Is The Government Doing Its Job To Protect Captive Whales And Dolphins?

Hopefully the USDA will inspect and measure the concrete bowl where Lolita has lived the past 39 years and will find it unlawful under the Animal Welfare Act...

Those words from Howard Garrett's post really got me wondering about how it is possible that the governmental agencies responsible for animal welfare are able to turn their backs when it comes to the Miami Seaquarium and the substandard tank where "Lolita" (the orca taken from L-pod) is forced to live.

The USDA arm of the government that is responsible is the Animal Plant and Health Service (APHIS). The Regulations read: 9 C.F.R. Sec. 3.104 - Space Requirements -
The primary enclosure for a Killer whale (Orcinus orca) must have a minimum horizontal dimension of no less than 48 ft. in either direction with a straight line of travel across the center.

Dimensions of "Lolita's" tank. Photo courtesy Orca Network.

Lolita's tank is a mere 35 feet from the front wall to the slide out barrier. At its deepest point in the center the tank is only 20 feet deep. She is about 22 feet long.

In 1995 the Humane Society of the United States filed a formal complaint against the Seaquarium regarding the substandard size of Lolita's tank. The Animal Plant and Health Service (APHIS) has yet to act. Fourteen years later, she is still in the substandard tank.

Who is the Animal Plant and Health Service? Their mission statement says: "Protecting American agriculture" is the basic charge of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). APHIS provides leadership in ensuring the health and care of animals and plants. The agency improves agricultural productivity and competitiveness and contributes to the national economy and the public health.

The 1994 Marine Mammal Protection Act amendments eliminated NOAA Fisheries jurisdiction over captive care and maintenance of marine mammals held for public display, placing it under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Animal Welfare Act administered by the Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). However, the MMPA requires that NOAA Fisheries maintain the captive Marine Mammal Inventory Database.

The 1994 Marine Mammal Protection Act amendment concerning captive marine mammals:

NMFS and FWS will regulate the taking of marine mammals from the wild under the MMPA, while subsequent care and maintenance of captive marine mammals held for purposes of public display at registered or licensed facilities will be regulated by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the Department of Agriculture under the Animal Welfare Act (Pub.L. 89-544, as amended). For the taking and importing of marine mammals for public display, permits will be issued only when [1] the effect of the take or importation on wild populations is considered, [2] the method of the taking is humane, [3] an institution is registered or licensed under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), [4] the institution offers an education or conservation program based upon professionally recognized standards of the public display community, and [5] the institution maintains facilities that are open to the public on a regularly scheduled basis. Although NMFS or FWS must be notified at least 15 days prior to the sale, export, or transport of a captive marine mammal, and NMFS and FWS must maintain an inventory of captive individuals, a permit or other authorization is no longer required to obtain, hold captive, transport, transfer, purchase, sell, or export marine mammals that are being held captive for public display purposes when animals move between facilities that meet the permit criteria. In addition, export of marine mammals is prohibited except as explicitly provided for in the Act.

So why doesn't the USDA do anything to enforce the law with respect to "Lolita's" living conditions?

When Lolita Comes Swimming Home Again

Orca Network's Howard Garrett has dedicated his time and effort into the "Free Lolita" campaign, and shares his views here with us.

Written by Howard Garrett

Recent photo of L-pod member "Lolita", taken by Shelby Proie on April 2, 2009

Hopefully the USDA will inspect and measure the concrete bowl where Lolita has lived the past 39 years and will find it unlawful under the Animal Welfare Act, and $1-2 million can be found to examine her, transport her to a bay pen along the west side of San Juan Island, and set up a care station with a freezer full of fish and professional care staff. It's all been done before and poses no real risk to her or to her family, but many may wonder what will happen then for Lolita.

After her return to her home waters, as she regains her strength and is led out on swims to experience her waters again, Lolita will be the focus of tremendous attention in the Pacific Northwest and far beyond. Of course security at the bay pen will prevent direct observations except by authorized personnel and media, but live webcam coverage and stories about her can be expected to abound locally, nationally and internationally.

Recent photo of some of "Lolita's" pod members, taken by Howard Garrett on June 21, 2009

When someone reads or sees a story about Lolita they will usually tend to care a little more about how she's doing. The reports will also tell about her family, L-25 and the L-12 subpod as well as all the Southern Resident orcas. People will learn about the orcas' long lifespans, lifetime bonding and no dispersal traditions. They'll hear about these orcas' selective diet - about 80% Chinook salmon and 15% chum - and the need to restore salmon habitat and reduce Chinook catches all along the Pacific coast to keep the orcas around. This alone justifies her return home.

Scientifically, we'll learn if Lolita's family bonds and memories are so strong that she will be able to travel, catch fish and socialize with her family, and we'll see the process of rebuilding the trust needed to do so. If she's not able to rejoin her family, the care station will always be there for her with food and companionship if needed.

Humans live according to their stories, and whales provide great inspiration for all ages to learn more and then act to protect and restore the natural world. When kids hear about Lolita and her retirement where she was raised decades ago, many will want to know more, and will do research and feel moved to write their views about orcas and create artwork about them, developing important language skills and learning how to do good science.

Where Orcas Swim Free (Photo by Katie Jones)

The benefits of retiring Lolita in the Salish Sea won't be easy to measure in dollars, but as a learning and sharing experience among the human community, and as a motivator toward better stewardship and protection of our precious marine environment, Lolita would be a priceless teacher for us all.

By Howard Garrett

Annual Commemoration of the Penn Cove Orca Captures

L-pc25 ("Lolita") photo by Peter Pijpelink - October 30, 2007

The whale they call "Lolita" is a member of L-pod. Her number is L-pc25, which denotes where she was captured (Penn Cove) and the whale she was associated with at that time (L-25, most likely her mother). "Lolita" has a local name too - Tokitae, and this is the family she would most be a member of:

L-pc25's ("Lolita's") presumed family: members of the L-12 subpod and L-25 who is believed to be her mother. Photo by Dave Ellifrit

Working diligently towards the day that "Lolita" is returned to her pod is Orca Network's Howard Garrett. I contacted him about the upcoming Annual Orca Capture Commemoration Gathering event, and he has graciously agreed to contribute his thoughts to this blog and will post here soon. In the mean time, he asked me to consider an interesting question, which I will share:

Putting aside the reasons of compassion,what are the really good things that would come out of bringing her home, how would that benefit us as a community?

What I came up with is that there are profound opportunities for research and education in this, as well as a deep sense of gratification to be gained, but I am sure that there are other things as well...

"Whale Saves Drowning Diver"

While watching the local news the other day, I saw some pretty amazing footage of Beluga whales as they were interacting with a diver in their pool.

Beluga and Diver (Photo from the online Sun)

I was able to record the footage on my DVR, but I have yet to locate a clip to share here. I have watched it several times, because the event as reported doesn't really sit right with me and I'm not sure exactly why. I'm not at all surprised that the whales would come to someone's aid, but I am surprised that the diver, just trying out for the job, didn't freak out and have a heart attack when the whale grabbed her leg. And what a goofy test to see if the diver would qualify to be a whale trainer, it is more like she was trying out to see if she could qualify as an entertainer.

But once again, the issue of keeping these animals in captivity for our amusement has come to the forefront, and confronting the fact that this can be very dangerous for people is something we really need to add to the equation. An excellent discussion on the subject can be found here. Please keep in mind that even our dogs and other pets can become dangerous when mistreated and confined excessively.

Over the next week or so we'll look more deeply into the issue on captive whales and dolphins, so far our informal polls show that the majority of people are against keeping them captive, and those that support captivity believe that it is okay for small species or for research only.

Please vote on this issue, we will run the poll for about two more weeks.

Orcas and Ecotourism

How much of our fascination with orcas is too much? How many boats, how much underwater noise can they take? At what point, given the dwindling salmon supply, are the whales either going to leave this area permanently or gradually succumb to the environmental stressors and just die off?

CWR 2009 Photo by Erin Heydenreich

No one knows. And that is the problem.

We do know that they are endangered locally, and their survival depends upon our ability to figure it out and set sustainable guidelines…compromises between our desire to watch them as they live their lives as wild, free, and peaceful animals and their ability to cope with us. And in these rotten economic times, we do have to take into serious consideration the businesses and individuals that rely upon the income generated by whale watching tourism. But the whales may not be able to endure it much longer.

In previous posts we have discussed how our resident orcas are constrained in their movements by where they can find salmon, and how the geographic and oceanographic features of the area put the orcas so close to us as they forage. They really can't get away from our boats and noise without leaving. And for them to look elsewhere for food means acquiring a new culture, new ways to hunt fish and to find each other for mating. And still, we would dog them wherever we spotted them because they are so enchanting to us.

The government proposes to give them a break in one small part of their range while we figure it all out - while we learn how much the orcas really can tolerate - and we concentrate on restoring salmon stocks.

We'll just have to adjust, adapt to new rules, and take the long view. After all, they have been adapting to us for centuries.

Resident Orcas Live in a Dynamic Environment

Bubbles (Photo by Erin Heydenreich)

Do orcas use bubbles similarly to other dolphins? We really don't know for sure - nor can we say with certainty if they use their sonar ability to detect currents and water masses. However, we do have some idea of the nature of the marine environment where our local resident orcas spend much of their time, and we can speculate on the rest as we continue to explore the intelligence of these animals. Future posts will delve more deeply into the marine environment, but for now we are staying focused on the qualities that characterize intelligence in mammals.

Resident orcas spent a lot of their time in Haro Strait which is the body of water that runs along the west side of San Juan Island, generally from the Strait of Juan de Fuca and up to Boundary Pass by the Gulf Islands. Underneath is a deep trough, which bumps up against San Juan Island and rises steeply along the area where the whale watch park is located (about where the orca icon is placed). On either end of the strait are shallow areas, called "sills".

Haro Strait Bathymetry

Divins, D.L., and D. Metzger, NGDC Coastal Relief Model, http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/coastal/coastal.html

Salmon returning from the ocean on their way to spawn up in the Fraser River (near Vancouver B.C.) come through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, then most of them head up Haro Strait. Orcas are present frequently during the time the salmon are running, and often appear to hunt them right along the edge of the island, over the sills or any geographic feature that tends to force the fish into an area where they are easier to catch - and fortunately brings the whales close to shore where we can see them.

When watching the whales you might notice that the surface of the water shows some subtle variations in texture - but those surface changes can belie the intensity of what may be going on beneath. Masses of water collide in this region, the tides push through, underwater waves stream, and curtains of bubbles get dragged down below at impressive speeds.

Haro Strait off Whale Watch Park (Photo by Elliot Whiting)

These graphs illustrate the dynamic nature of Haro Strait, and show a mass of bubbles moving at a clip of 50 centimeters per second downward and extending to a depth of almost 100 meters. That is a little over a foot and a half per second, to a depth of just under 300 feet. This type of event is transitory, but occurs frequently. It is certainly possible that these bubbles and vertical currents could be detected by the orcas - the entrained bubbles were measured using equipment that works similarly to dolphin sonar.

Entrainment of bubbles.

(Graph prepared by the Ocean Dynamics Laboratory at the University of British Columbia (except for the added clip art) http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~rich/research.html#Strait%20of%20Georgia%20Project To be accurate the whale icons should be about half the size shown, but they are too hard to see when made to scale).

The middle graph shows the temperature difference of the water masses, and the blocks of salmon illustrate that as the fish move from salt to fresh water on their journey home, they move around the water column to track the river source (the river water is warmer and lighter than regional ocean temperatures - we will cover river plumes and salmon in later posts).

The bottom graph shows the speed of the currents as they moved vertically up and down the water column, and the whale icons show the direction of movement.

If you have spent much time whale watching, you will be familiar with the whales' ability to pull a vanishing act at times...they just seem to submerge and disappear, or surface a mile a way. Maybe the orcas are hitching rides on deep waves or currents.

It is certainly possible...

How Dolphins Make The Bubble Rings

So how do the dolphins make those bubble rings (previous post) that seem to defy what we know about physics? According to a Scientific American article on the subject, the dolphins are able to create and control the movement of the rings by controlling the movement of the water around their own bodies.

Probably the easiest way to visualize this is to think of a whirlpool, similar to what is created around the drain of a bathtub when we let the water out, except in this case the vortex consists entirely of water.

Whirlpool (Creative Commons Photo)

After first creating the whirling vortex of water with their body motion, the dolphins then blow a huge bubble of air such that the water vortex pushes through the center and traps a ring of bubbles around it's edges. The dolphins then continue to manipulate and control the water… and thus control the bubble rings.

But how do the dolphins know where the vortexes are once they make them? Scientists think the dolphins "see" them by using their sonar, and the implications of that are stunning.

Much like we can see these shafts of light, dolphins can "see" water layers with sonar (Creative Commons photo).

Because we know that some of the brain structures of odontocetes (toothed whales and dolphins) are arranged in such a way that what they "hear" might be easily processed in the same parts that process what they see, it is not surprising to understand that at least some of the cetaceans actually create mental pictures of what they detect with their sonar. And although most of us don't think of it that way, oceanographers know that the ocean is not a uniform body of water at all, but a complicated mass of layers and swirls. So if you think about it, what we see as uniform in texture and varying only in light and temperature – how we see the ocean - could be perceived, or 'seen', by the cetaceans in much greater complexity.

In the presence of algae or plankton, we too can see water motion (Creative Commons photo).

If you add to that the fact that some of the dolphins and whales most likely 'see' underwater shapes of currents and vortexes with their sonar,though, you begin to understand their amazing adaptation to the richness of their ocean world.

Photo by Erin Heydenreich

In our next post, we'll talk about how our local orcas may use these properties of water and sound in their search for food.