(Thursday’s orca sighting, Photo by WSB’s Christopher Boffoli)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Three times in the past week, endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales have passed West Seattle shores.

It’s also been a busy week for one of their most fervent support groups, The Whale Trail.

Just three days after TWT co-presented “Welcome the Orcas“ at Alki – with SRKWs showing up for the occasion – the group’s monthly Orca Talk filled the seats at C & P Coffee Company (WSB sponsor).

Unannounced guest speakers stole the show.

Mark Sears – who’s been researching orcas for 43 years, especially to let NOAA know what the orcas are eating while they are here – presented an update on K-Pod’s visit last Friday and Saturday (November 30 and December 1).

J-Pod came in on November 4th – from the ocean to Central Puget Sound, which is where Mark and daughter Maya Sears work. Chum have the longest Puget Sound run and the orcas were here “right on time” to eat them. Then K-Pod showed up, “they went out together,” and then K Pod came back “all by themselves” last Friday and Saturday.

While Mark and Maya are out with the whales, they are doing photo ID of each animal to “see who’s there, assess their physical appearance … certain animals, we have a list of priorities” before they head out. After whales eat, they collect bits and pieces, fecal material, even some mucus/regurgitation – “we collect the stuff for the science folks to do their work.” He said Maya is the ID expert, and is the spotter while he operates the boat. (They’re the ones in the red boat.)

(Photo from last week’s K-Pod visit, by Kersti Muul)

Maya took the stage at this point. “Sometimes when a pod comes in, it’s been literally months since we’ve seen them,” she explained. This year’s focuses included seeing J41, the pregnant female in J Pod. She so far “appears to be in good health.” No baby yet; newborns have a peachy color, she explained, showing one of her father’s photos of J35 in 1998 – Tahlequah when she was a calf. That’s the mom who lost her calf and carried the dead newborn around for weeks earlier this year; she appears to be OK now. They can assess that by looking at the area behind the blowhole. K25, meantime, is not doing so well.

On Saturday, they got a look at K27, believed to be pregnant, and she also looks good. On Saturday, all of K Pod was here, so they decided to follow her in hopes of getting samples. Following K27 for samples was fairly easy this time, Maya explained, showing photos of the matter they sampled.

She also talked about Friday’s sighting, K-Pod’s first appearance in this area this year – as they were passing Alki, coinciding with “a very big wave that seemed to come out of nowhere,” the whale surrounded the research boat and were breaching – and then scattered to forage. “Quite an amazing scene.” She was wearing a GoPro camera on her head and showed footage in which she was heard to say “Never seen this before” – referring to the multiple breaches.

Also before the scheduled guest, Whale Trail founder/executive director Donna Sandstrom spoke.

WHALE TRAIL UPDATE: Sandstrom talked about The Whale Trail’s mission and her work on the Governor’s Task Force. She said, “I know what’s possible when we work for the whales.” She talked about the success not only of TWT – now 10 years old – but of the joy of helping humans see orcas.

The SRKW are now down to 74 – just three over their historic low of 71. “We know they can recover from (that point),” said Sandstrom. But if they go lower than that? We don’t know.

Their biggest 3 threats include toxins bioaccumulating in blubber and mother’s milk, and they’re released into the whales’ bloodstream when they’re stressed/hungry. Noise stresses them too. The good news, the problems are fixable – “we broke it, we can fix it,” as Sandstrom put it. The goal: 10 more whales in the next 10 years. She expressed pride in the task force’s work, saying stakeholders put aside their individual interests on behalf of the whales’ future.

What’s next: The task force’s 36 recommendations are being reviewed right now by the governor. “We’re all kind of biting our fingernails” waiting to see what happens. Then – legislative action must follow. Her interest is especially focused on “turning down the noise” including stopping on-water whale watching for three to five years “to give the Southern Residents the best chance to find their food and communicate with each other.”

The night’s featured topic/guests were related to one of the threats faced by the orcas – toxins:

‘WHY ORCAS DON’T LIKE PESTICIDES’: Lisa Hayward and Clement Furlong of the University of Washington Superfund Research Program presented this topic.

Hayward began, going back to three events in evolutionary history – the first marine mammal, the manatee – then an ancestor of the cow became a marine mammal, and then an ancestor of canines became pinnipeds.

Dr. Wynn Meyer at the University of Pittsburgh studied this and discovered a factor was the enzyme PON1 – related to the breakdown of fats in the bloodstream.

She turned it over to Furlong, who explained “Why the Orca is Sensitive to OP Insecticides,” focusing mostly on an organophosphate insecticide known as chlorpyrifos.

He showed scientific diagrams of organophosphates’ parent compounds – related to deadly nerve agents. They are detoxified with paraoxonase, which can protect you from some of the compounds – but not all.

He went into some very granular explanation of gene research and discoveries and how scientists figured it all out. The processes he was describing happen in your liver, he explained in response to a question.

Local research discovered some variations in Human PON1. “Early in the environmental genome project PON1 was cited as an excellent example of gene/environment interaction.” If you have low levels of PON1, you might be at risk of stroke.

Overlooked in safety research by Dow, he said, was “exposures involve direct contact with oxon residues.”

He and Becky Richter have worked together for 30 years on some of this. They found three different genetic types for how fast people’s blood breaks down the particular substance they were researching. Richter, he said, spent 10 years working on a way to study this without it being toxic.

Since there are wide variabilities in sensitivity to this, they studied whether that means a variability in your risk of related disease. High PON1 levels are protective against a dermal (external) exposure, they discovered.

This and other related experiments demonstrated that high levels of PON1 protected against exposure to organophosphates including chlorpyrifos and diazinon. That could have therapeutic effects, he explained.

Studies ensued in genetically modified mice. And they confirmed that mice wihout PON1 were more sensitive to the substances than mice with it. So – sensitivity varies. They discovered that young individuals are more sensitive than older ones. Babies are born with much lower levels – by age 2, they reach adult levels of PON1. Mice reach adult levels in 21 days. They studied Salinas (CA) farm worker moms and babies’ PON1 levels. They discovered some moms’ levels were lower than babies – so those moms wouldn’t be able to protect their fetuses from exposure.

Furlong said he explained all this to the EPA and a negotiation to pull diazinon off the shelves ensued. He said he was “horrified” when the administration announced that it wanted to do away with regulation and then Dow moved to stop phasing out diazinon.

He talked about the ethics of workers knowing their genetic sensitivity to these compounds and said he feels unions should offer testing so people have the chance to know.

He brought in the case of a man who got sick after using a product involving the substance, and was found to have low blood levels of paraoxonase.

He showed more specific procedures and details of how this is being researched, including Washington State agricultural workers. They’ve been working on a treatment for organophosphate poisoning.

Now, how it all comes back to the orcas:

They discovered that most marine mammals have no protection. Birds and fish too. “Which means that baby salmon are not going to be happy when a helicopter is spraying them with chlorpyrifos,” he noted. Runoff from forest spraying is how this is getting to salmon, marine mammals, and other sea life.

The low protection was something that evolved as the mammals that became today’s marine mammals went back to the sea, Furlong explained.

Wrapping up, they showed a timeline, including: Chlorpyrifos became a pesticide in the US more than 50 years ago. Residential use was stopped in 2000. A lawsuit seeking a ban was filed in 2007. A human health risk assessment in 2014 showed “undisputed evidence of harm.” The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a ban this past August – but the EPA is challenging that.

So this is another reason not to use this pesticide, was the bottom line.

If you don’t know where to start but want to take some action” Hayward said, check out EarthJustice‘s site about this.

“If we do decide to ban it, it does break down relatively quickly” and that could make a difference fast, said Hayward. It always helps to buy organic, she said, and if you can’t do that, wash your food. Also buy organic cotton.

Ending the evening, Sandstrom promised that TWT will keep presenting talks that shine spotlights on the multiple threats facing the whales. “The other (important) part of the solution is to not lose hope … you saw the whales out there … they’re not giving up … we can’t either.”

Keep track of what The Whale Trail is up to at thewhaletrail.org.