I posted population sizes of Northern Residents Killer whales below. If the Northern Resident Population were following the southern trend I would buy the analysis. The fact is I don't think Chinook is the smoking gun. I sometimes feel like people are just looking for a simple answer here. When Trites did his study he mentioned that.
You have to look at these figures and ask yourselves why? If there are no salmon and it's as bad as they say why is this population thriving?
Don't you guys find it odd this intentional left out of this study?
To add no one in saying that Southern Resident Orcas aren't doing that great. What we are saying here is that going around telling the world they are starving in not factual. It does not correlate with the Northern pods that intercept and eat the same fish.
My fear is we are missing something fundamental here, and we are going through a lot of effort with closures etc. which will do nothing. Also the general public is really getting the wrong info. Trites was right. IMHO.
The abundance trend of the northern resident population during 1974-2014 is shown in Figure 1. From the mid 1970s to mid 1990s, the population grew steadily at an average mean annual rate of 2.6%, from approximately 122 individuals in 1974 to 218 in 1997. The population then declined by about 7% during 1998-2001, a period that coincided with a significant reduction in the availability of the whales' primary prey, Chinook salmon ( Ford et al. 2010b). Starting in 2002, the growth trend became positive once again, with the population increasing at an average mean rate of 2.9% per year until 2014 (range = -0.4 -8.6% per annum). This represents an average annual mean increase of 2.2% over the 40 year time series. All three northern resident clans experienced growth during 1974-2014, but at different rates (Figure 2). The G clan grew at the greatest average mean rate of 2.9% per annum followed by R clan at 2.1% per annum, and A clan at 1.9% per annum. By contrast, the southern resident population (J clan) has not maintained similar growth over the same time period (Bigg et al. 1976;Ellis et al. 2011;Cogan 2014). With each year of field research, our understanding of the distribution, demographics, behaviour and population trends of northern resident killer whales improves, as does our ability to detect subtle changes in population parameters that may result from anthropogenic threats. On-going photo-identification monitoring will continue to be a key component of recovery efforts focused on the northern resident population and other communities of killer whales that live off the west coast of North America
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