to make these immersive stories, irresistible stories that you can't turn away from by bringing you into the world of these animals, bringing you into these landscapes, bringing you into the world of scientists trying to understand them. I think that storytelling in terms of making change, it's primal, it is the blood that fills the veins. It's the sharing of the oxygen of our shared life. You know, this storytelling thing that we do is, it's probably not unique to humans. I'm sure that animals have their way of sharing about their day, but what's the first thing we say to one another? How are you, how was your day? What's, how, what's going on in your life? I think story is at the beating heart of change. You can't have change without shared story and the first step in any story is information.

Justin Cox (32:02):

Do you have a sense of throughout your coverage of Tahlequah, to the Hostile Water series, to now the book, I'm kind of asking you about all these, have you heard from elected officials and people in charge of policy? How do we get it in the hands of those people or get it in front of those people? Like, what's the best way to leverage that for change, I guess?

Lynda Mapes (32:25):

Right. Well, I mean, I don't have any doubt that it's been profound in its impact on decision makers. I mean, I can share with you that, you know, when we were covering Telequah and her journey, I got an email from a high elected official whose privacy I will protect, saying that, you know, these stories literally were so effecting that this person was having trouble sleeping at night. This person was having trouble functioning. This person also responded in a policy way in very direct, generous, important ways to support all kinds of things that would not have happened were it not for this coverage and that commitment has been continuing. And so I know that from local government, to state government, to federal policy, the Telequah story, if you will, the story of the Southern Residents, is a different story today. It is a story that's become urgently important and you know, it's very interesting to me that we have seen a lot of change on behalf of Orcas over just the last couple of years and I'm sure that's not random. I'm sure it's because of the increased public attention to Orcas and to the salmon that they rely on, that we're seeing this conversation blow up, whether it's about the current, you have a Republican congressmen in Idaho calling for the take-down of four dams on the lower snake river. That's different.

Justin Cox (33:18):

Yeah, wow.

Lynda Mapes (33:18):

You had a governor bringing out an Orca task force, and in a very ambitious legislative agenda with a billion dollar price tag continuing on and its momentum into this legislative session. We have hundreds of billions of dollars of work going on in the region to take down all kinds of dams, move back dykes, and improve estuary function, take out culverts. This is happening for a reason, it's happening because people are insisting on it, that they don't want the Pacific Northwest to turn into being just like everywhere else. You know, and I, I think people profoundly understand that it's it's judgment day. You know, if this place is going to look and feel and be the Pacific Northwest that we know it to be going forward, we are going to have to invest in taking out some of the infrastructure that no longer serves a purpose or isn't needed, but is very much, um, destroying the ability of the natural processes that these animals depend on to function. And you know what that takes money. It takes a lot of money that changes we're already seeing come directly from people demanding it, you know, they're, they're not willing to watch salmon declined to the point of extinction. They're not willing to watch the Southern residents go off a cliff into oblivion. This is happening for a reason. It's happening because people are insisting on it, that they don't want the Pacific Northwest to turn into being just like everywhere else. You know, and I think people profoundly understand that it's it's judgment day. You know, if this place is going to look and feel and be the Pacific Northwest that we know it to be going forward, we are going to have to invest in taking out some of the infrastructure that no longer serves a purpose, or isn't needed, but is very much destroying the ability of the natural processes that these animals depend on to function and you know what, that takes money. It takes a lot of money. The changes we're already seeing come directly from people demanding it, you know, they're not willing to watch salmon declined to the point of extinction, they're not willing to watch the Southern Residents go off a cliff into oblivion.

Justin Cox (35:21):

So where we sit right now, looking ahead, do you feel like those things are more likely to happen? Do you feel inertia in that direction more than you did a few years ago?

Lynda Mapes (35:30):

I think they are more likely to happen. I see an absolute increasing awareness and desire to act on that awareness and insistence on acting on that awareness and I think what has to happen next in Washington is we need dedicated funding for the large scale habitat repair. That's just got to happen for these whales and for the salmon that these whales rely on. What do I mean by that? We've already done a lot of the low hanging fruit and the smaller things, all of which matter and are tremendously important, but at this point, we're in the hundred million dollar range projects. These are the dam removals that need to happen to solve community problems, whether it's a water source that is no longer reliable. That's what happened for the city of Bellingham. They needed to take out the dam on the Nooksack River so that they could, you know, not have to keep relying on a dam that they couldn't even count on anymore to not fall apart on them. So they needed to put together a very expensive dam removal project that ultimately was funded by a whole suite of partners to take that dam down. And their dam removal is on the upswing in Washington and across the country and the reason for that is we have a lot of aging infrastructure, things that were built a hundred years ago that are falling apart and no longer do what needs done. Enloe Dam, perfect example, it's out there in the middle of central Washington blocking hundreds of miles of Steelhead habitat, hasn't made a kilowatt since the 1950s, the small PUD out there doesn't want it. I quoted their, one of their board members saying, you know, I used to say, I'd take a nickel for this, now it's down to a penny, but they don't have the money. They can't, they can't afford to take down the Enloe dam. They just had to replace most of their power poles because they got roasted in the wildfires. I mean there isn't the money to do these things without all of us stepping up to make them happen. And so, you know, when you're talking about a dam removal, you're talking about typically at least tens and very often more than a hundred million dollars, and it's a sophisticated undertaking to solve community problems for the long haul. And so every time in our state that orcas and salmon have to come up against the competing needs from the University of Washington to K-12 education, to public health, all of these critical jobs that government has to do, they're going to lose. They're going to lose that battle unless there's a dedicated fund for orca and salmon recovery and whether that happens through an initiative or it happens through in the next legislative session, you know Governor Inslee made a move for this in the last legislative session. He wanted a tax to pay for worker recovery, salmon recovery habitat. That didn't happen. It didn't come up again this session and, you know, maybe that'll resurface in the future, or maybe there'll be an initiative campaign that takes off on behalf of these whales and salmon, but that's, what's needed honestly is a dedicated source of funding, ongoing for habitat repair. We need to, we need to commit to that and there will never be enough money if we don't do that. And then you have to ask yourself, well, money for what? You know what would actually make a difference for these whales? And what would make a difference is allowing the natural processes that will forever sustain salmon to function and, you know, we have a lot of infrastructure right now that is either blocking off the near shore so that you don't have the nurturance of those nearshore habitats for the herring and the other forage fish that feed the baby salmon that feed the big fish that feed the black fish. You know, these things are all connected from the forest ecosystems, all the way down to the near shore, all the way to the estuary. And then of course the ocean itself has turned hostile. And so it's a connected system and we need to approach it that way and we need to invest in it in a much bigger than the ways we have been to date for us to really get anywhere and we need to be willing to profoundly rethink, you know, how we live in our cities and how we develop the landscape. I think some of the most interesting conversations I had about that were with some of the policymakers at WDFW and, you know, Jeff Davis is the head of conservation for them and what he said to me was, you know, he had just been out on a tour of south sound where development was just devouring some of the very delicious habitat that these animals rely on and you said, you know, it just left him in a sense of despair and understanding that these issues of transportation policy and land use and habitat are intimately connected, and we have to approach it that way. You can't expect to make progress on salmon habitat if you keep bringing development and highways into the last salmon bedrooms, you know, these places need to be protected, and the places that we've wrecked, where we can make changes to repair them, we need to make those repairs. So it's really kind of simple, isn't it? It's about fixing what we've broken and not breaking more.

Justin Cox (40:52):

Something you said earlier, I think is really important and enlightening, and it's a thing I know, but a thing that I think I even get lost in is like, it's easy to think about dams as like, all right, this group of people who love orcas want dams to come down, and this group of people who want to keep the dams want them to stay. But it's not such a binary thing. It's, even if you want the dams to come down, you don't necessarily have the money to do it. There's a lot more nuance in that and like you said, it requires money to make that change actually happen. I think it's easy to oversimplify that divide.

Lynda Mapes (41:26):

Absolutely. Right, and, you know, there's no one answer either. Every dam, every place needs to be considered as to its costs and benefits. And, that needs to be an honest calculation with resources brought to the task and we've seen that done before in our state with the Elwha dams. It's a perfect example. That was really an economic decision. I mean, you had a dam owner there, Crown Zellerbach corporation with dams that could no longer meet modern environmental standards and was not willing and could not put the money into bringing those dams up to modern environmental standard. So the federal government came in and bought them on behalf of the world's largest dam removal project still, ever, anywhere for the Elwha watershed and that was in 1992, so a bit of a way back machine, right? And it took decades to get that project actually funded and done, but it still today is the grand experiment that the scenic one-on exemplar of what you can do for fisheries. If you just give basically the fish back their habitat. In the case of the Elwha, you know, we've gone from returns of Chinook in the low thousands to at least 7,600 adults in the most recent count and out-migration of baby fishes now into more than a million strong. So you see, even in early days of recovery or a dramatic response all the way from the headwaters to the sea, with Washington's newest beach out of the estuary, you know, come back with a restart of the flow of sediment from the high country to the low, we've got all kinds of big wood, you know, logs and root wads and everything coming out of that forest building all kinds of fantastic log jams, which creates side channels, great rearing habit for salmon. Some of what's most exciting to me is the way that recovery is even reaching into birds. You know, you have birds that are suddenly have a much better food source with this feast of, of salmon coming in from the marine environment into the freshwater environments and laying eggs that then a dipper eats and, and suddenly dippers a beautiful songbird that's unique, it's aquatic, suddenly female dippers are bearing double clutches, they're bigger in body size, they're not even leaving the Elwha to migrate away. They just stick around, why? Because they have more food, and why is that? Because the salmon are back. So you see this recovery at this point, going far beyond salmon into these other species and feeding the land itself and that's what salmon do. They are a source of nitrogen and phosphorus. They're a source of food for other animals, more than 120 vertebrate species alone. They truly are the lifeblood of the regions ecosystem. When you bring them back, you bring back a lot more than salmon. And there's also a very important cultural revival underway, the lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, bringing back ceremonies based on the first salmon return that hadn't been practiced on the reservation for generations. Salmon are so much more than a fish, they are not only our identity, but they're the ecological engine of the region and that extends all the way to the Southern Resident killer whales. The Elwha is a good example of what we can do when we decide to do it. The thing I like to say about restoration, and I say this in the book is, look, you know, this is actually a lot easier than so many other challenges we face. This isn't- we're not trying to accomplish world peace. We're not trying to cure cancer, we're just trying to bring back the natural function of these ecosystems and we know how to do it. And it works every time. It's practical work that, you know, we know how to do, and we're very good at it. So you can count on nature. Nature will respond if you restore the processes that allow nature to work. It's just a matter of having the political will to provide the money and the community solutions to make this work so that the salmon can survive. And when you do that, it's better for people too, because you're talking about clean water, you're talking about a food source, and a cultural, a cultural revival for everybody. I mean, this isn't only an Indian thing. I mean, anytime my phone rings and I hear the voice of someone in this region, who's lived here for a long time, very often what they want to talk about is the salmon that they used to be able to go catch with their grandfather on the Columbia or somewhere in Puget Sound where they used to be able to just tickle flounder out of the mud with their toes when they went out with their grandparents. You know, I often think to myself, if we understood what the Southern Residents are saying to one another, when they're out foraging with their matriarch grandmother, that they're probably saying the same thing. We used to come here with our grandmother and there were so many more fish. What happened?

Justin Cox (46:44):

Dang, God. Yeah. With the salmon thing, it's like, what species that is feeding Southern Resident killer whales out here in the saltwater, the Salish Sea is going to elicit an opinion or any kind of formal stance from a Republican politician in Idaho? It's just so insane, just an insane species and I think everything that you're getting at, I'll turn this into a question in a second, but, would you say that, so we're having a conversation about Southern Resident killer whales, which is implicitly going to be a conversation about salmon and dams and pollution and all of that. Would you say that all this coverage about Southern Resident killer whales is actually just coverage about this ecosystem and the Salish sea? That's like a foothold for a larger conversation that kind of carries a lot of the same answers?

Lynda Mapes (47:30):

I'm so glad you said that. Emphatically, yes. I mean, I'll tell you something, as a writer and a reporter, a journalist, here's how I go about it, I look for the storytelling moment. I look for what I call the keyhole story, the smaller story that allows me to tell the much bigger story and that's what the Southern Resident killer whales are. They are the animal that allows that larger conversation to happen. Can I get people excited about modern sewage treatment and it's importance?Well, I don't know, maybe.

Justin Cox (48:09):

That's our next podcast series, so..

Lynda Mapes (48:11):

I'm going to have a much better chance at that if I can make the clean water connection to Southern Resident killer whales and abundant salmon. Can I get people to care about a herring fishery on the other side of the border? I don't know, maybe. But, if I can talk about how those silvery, miraculous fish that feed everything from seabirds to killer whales and their importance in the web of life, I'm going to have a much better chance of getting people to care about that herring fishery and ask the question of whether we really ought to still be doing that when everything in this ecosystem needs that forage fish to survive. How well am I going to do with talking about Bulkheads? Well, I don't know, maybe not so great, but if I can make the connection to a natural beach and how Sandlance and Herring need a natural beach on which to spawn so that you get those little fish, that feed the bigger fish, that feed the black fish, and tell that whole miraculous story of the circle of life, I think somebody is going to read that story. So your question, is the Southern Resident killer whale story really about the whole larger system and our place in it and how we're living here? Absolutely. That was the premise of Hostile Waters, the series in the Seattle Times and it's absolutely the beating heart of this book.

Justin Cox (49:06):

How does it feel covering this stuff?

Lynda Mapes (49:06):

You know, I would say it's a high honor and it is that because I have so much respect for these animals and for the force of life that is nature and so much faith in it. I mean, I just am, unshakably convinced that if we provide these animals with what they need to survive, they will take care of the rest. And you know what? We owe them that. They were fine until we got here in our great numbers and in our multitude. What we have done is taken the natural wealth of this region and transformed it. The old money of this region as chairman Shannon Wheeler at Nez Perce calls it, and transformed it into this currency that we take out of the cash machine, you know, that original wealth, that natural wealth is what makes the Pacific Northwest what it is. It is what sustained the beautiful lives of this region. I just feel it's a high honor to write about those lives and this place and don't think it's a downer story at all. I think the heroism of the Southern Resident killer whales in taking care of one another and persisting, despite everything that we've thrown at them from the capture era to the redevelopment of the Puget Sound region and beyond, the fact that they're still here. I think one of my favorite passages in the book is towards the back, towards the end. I talk about the Southern Resident killer whales, you know, swimming through the Salish Sea like black and white robed judges really reminding us of their hunger and where it comes from that we caused it to remind us of what we've taken from them and what they've given to us, and to cause us to ask and answer the question of what do we really want this place to be like in the future. I think as Cecilia Gobin so beautifully said it in your recent show, Cecilia from the Tulalip Tribes, you know, we, all of us here, native, non-native people who just got here, people who've been here for generations, we really are United by the Southern Resident killer whales across Washington state and across the region because of their reliance on the salmon. I love this story because it ultimately is about connections between communities, between one another, between the uplands, the lowlands, the salt water, the fresh, and that's the right way to think about this as one whole connected community of lives.

Justin Cox (51:58):

Amazing. Yeah, I'm going to share this just because I can't not talk about it, but I live like three blocks from the water in the North Beach area of Eastsound and the other day I had this moment, I was sitting and working at my kitchen table and just stood up to stretch and glanced out at the water. I stare out at the water all the time, incredibly lucky to be able to see the water, it's not right there, but it's just kind of off on the horizon, and I stood up and glanced out and saw a killer whale, the instant I looked, at the specific spot I looked. I don't know if they were Southern Residents or not, but the shot of intense adrenaline that ran through my body, that was just like, it basically, felt like a chemical change in my body. I just shouted my wife's name, we went outside, we watched and it was no boats. It was no.. I talk about Southern Resident killer whales every single day in this job, I'm doing this podcast. My head is in on this species. I've been out on the water and seen them on trips where you're planning to go see them and this was this like totally naturally occurring moment. And then we raced down to the water and watched from there and I don't know, I mean, it doesn't that doesn't completely tie with what you're just saying, except for pure, pure bliss and luck and happiness to have this species around in what felt like the most natural state I could ever see them.

Lynda Mapes (53:20):

You know, I couldn't agree more. I think one of my other favorite parts of the book is again, in the walk-off at the end, I described this moment where it's winter time, which is when the Southern Residents do this incredible thing, they provide us with the gift of their presence. They come all the way to downtown Seattle. I mean, downtown orcas, who else has that? And I was out on a boat with Brad Hanson from NOAA fisheries who was kind enough to invite us to come out as he was doing his monitoring of the Southern Residents while they were right here in central Puget Sound and it was the craziest thing, Justin, you know, we just, we all piled in the car and we went over to west Seattle to the Don Armeni boat ramp, and we met Brad Hanson right there in west Seattle and zipped out to the south end of Vashon Island and we're out there basically between Vashon and Commencement bay and there they are, and they're blowing that breath that sounds like something from the beginning of time, because it is. And there they are, they're swimming under, they're swimming right by the boat. They're rolling around and slapping their pectoral fins, seemingly just for the fun of hearing the sound, you see the glow, their white belly, as they skull along under water, on their backs, they're playing, they look great. They're together. J, K, and L pod were all here that day. We stayed out with him for hours and I saw all of these people come down to the beach on the south end of Maury island with their dogs and their kids and either you saw them pointing and shouting and laughing with joy, just like you described your own experience and that's real, you know, that connection to these animals with whom we're so lucky to share this place. That is so special, that is so worth fighting for to keep and pass it on to the next generation and that love for place that love for these animals, that's what keeps me in this story.

Justin Cox (55:15):

I thank you so much for coming on this show. I was very excited to have this conversation. When does the book come out, and where can people find it? Tell us a little more about the book.

Lynda Mapes (55:26):

Right, so it's out June 1st, you can buy it right now. If you just type Southern Resident killer whales, Lynda Mapes book, you'll find it. You can buy it absolutely anywhere. It's out June 1st. I'm going to be doing a launch by Zoom and that's with the sponsorship of the Elliot Bay Books and our very own treasured Seattle Public Library. I'm very proud to have those sponsors for that launch and there's going to be a lot more book events throughout June, which is after all orca month. So, I'm going to be putting up a website very soon called Orca Story, and you can find the full calendar of events there. It's called Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home. When I was trying to think of a title, I thought, well, what's better than Orca? It's a beautiful word, it's fun to say, it looks beautiful and typeface. So yeah, June 1st and I can't wait to bring the story out.

Justin Cox (56:25):

As I haven't held the book in my hands, but I have scrolled through a beautiful PDF of it, and can't wait to grab it. It's very, very cool.

Lynda Mapes (56:33):

Thank you.

New Speaker (56:34):

Lynda, thank you so much for coming on the show. Can people find you anywhere in particular, or whether at the paper, or on any kind of social media, or anything like that?

Lynda Mapes (56:44):

Sure, so all of my work at the Seattle Times is collected on my author page. If you type Lynda Mapes author page Seattle Times, that'll take you there. You'll see everything I ever wrote, and I hope you'll subscribe to the Seattle times and support us. It's a locally owned Pacific Northwest journalism. Small batch, made for you right here, every day.

Justin Cox (57:03):

Very cool.

Justin Cox (57:06):

This series is a production of the SeaDoc Society, a non-profit marine science organization based on Orcas Island. If you'd like to support our work, you can visit seadocsociety.org/donate and make a donation. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, just search SeaDoc Dociety. Thank you again to Lynda Mapes and the fantastic guests who made this series possible, that's John Ford, Cecilia Gobin, Jason Colby, Rob Williams, Kirsten Gilardi, and Peter Ross. Thanks also to Kevin Campion and Joe Gaydos for the instrumental roles they played in preparing and producing this series. Like I said before, stay subscribed to this feed so you don't miss out on any future plans or updates. One last time, I'll ask that you rate the podcast and consider leaving a review in your app, doing so goes a very long way toward helping people find the show. I am Justin Cox, and you can reach me at justin@seadocsociety.org and thank you to Podington Bear for providing the music for the series and to Float for providing the logo. Thank you again to the sponsors who have made the show possible.