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02/01/2008: "Washington Orcas Return To California Waters"

( From left: L-88, L-78, L-105, L-67, and L-72 off Cypress Point, California. -Photo courtesy of Nancy Black/Monterey Bay Whale Watch)

By Ken Balcomb

In spite of the rough winter weather in California, the Puget Sound Orca (officially known as Southern Resident Killer Whales or SRKW’s) once again traveled more than six hundred miles down the Pacific coast to Monterey Bay in search of their favorite food – Chinook salmon, now scarce in Washington State.

Nancy Black, of Monterey Bay Whale Watch, forwarded us this photograph taken yesterday of L67,72,78,88,105 and many other L pod whales off Cypress Point near Carmel, heading south. Part of a pod of about 43 whales, they were last confirmed in Puget Sound on 14 December 2007 by researchers from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NMFS/NOAA).

Subsequently, we have reports of at least one L pod whale (L57) near the San Juan Islands on 13 January, a large group of killer whales heading west in the Strait of Juan de Fuca on 14 January, a pod of killer whales going south past Depoe Bay Oregon on 17 January, a pod of killer whales heading south off Fort Bragg California on 20 January, and a pod of killer whales heading south off Gualala, California on 21 January.

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All of these reports fit a pattern of travel at about 75 miles per day that has been typical for SRKW’s during the thirty-two years of Orca Survey photo-identification research that CWR staff have conducted. Each winter since January 2000, the majority of Puget Sound killer whales head south along the Pacific continental shelf searching for their prey, notably “feeder” Chinook salmon that used to number in the tens of millions along the Washington and Oregon coast.

In early spring, the SRKW’s head north again along the coast, going as far as the Queen Charlotte Islands hunting for their food before returning to the Puget Sound region in summer months to feed near the San Juan Islands on salmon migrating to spawn in Washington and British Columbia rivers.

The whales and most stocks of the Chinook salmon are listed as Endangered in both the US and Canada. If California’s pro-active effort to recover salmon stocks by setting aside large parcels of ocean as marine reserves prohibiting to fishing is successful, the SRKW’s might just stay there. That would solve the so-called “whale-watching problem” in Washington State.

Already it is clear that the whales’ critical foraging habitat is not simply bounded by Puget Sound, hence that is an inadequate designation. We believe that as a highest priority fisheries managers need to accept that in order to recover SRKW’s, they must first recover salmon; and, we further believe the best way to do that is to put the whales before all other user groups of salmon. That is a huge paradigm shift in fisheries management that at this time may require several years of closure to all commercial and recreational fisheries for Chinook salmon, while restoring their spawning habitats as much as possible.

The alternative and the path society is on, according to fisheries experts, is that Chinook stocks will be driven to extinction before the end of this century. We consider that is worse news for fishermen than a few years of closure to allow stocks the best opportunity to recover.

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Each winter, CWR representatives travel along the BC, Washington, Oregon, and California coast putting up posters requesting public sighting reports and opportunistic photographs of whales to track the SRKW population and determine its critical habitat requirements.

Please call 1-866-ORCANETWORK if you have a sighting report.

(Ken Balcomb is the Director of the Center for Whale Research. Balcomb, and another local, Mark Anderson, were the co-founders of the Whale Museum)