By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

After a year full of new hope for survival of Puget Sound’s resident orcas, what will 2016 bring?

On the first Thursday of the new year, The Whale Trail invites you to its next Orca Talk in West Seattle – this time looking at the ecology of the “transient” orcas who visit our waters; registration for the 7 pm presentation on January 7th at C & P Coffee Company (WSB sponsor) is open now.

If you’re interested, you’ll want to get your tickets fast, since the last Orca Talk of 2015 brought a sold-out full house. Good news is, it’s on video:

NOAA researcher Brad Hanson spoke at C & P on December 3rd to talk about the Southern Resident Killer Whales’ baby boom. At that time, the count stood at six in less than a year, and as if that wasn’t exciting enough, two more babies have been announced since then.

The first newborn announced in December turned out to have been first sighted off West Seattle on November 10th, by two skilled spotters, including Alisa Lemire Brooks of Orca Network, who recorded this video:

November 10th was one of the days that The Whale Trail founder and executive director Donna Sandstrom was out on the West Seattle shore helping make sure orca fans could see the killer whales swimming in the Sound.

On December 3rd, she opened the Orca Talk with news of The Whale Trail’s continued growth, too – with partnerships and informational displays along more of the Pacific Coast, enhancing everywhere what she calls “an intensely local” experience, watching whales from shore. But awareness and information aren’t enough. She spoke of the importance of personal action: “We all need to ask what we can do.”

Introducing Hanson, Sandstrom recalled the bleak mood among orca advocates almost exactly a year earlier – a SRKW female, J32, had washed up, dead, in British Columbia, and she was found to have been carrying an almost-full-term female calf whose had died in utero, making the death a double loss.

Hanson had more to say about that, but first set the stage: His work is only possible, he said, because of the “photo ID” capability with orcas, dating back more than 40 years, “a revolutionary way to ID all the animals in BC and Washington … You wouldn’t know about the killer whale life-cycle if not for the identification if individual killer whales.”

That lifecycle involves a paradox – the males living much shorter lives than the females. Hanson detailed the lifespan, starting with orcas’ 17-month gestation period, and then their status as juveniles until age 10. Females usually give birth for the first time around 15 and remain “reproductively active” until their early 40s, potentially living into their 80s. As an aside, he mentioned that the popular orca J2, “Granny,” is often described as 104 years old, but might actually be somewhat younger.

Males “are a little different,” he said – it’s very rare for them to make it into their 50s; most only get into their 30s: “We really don’t know why that is.”

Females have a post-reproductive period – they are the ones who know where to go to find fish, for example.

Then, the status of the SRKWs, listed as “endangered” after a 20 percent decline in 1990s – that’s when they found out only 74 were left. Then the population started increasing – almost to 100 in 90s – then dropped back into 70s. 2005, listed as endangered under ESA. The second decline in 2011, from 87 to 78 by 2014: “Something that’s been a great deal of concern.”

L120 was born in summer 2014, the SRKW’s first calf in two years, but vanished by October of that year. And December 4, 2014, was when “things went from bad to worse,” with 18-yo J32 found dead, carrying a decomposing calf. “We lost her, and her reproductive potential, and female calf … a big blow to the population.” That’s because, Hanson said, there were as of this fall only 36 females of less-than-postreproductive age among the SRKW. At best, on average, a reproductive-age orca will have a calf every five years until age 40.

J50 was spotted with J16 in late December 2014, the start of the baby boom:

(December 2014 photo courtesy Center for Whale Research: Mom J16 and newborn J50)
Hanson said he doesn’t recall more than 6 calves in a year in recent decades (though one year in the ’70s had nine).

Some of the research they’ve been doing gave them interesting insights, including satellite tagging, which showed that J Pod seemed to have gone to find a “calm space for the baby to be born.” J Pod overall is unique from Ks and Ls, the other two pods in the SRKWs, he said, by generally staying in Salish Sea waters. Unlike other pods, they don’t spend much time on the outer coast.

Fall is the typical time for calves to be born, according to Hanson, though the current “baby boom” hasn’t been confined to that time period. In early February, J51 was spotted with J15. Then while out cruising on the RV Bell M. Shimada, Hanson continued, they saw the whales, behaving unusually, “bunched up, acting excited” — and “up pops this calf probably about 2 days old, L121.”

He detailed the travels of that group on the outer coast, and reiterated the importance of doing some tagging so they know what the whales are doing “during a big part of the winter.” They stayed primarily within 4 1/2 miles of shore, in a “contour” where apparently they are finding fish – remember, the SRKW are fish eaters – where human fish-seekers don’t. “It’s like Highway 101 (for chinook salmon) – they’re not leaving the continental shelf.”

“The Whale Trail,” Sandstrom quipped at that point – an offshore version.

The six calves that had been announced by the time Hanson spoke were born between December 14, 2014, and October 15, 2015, four to J Pod – which has more females – two in L Pod – none in K Pod. (The subsequent two births were in J Pod and L Pod, so K Pod remains without new arrivals.)

“The fact that all these calves have survived this long is nothing short of amazing,” Hanson noted, pointing out that usually only 50 percent survive their first year. However, he cautioned that the pod’s “relatively low number of sub-adult females” still could “potentially limit the future reproductive output of the population.” He explained that some of those females are “years overdue” for calf-bearing, and researchers don’t know why – they might, for example, be losing their pregnancies early.

That’s why work is under way on a variety of fronts to support the remaining SRKWs, including protection of “critical habitat” and studies of the existing “family tree.” There could be future “inbreeding problems” because many of the calves were fathered by the oldest, largest males, such as J1 and L41, and mating can happen within the pod.

J1 was “Ruffles,” estimated to be about 59 years old when he vanished five years ago. Researchers are watching to see who’s replacing him in the SRKW. L85, a male in his 20s, was the father of the unborn calf found dead inside J32, according to tests. But in the big picture, Hanson said, “We dont really understand the breeding structure in killer whales – female choice? male-male competition?” (Although, he noted, orcas “don’t really fight.”) He suspects “female choice” since orcas are matrilineal – “arranged marriages, something along those lines,” he semi-joked.

To find out more of what’s going on, researchers are trying every way they can to assess the health of the SRKWs – collecting fecal, mucous, breath samples (the latter, according to Hanson, is the “closest surrogate to blood samples,” which as you can imagine are difficult to get, though they do manage to collect “small cylindrical pieces of tissue” to analyze, from time to time, and have “a freezer full of samples”).

At that point he showed the drone visuals from xx, “absolutely amazing images of northern and southern residents” ; among them, one showing a pregnant orca, which researchers on the water followed in hopes of getting fecal samples for analysis, to assess their “nutritional status” among other things. Lack of prey – the chinook salmon that SRKW prefer to eat – is what they suspect as being behind the mortality rate. “There’s no direct evidence of starvation, but a few whales showed signs of malnutrition before disappearing.” It’s not just the quantity of fish, but also the quality, and even “the relationship between predator and prey.”

He showed what it looks like as an orca chases a fish – with a GoPro camera recording the point of view of L95 in Haro Strait, and then fielded questions.

Among them:

Where do transient killer whales fit in, with resident populations in areas “all around the Pacific Rim”?

It’s a “whole different ecotype,” Hanson explained, with different diets. The transients and residents don’t mix and mostly “ignore each other,” he said. In the North Pacific – our part of the world – there’s a third ecotype, “offshore,” which tends to feed on sharks and ranges from Alaska to Southern California, rarely coming into inland waters, though you might glimpse them in Alaska and British Columbia.

Back to the transients – their prey is doing rather well in this area, according to Hanson, with harbor-seal populations up, and harbor porpoises “recoloniz(ing) Puget Sound.” Overall, he said, “the transients are actually more ‘residents’ than the residents are,” using backwaters a lot more, where more seals hang out, ranging all the way down to Olympia.

Asked how researchers get those “cylindrical” tissue samples he mentioned, he described an air-powered dart that “just goes into the blubber layer,” which yields everything they need for multiple types of analysis.

Asked about the residents’ frequent visits to the West Seattle area, Hanson said it’s not unusual in the fall – they eat Fraser River salmon in the summer and then switch in the fall, coming here because there’s a lot of chum; though they prefer chinook salmon, it comprises only half their diet. He did not want to offer an opinion when asked about the Snake River dam-removal issue – “I’m not a salmon guy.”

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OPENING SPEAKERS: As mentioned, the event opened with two other advocates who often present updates at the start of Orca Talks.

First, Robin Lindsey of Seal Sitters – “a very busy network, typically,” 724 calls last year, with 150 responses and 51 positively identified pups. “We average 200 responses a year here in West Seattle, 70 percent of them during pupping season – usually August to the end of the year.” This year was unusual: A lanugo pup (newborn) turned up in early June – Winken, who didn’t make it; its mom never came back. In all, while SS usually gets 60 calls in September and October, this year it was only 14.

One big success story for the year relayed by Lindsey was that of a pup from Lincoln Park taken to PAWS, weighing 18 pounds, released back in the wild in October 9th, when it weighed a “robust 66 pounds.” 4 pups in June, nothing in August. Usually 60 in September-October; this year, 14.

Another datapoint of the season: 39 seal pups were eaten by coyotes in the South Puget Sound rookeries.

‘DIVER LAURA’ JAMES: On behalf of tox-ick.org, working to reduce toxic runoff, she provided a variety of updates.

She says Sea Star Wasting Syndrome is still a big problem – purple and sunflower stars in particular are not recovering. She talked about new projects to provide visuals of what’s really happening under the water, including a “virtual reality” setup – she wants people to understand what it looks like to the diver underwater – for example, the plume of polluted water, the trash, the heavy plastics – “but what I also see when I turn around is the debris trail. It doesn’t just stop 50 feet away … it makes a debris trail of leaves, wood, plastic, garbage, trash, a black decaying swath that goes out as far and as deep as I have gone – there is no place that I can go in Puget Sound that I don’t see human litter under water.” She’s been recording scenes like this for years – this is from almost four years ago:

She stressed that these are problems that can’t be ignored, and must be shown to more people – “it’s very visible to me underwater and there is no one to pick up the trash underwater.” She’s also working on educating kids, “Know What’s Below.”