Humpbacks, Transient Biggs, and Krill

In a marine protected area off of Vancouver Island, Canada, a rich ecosystem supports breeding and migrating seals and sea lions – and at least one adorable sea otter, Ollie. Southern resident killer whales pursue the adult salmon that hide among the kelp fronds, and the mammal eating transient orcas hunt the seals and sea lions.

Admittedly, not everyone loves these furry machines that need a quarter of their body per day to keep warm, even with their luxurious coats. They consume over a hundred different species of primarily bottom dwelling invertebrates, but come into conflict with fishermen over the sea cucumbers, urchins, clams, abalone etc that have a fairly high market value.

When the otters move into a region they do have an impact on those fisheries, but what they give back to the environment makes them worth their weight in gold – their foraging habits quickly restore kelp beds where juvenile salmon hide on the journey to the open ocean. Each female Chinook salmon that successfully returns to spawn carries as many as 17,000 eggs, so each fish saved by adequate kelp beds can have a significant impact….
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B.C. Premier John Horgan and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee pledged Wednesday to do their part to protect chinook salmon habitat, the main diet for southern resident killer whales that have been a focus of concern on both sides of the border.

"We are united in our efforts to save our orca population, and we are going to be active in that regard, and we are glad British Columbia will be an ally in that effort," Inslee told reporters at a conference in Vancouver on developing the Cascadia region that includes both B.C. and Washington.

Horgan said their next stop is a meeting with Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, who has jurisdiction over tidal waters, salmon and ocean fishing in Canada. Horgan and Inslee pledged to continue work on inland areas, including logging protection for the Skagit River and the Columbia, which lost most of its salmon runs due to hydro dams on the U.S. side of the border….
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As I write this on October 3, I’m listening to members of J pod of Southern Resident killer whales calling to one another off the west side of San Juan Island. The calls, heard over the Lime Kiln hydrophones, are clear and crisp and so familiar. They’re the signature J pod S-1 calls, including a variety of chirps, honks and sounds like squeaky doors. The thumping rumble of a freighter overwhelms the calls for a few minutes, but eventually sweet orca voices once again pierce the static. All too soon the whales move out of range.

They came in from the Pacific overnight, appearing in Haro Strait along San Juan Island. We fervently hope they’re finding the food they need and can eat – mainly Chinook salmon – but we know not many salmon are in the Salish Sea this year….
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Concerned community members gathered to hear Director of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s Wild Salmon Program Misty MacDuffee and Saanich Council candidate Nathalie Chambers…Both Chambers and MacDuffee are involved with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, an organization responsible for one of many lawsuits opposing the construction of the pipeline. The aim of the town hall was to keep up momentum, and to educate attendees on the complexities that surround saving the Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) population.

MacDuffee touched on problems plaguing their staple food – Chinook salmon – repercussions of environmental pollutants, and noise in the Salish Sea. More than anything, especially in conjunction with the Court of Appeal’s ruling to delay construction, she detailed why we all have reason to save the Salish Sea and protect the marine inhabitants we share it with.

Building off of the incredible energy in the room, MacDuffee dove straight in and outlined a number of issues, all of which equally plague the SRKW population. The first topic of the evening was the status of wild salmon populations.

"Chinook stocks are not at the levels that they once were," she said, speaking of the the species’ almost exclusive choice of food.

MacDuffee pointed to hatcheries as having an adverse effect on salmon.

[The pipeline’s] path would cross more than 200 streams and rivers, many of which serve as crucial spawning environments for salmon.
"In the past, we always thought . . . the ocean had an unending, unlimited ability to feed and support salmon. But we know now that that is not the case. There are limits to the number of salmon that can be supported in the North Pacific.

"When we put so many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of hatchery salmon into the North Pacific, there’s only going to be so many salmon that are supported," she said. "And that comes at a cost to those wild salmon populations."…
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In 2014, BBC aired a two-part documentary that featured intimate and close-up footage of dolphins using remote-controlled cameras disguised as sea creatures like turtles and fish. In one of the scenes, a group of adolescent dolphins captures a puffer fish and passes the ball-shaped little guy around. But as narrator David Tennant explains, what the dolphins really appear to be after is the toxin released by the puffer….
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… It didn’t take long for the researchers to realize that the submerged mountains were brimming with life. Right as the ship was sailing above the uncharted terrain, the researchers detected a huge spike in phytoplankton activity – the bottom of the food chain that ensures the livelihoods of

"While we were over the chain of seamounts, the ship was visited by large numbers of humpback and long-finned pilot whales," said Dr. Eric Woehler from BirdLife Tasmania, who was on the Investigator with a team surveying seabirds and marine mammals.

"We estimated that at least 28 individual humpback whales visited us on one day, followed by a pod of 60-80 long-finned pilot whales the next.

"We also saw large numbers of seabirds in the area including four species of albatross and four species of petrel."…
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Dolphins, whales and other cetaceans are susceptible to many of the same health hazards as humans including mercury, brevotoxin (e.g. Red Tide), and lobomycosis. They also serve as important sentinel species to highlight concerns relevant to environmental and public health. Yet understanding how these aquatic mammals fight disease-causing pathogens, how they adapt to changing pathogenic threats, and how their immune responses are triggered has been challenging.

Two recent papers by Florida Atlantic University researchers reveal how cetaceans compete for survival in an evolutionary “arms race” with changing pathogen communities. As pathogenic threats and the risk of infectious disease changes, whales and dolphins must adapt to those changes. The question today is can they adapt fast enough?…
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