Killer Whale (Orca)

The carcass of a prematurely born orca calf was washed up on a beach on Henry Island, just north of San Juan Island.
Joe Gaydos, regional director of The Seadoc Society, examined the calf with Brad Hanson, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service. Although the carcass was badly decomposed, Gaydos and Hanson hope to establish whether it was a transient or a member of the rare southern orca population. High levels of PCBs have been implicated in premature births and the researchers will try and establish whether this might have been the case here.

This story was covered in the local news outlets, here:
KUOW NPR Pod Cast

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Seattle PI blog

Kitsap Sun

San Juan
Islander

What is the Salish Sea?

The Salish Sea is one of the world’s largest and biologically rich inland seas.

The Salish Sea is the indigenous Coast Salish people’s name for the unified bi-national ecosystem that includes Washington State’s Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the San Juan Islands as well as British Columbia’s Gulf Islands and the Strait of Georgia.

Politically the Salish Sea is governed by the USA and Canada, but the international boundary separating the Puget Sound Basin (USA) from the Georgia Basin (Canada) corresponds to no natural barrier or transition. The border is invisible to marine fish and wildlife. Species listed as threatened or endangered under the US Endangered Species Act or the Canadian Species at Risk Act, including Southern Resident killer whales (Orcinus orca), marbled murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus), and some ecologically significant units or species of Pacific salmon (Onchorynchus spp.), traverse the boundary daily. Oceanographic processes such as freshwater inflows and wind driven surface currents exchange biota, sediments and nutrients throughout the larger ecosystem.

Salish Sea Facts:

• Coastline length, including islands: 7,470 km (1:250,000 scale World vector Shoreline and TEOPO2 topographic/bathymetric GIS grid)

Number of species listed as threatened, endangered or are candidates for listing: 64 (Brown and Gaydos, 2007) http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/whc/seadoc/pdfs/brown-gaydos07.pdf

Population Map of the Salish Sea

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Dear SeaDoc Society Supporter:
In addition to killer whales, rockfish, and other well-known marine mammals and fish of the Puget Sound region, dozens of bird species depend on our saltwater ecosystem. Some of these birds, like the Western Grebe, winter here and fly farther north to nest in the summer. Others, like the Rhinoceros Auklet, summer here and then move to the open ocean for the winter. And then there are species like the Black Oystercatcher that call this area home year-round.
In response to growing evidence that many of these sea bird populations are declining, the SeaDoc Society recently convened a meeting to evaluate causes for these declines and to determine how we could use science to help these wildlife survive and thrive. On September 29th, regional bird experts and managers met at the Tulalip Reservation to discuss this topic. The consensus among these experts was compelling:
Numerous populations of seabirds and seaducks are in decline. Meeting participants identified 16 species (approximately 50% of the species found in the region) for which there were concerns about the status of the population.
• Synergistic factors are probably contributing to these declines, ranging from changes in prey availability and destruction of sensitive breeding habitat, to fisheries by-catch and human disturbance.
• Management organizations like the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife need to improve collaborative efforts for species recovery.
• Some restoration actions are being held up by a lack of basic biological information, such as what are birds eating, and when and where.
• Seabirds are long-lived, slowly reproducing, top-level predators and are therefore good indicators of the health of our marine ecosystem, yet the massive declines we’re seeing in these populations are not as well recognized as are declines in other species, such as killer whales.
Fortunately, meeting participants resolved to immediately acquire critical new information, enact some restoration efforts, increase collaboration, and begin a public education campaign. To read meeting notes from the September 29th seabird and seaduck research meeting, please visit www.seadocsociety.org
While there are many organizations in the region working towards marine conservation, there are no groups charged with convening meetings such as this. The SeaDoc Society is uniquely positioned to leverage private funds to convene regional conservation initiatives, and get people working together on a common issue; the result being much greater than the sum of its parts.
Projects like this would not be possible without private investment by people who care about the future of fish and wildlife populations in the region. Thank you again for all your support.

Sincerely,

Kirsten Gilardi Joe Gaydos

Note: this was adapted from a presentation Joe Gaydos made to the 2008 Leadership San Juan Islands class in May 2008.

Over the past 7 years the SeaDoc Society has put millions of dollars into studying fish and wildlife. Why?