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17 November 2013 Southern Troubles In the waters off the coast of Washington State, there is an area called Puget Sound. This place serves as a summer home for a population of orcas called the Southern Residents. These whales come here every summer to forage, mate and socialize. Unfortunately, something is threatening this unique group of whales. They are facing a threat against which they have no natural defense. Human interference such as pollution and wild captures are causing such harm to the Southern Residents that they are facing possible extinction. The Southern Resident Killer Whales are probably one of if not the most studied marine mammal on the planet. They are part of an ongoing Photo Identification study that was started in 1976. They have provided invaluable information about the lives of wild killer whales. Through observations and data collection obtained from this group of whales, we have learned about the biology and culture of wild killer whales. Before we studied these whales, almost nothing was known about killer whales aside from the fact that they were killers. The southern residents debunked this belief and helped shape the positive way that the public now views killer whales. The Southern Resident Killer Whales live in stable family units called pods. A pod of whales usually consists of five to twenty closely related whales. The Southern Resident Community consists of three pods of whales. J pod is perhaps the most well know, it has twenty-six members in all, fifteen females and eleven males. K Pod, which is the smallest of the three pods, has just nineteen members with nine females and ten males. In contrast, L Pod is twice the size of K Pod. It has twenty females and eighteen males in all. These

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numbers are from the 2013 Photo Identification study that was conducted by Kenneth Balcomb and the Venter for Whale Research. (Balcomb, Orca Survey) Resident killer whales have family bonds that are unique in the animal kingdom. There society is what is considered matriarchal, meaning that the older females govern them. What makes their family bonds so unique is that sons and daughters stay with their mothers for her entire life. Once you are born into a specific pod, you are in for life. Daughters may move a very short distance away once they have calves of their own, but grandma will still take part in the rearing of those calves. The hypothesis about why males stay with their mothers has to do with survival rates. If mother has a grown son around to help her care for her younger offspring, the younger ones have a better chance at survival. Killer whales are not competitive or aggressive against each other the way most other animals including their cousins the bottlenose dolphin. With so many of closely related pod members, logical would suggest that there must be fierce competition for things such as food and mates. With the Southern Resident Killer Whales, this is not the case at all. They participate in food sharing, which is when one animal catches a meal and shares it with other members of the pod. There is no competition for mates; this is most likely because the matriarch of the pod gives her approval for every mating that occurs. They have managed to find a way to live peacefully and co-cooperatively with one another. This is one of the things that makes them so special.

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The biggest threat to the Southern Resident Killer Whales is chemical pollutants. PCBs being among the worst of them. Killer Whales are apex predators, which means that they are at the top of the food chain, because of this; they have the highest concentration of these toxins in their bodies. They are exposed to the toxins mostly through the food they eat, salmon. In her article Salmon in near-shore Pacific contaminating killer whales, Marla Cone weighs in on the issue and calls Killer Whales the most contaminated wildlife on Earth. No one can be sure exactly what is a safe level of PCBs in killer whales, we can only guess. The safe level for harbor seals in the area is around 50 ppm (parts per million.) Killer Whales have been discovered with levels around 660 ppm. Studies have shown that having such high levels can cause hormone irregularity and retarded neural development. It has also been show to hinder reproduction and population growth by compromising the immune systems of the whales. (Cone, Contaminating) Although PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have been illegal since the 1970s, there effect on the Southern Resident Killer Whales is still very much present today. The toxins from the PCBs are stored in the whales blubber layer. Sadly is only two ways for killer whales to rid themselves of this toxic chemical. The first is through the placenta during gestation, and the second is through the rich fatty milk that feed the calf when the mother is lactating. Research has shown that because there are only those two ways to disburse the chemicals, adult males have the highest level of PCBs in their bodies. In fact, the levels in the Southern Resident Killer Whales are so high that when they die, they must be handled as hazardous waste.

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Noise Pollution from heavy boat traffic and Navy sonar testing is becoming an increasingly problematic threat to the Southern Residents. The Southern Resident Killer Whales make their summer home in Puget Sound. This is an area that has very heavy boat traffic in the summer from both private and commercials vessels. The sound that these boats emit that is heard underwater is atrocious. It also scares fish away that could possibly have served as sustenance for the Southern Residents. The other and more deadly form of noise pollution effecting the Southern Residents is the United States Navys sonar testing. While it is important for the government to have to have these weapons in the event that they have to use them, what is the cost? Killer Whales see about as well underwater as humans do, so they must rely on their echolocation abilities to navigate and locate prey. A killer whale who cannot echolocate to find its way around and forage for food is as good as dead. (Peterson, Resurfacing) In the 1960s and the 1970s the Southern Resident Killer Whales suffered a major blow to their numbers as a result of the Live Capture Industry. In 1961, the first killer whale was caught accidently, it quickly died but not before leaving its mark. People began to realize that these were docile and trainable creatures and more importantly that the public would pay to see the tamed beast and so an industry was born. The Southern Residents had no natural fear of human so it made them easy to capture. Therefore, they were hit harder than any other group of whales. In the infamous Penn Cove capture in 1970, the entire southern Resident Population was entrapped and the young ones were taken into captivity. Leaving the Southern Residents numbers decimated. They went from one hundred and thirty-nine whales to just seventy-one by 1976 when it was finally made illegal

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to capture them. Of the seventy-one whales taken from the Southern Residents, only one remains alive in captivity today. In 2001, several environmental groups started a petition to get the Southern Residents placed on the Federal Endangered Species List. They fought and lobbied congress for four long years and after repeatedly being denied, they were finally successful in 2005. The whales were given endangered status and a recovery plan was made for them. Their numbers began to once again make a slow and agonizing climb. Then, in 2013 a local fisherman and businessman petitioned to have them taken off the endangered species list. They stated that the whales were no longer in need of government protection and therefore should be removed. This did not go over well with the public and after much heated debate, their petition was denied. They remain listed as Endangered. The Southern Resident Killer Whales are an integral part of the oceanic eco system as well as our counterparts in the sea. They shares so many traits with us that we consider distinctly human. Some people ask why? Why should we can if one little group of killer whales dies off? So What? The answer is very simple. We owe it to them. They have been so completely trusting and accepting of everything that we have done. They live their lives around our boats and our noise and our sometimes-intrusive observations. As a thank you for the knowledge that they have given us, we have endangered them. It is our fault that they are in danger in the first place, we put the chemicals and noise in their waters and we took their babies from them. It is our responsibility as being on this earth to try to fix our mistakes and clean up the messes that we have made.

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Works Cited Millius, Susan. "Killer Whale mama's boys live longer; females' long postmenopausal years may benefit their sons." Science News. 182.8 (2012): 16. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. Cone , Marla. "Salmon in near-shore Pacific Contaminating Killer Whales." Environmental Health News. 20 01 2013: n. page. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. Peterson, Brenda. "Resurfacing: resident orcas off the coast of San Juan Island and Olympic National Parks face a series of environmental threats. Will they be able to rise above the tide?." National Parks. 08 2006: 32. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ncpa.org/magazine/>. Mongillo, Teresa. United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Potential Effects of PBDEs on Puget Sound and Southern Resident Killer Whales. 2013. Web. Balcomb, Kenneth, and et al. "Official Orca Survey:Naturalists Family Tree Guide to Orca Whales of the Southern resident Community." The Center for Whale Research. The Center for Whale Research, n.d. Web. 12 Nov 2013.