feelin swell
Member
Ultimately .....TIME..... will tell the story for the Southern Killer Whales and whether Fisheries and Oceans and the feds have picked the right solutions to help the whales recover. They appear to be primarily focussed on increasing food supply and reducing noise, and some very small mention of toxicity. In listening to Dr Trites it looks like the northern & transient killer whale populations are doing well and their numbers are growing. He states drone photography shows the southerns are much thinner than their northern and transient cousins. But no one knows the why. He mentions cancer as a possibility. So why aren't DFO and feds looking into this? Are they just plain dumb. It doesn't appear to be very high on their radar... but it sure as hell should be.
If any creature is feeling sick its not going to feel like eating nor have the energy to pursue prey properly. In the last few years a killer whale was found dead at the mouth of a Washington state river. An autopsy showed it was loaded with extremely high levels of toxins. It makes sense to me that the SKW's seasonally live and migrate where there are more people and therefore more polluted waters. Recently a family acquaintance came back from a holiday in Mexico where they stayed at a beach hotel. The wife went swimming in the ocean water and within a few minutes developed a rash all over her body. They speculated all the hotels in the area were dumping waste water via pipes directly into the local ocean waters. Go to Victoria and look at the signs on the beaches, no swimming, at least they used to be there at one time! Victoria is notorious and ill famed for dumping raw effluent and toxic waste into the Salish Sea. Think of the combined effect of pollution from communities upstream along the Fraser River, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle and all the other southern coast communities. What about ships that might be flushing their tanks.
Toxicity should be treated as a major suspect. If you search the web there are several studies on killer whales and toxicity. I cannot recall much if any from Canadian studies.
If the DFO and feds are serious about helping the SKW's then more funding should be directed at reducing marine toxicity and be included in their SKW recovery plan. There are other deficiencies in their plans such funding and efforts to protect and restore marine, estuary, river, and stream habitat. Certainly more widespread SKW research is needed as we seem to generally know squat about them.
