Dolphins in Numbers, Orca and Humpback Whales

–:– • Biggs Orca ?T002Cs? heading south off Chatham Point, Discovery Passage.

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

08:30 • est. 4+ NRKW Orca heading north just south of Powell River Viewpoint, Malaspina Strait. Two near the Viewpoint and two more further out.

17:00 • 4-5 NRKW Orca ?A42s? spread out, heading north off Powell River, Malaspina Strait. One breaching calf.

16:04 • 4-5 NRKW Orca ?A42s? heading north past Myrtle Rocks, Powell River, Malaspina Strait.

16:54 • est. 5 Orca heading north past Myrtle Rocks, Malaspina Strait. Two big fins observed. (Not Northern Resident Orca A42s.).

11:30 • 2 Orca surfacing and rolling, heading west in Bowen Bay, Bowen Island, Collingwood Channel. Swimming close to shore near the most westerly point of the bay.

13:30 • Orca heading south towards Grief Point, Malaspina Strait. ▫ Second Hand

14:00 • Orca about half way between Nanaimo, Horseshoe Bay, Georgia Strait. They were traveling about five minutes behind about 200 Pacific White Sided Dolphins. The Orca were not moving as fast as the Dolphins and looked like they were slowing and peeling off back towards the mainland. ▫ From Ferry; Second Hand

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

–:– • Humpback Whales in Seymour Narrows, Discovery Passage. Observed during the afternoon.

13:45 • est. 2 Humpback Whales moving slowly, heading south off Neck Point north of Nanaimo, Georgia Strait. Taking short 5 minute dives. ▫ Observed from Shore

16:54 • 2 Humpback Whales moving quickly, heading south-west just south of Rebecca Rocks towards Vancouver Island, Georgia Strait. One big blow and one smaller.

14:00 • 1-2 Humpback Whales off Kye Bay towards Little River, Georgia Strait.

10:20 • 1 Humpback Whales foraging, heading north close to shore by Hidden Harbour, Campbell River, Discovery Passage. ▫ Observed from Shore

12:45 • 2 Humpback Whales 400-m off shore of We Wai Kai Village, Cape Mudge, Discovery Passage.

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

SPECIES SUPPLEMENT

13:00 • est. 200 PWS Dolphins moving quickly, heading west between Nanaimo and Horseshoe Bay, Georgia Strait. Travelling toward Vancouver Island. ▫ Second Hand; From Ferry

REGIONAL

To the human eye, big ships cruising along the west side of San Juan Island this summer might have looked like they were traveling in slow motion. To the perceptive ears of killer whales, those same ships might have sounded a little bit quieter.

That’s because more than half of commercial ships transiting Haro Strait – between San Juan and Vancouver Island – voluntarily slowed down as part of a two-month experiment by the Port of Vancouver, British Columbia. The Port wanted to test how slowing vessels reduces underwater noise – and whether that could help endangered killer whales…… read on

For more details:
• PoV Preliminary Analysis

Restrictions on vessel traffic have helped keep more boaters farther from critically endangered southern-resident killer whales, while not harming the whale-watch industry, a new study has found.

Federal restrictions enacted in 2011 require whale-watch boats and other vessels to stay at least 200 yards away from orca whales. That’s a long way – two football-field lengths – and doubled the buffer. Yet whale-watch tourism continues to grow, the technical memorandum from NOAA found.

Lack of food – namely salmon in Puget Sound – as well as high levels of contaminants in their environment, and disturbance by vessel noise are the primary threats identified by the agency to the Puget Sound orcas’ survival…. read on

The 2018 Salish Sea Protection package of new legislation, will commit the state to dramatically improving oil spill response, strengthening protections of orca whales, banning net-pen aquaculture of invasive species, and prioritizing toxic cleanups in the nearshore and marine environment…. read on

Marine researchers will take to the water and sky in the Salish Sea this year in a major effort to help save endangered southern resident killer whales.

Bankrolled by the federal government’s $1.5 billion Oceans Protection Plan, researchers will conduct numerous studies to learn more about the killer whales and why they are in such peril. Just 76 of the animals are thought to exist…. read on

Friends of the San Juans appealed San Juan County’s recently updated Shoreline Master Program to the Washington Growth Management Hearings Board. The SMP is the primary tool for protecting the fragile marine ecosystem that depends on the health of that narrow band of shoreline where the water meets the land.
… Particularly worrisome are adverse impacts to our forage fish spawning beaches and the threatened juvenile Chinook salmon that rear along our shorelines- and by extension to endangered orca higher up the food chain…. read on

WEST COAST

Why does Canada take a much greater risk with its salmon fisheries than Alaska?

Earlier this month, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued an “Emergency Order’ closing all Chinook salmon fisheries (sport and commercial) in Southeast Alaska marine waters. In doing so, they acknowledged their responsibility to protect not just Alaska’s salmon, but also the low numbers of Chinook returning to northern British Columbia, the Fraser River, Washington and Oregon.

ADF&G’s Emergency Order states, "The in-season data and stock specific information cannot be ignored when conservation of wild stocks is the foundation of the Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fisheries Policy and the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Therefore, it is imperative that Alaska offer relief now for these stocks, with a focus on protecting future production."

There are just as many warning signs that Chinook (Spring) salmon in British Columbia are also returning in poor numbers. So why does Canada take a much greater risk with its salmon fisheries than Alaska? Fisheries on the Nass, Skeena, and Fraser Rivers illustrate the point. The Nass return is 27% of average, the Skeena’s 23%, and to date, the Albion test fishery on the Fraser shows some of the lowest returns on record. Yet these fisheries remain open. Prioritizing fisheries over fish facilitates their long term decline …… read on

The state of Oregon sued the agrochemical company Monsanto on Thursday over pervasive pollution from PCBs, the toxic industrial chemicals that have accumulated in plants, fish and people around the globe for decades. The company called the lawsuit baseless.

… A variety of fish species in Oregon are vulnerable because the PCBs accumulate in their fatty tissues. When seals, eagles, osprey, orca whales and humans eat those fish, that contamination is passed on, the lawsuit alleged.

In some cases, dead orca whales that washed up on shore have been treated as hazardous waste, the lawsuit said.

"PCBs cause a wide range of systemic toxic effects in humans and animals and can seriously impair the endocrine, neurologic, and reproductive systems," according to the lawsuit…. read on

NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL

A U.S. scientist is trying to stop right whale entanglements with fishing gear, which garnered increased attention after a spate of deaths this past summer.

Mark Baumgartner, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., has been studying North Atlantic right whales since 1999. He said in recent years there’s been a shift toward conservation to try and save the species because they could be extinct in 20-25 years. There are fewer than 500 of the whales remaining and the population has been declining for the past seven years. …… read on

The plight of the large whales at the hands of commercial whalers both historically and currently, is well documented. As a result of intensive and unregulated hunting, population figures plummeted, some even went extinct (the northeast Atlantic population of the north Atlantic right whale) and only with the protection afforded by the moratorium on whaling in 1986 have some of these species slowly started to recover.

However, the hunting of small whales and dolphins, although illegal in many countries, remains mostly unregulated and therefore the true scale of…… read on

The Mexican coast of the Pacific Ocean received on Friday the first whales of their migratory season, during which these cetaceans swim some 18,000 kilometers (11,000 miles) from the frigid Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska.

In the five whale sanctuaries of the northwest Mexican state of Baja California Sur, it is now possible to sight some of the 3,000 whales that each year come to spend the winter and reproduce following the most massive migration of mammals in the world……. read on