Orcas Appear in Ancient Artwork Worldwide

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Made 6000 to 9000 years ago, Norway is home to some of the oldest known orca whale images.

Comedian Stephen Colbert Asks: "Why should I care about the ocean?"

Find out how oceanographer Sylvia Earle answered his question:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/

Senator Murray is Beginning to Listen to You on Orca issues

If nothing else, the proposed Killer Whale Vessel Regulations have served to show how strong our community is in supporting the Southern Resident Orcas. Please read the blog at the Seattle P.I. for more information:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/

Farmed Salmon Are Really Bad News - For Us, for Wild or Captive Orcas, and for the Environment

Included in a serving of farmed salmon are 14 known toxins in much greater concentrations than wild caught salmon.

Click on over to our blog at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to learn why you should avoid eating this product, and why fish farming is harmful to the orcas (including the captive orca "Lolita"):

http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/

Proposed Regulations for Vessels and Orcas

Please come view these posts on the Seattle Post Intelligencer website:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/index.asp

Dophins Often Protect Us

By now, most of us have read stories or heard tales of dolphins coming to the rescue of swimmers and divers, and I thought this would be a good time to share some insights. We are now being asked to reconsider the impact that we have on the local orca population, and on October 27th our window for discussing the proposed guidelines for vessels and orcas will close. Hopefully we will come to understand the reasons and value of that increased protection - one of which is the mysterious nature of the whales themselves.

The bottom line is that for many species of dolphins, porpoises, and whales, their survival depends upon their maintaining group unity and culture, and for some dolphins this leads to demonstrations of compassion towards other species. Last year a dolphin led two beached Pygmy sperm whales to safety, an event which was somewhat astonishing and to my knowledge has not been recorded before.

But I got to thinking about it; this rescue occurred by a dolphin who enjoys being in the company of humans, and would therefore feel safe in coming to the aid of the whales when people were around. So possibly dolphins help species other than their own with some regularity but because they might fear us, or because it happens where we are not around, we just have not been fortunate enough to witness such occurrences.

Or maybe we just don't notice.

I saw the following video clip right before going to Hawaii a while back, and it gave me pause. Already phobic about sharks, seeing this did freak me out a bit, but ultimately having watched it help me to put my fear in perspective and I was able to swim with dolphins and turtles and celebrate the experience (however I did stay alert!). So a gentle warning, it might spook you if you have a vivid imagination. Not recommended for kids either. The titles are in French - essentially they describe the events as seen, which involved a Tiger shark.

For the most part, the people were unaware of the event as it unfolded, and it does make you wonder how often dolphins protect us and we never know.

Currently there is a movie out called "The Cove", which documents the slaughter of dolphins by a nation concerned with competition for fish with the animals, (coupled with a desire to eat the dolphins, it would seem). Yet I wonder how many times people in that nation may have received assistance from dolphins. Certainly, there are no records of unprovoked attacks on humans by dolphins.

I am proud to live in a part of the world where such barbarism is not allowed, and where we have evolved an attitude of seeking to achieve balance in how we relate to the Earth and the other beings that share the planet. We are learning to take a step back from conflict and seek solutions, and I am confident that we can come up with positive outcomes for everyone while protecting our local orcas and the waterways where they live.

The proposed federal guidelines for vessels and orcas can be found here, and we have provided links as well.

Orca Cultures

While researching how our southern resident orcas hunt and capture fish, I came upon an interesting article that shows that the northern resident orcas (which live in British Columbia waters, generally north of the Fraser River) alter their hunting strategy depending upon prey availability, and that this is tied into large scale climatic variability. But when I checked to see if the southern residents showed a similar pattern, I encountered a really different, and surprising pattern.

According to a thesis, the local orcas don't seem to change their strategy in relation to climatic changes, but do extend the range and effort required to find adequate prey when it is scarce. And not all the pods showed the same changes in the same circumstances.

What is surprising is that the orcas did not concentrate their hunting efforts where salmon were most abundant, as measured by the capture rate by fishing boats. In other words, where fishermen had the most success was not necessarily where the orcas chose to hunt...although it became a 'chicken or egg' issue - did the fishermen have more success because the orcas weren't there? Or were there other features of the environment that were less desirable for the orcas at those places? Is there an aspect of the killer whale's culture at play, since they are different even from their "cousins" north of the border?

I looked at some other populations of fish-eating orcas, and again I found interesting variations between areas. When hunting herring, a population of orcas in Norway has

School of Herring (Creative Commons Photo)

been observed to keep schools of the fish near the surface. The whales flash their white undersides towards the fish and emit bubbles, which has the effect of driving the fish school to form into a 'ball'. The orcas then strike at the herring school with their tails, stunning and killing the fish, which the whales then eat one at a time. (I had no idea that herring can get to be 18" long!)

In Iceland, another population of orcas feeds very similarly upon herring, but in addition to emitting the bubbles the whales produce a loud droning type sound, possibly to help confuse and further compress the fish school (for video and a soundtrack, go here).

In the Russian waters of Avacha Gulf, orcas force tight schools of mackerel in a similar fashion, but then take turns swimming into the middle of the fish 'ball'.

In and around the Mediterranean Sea, a population of orcas hunts bluefin tuna (which are huge, 620 lbs is spawning size) by chasing them until the fish becomes exhausted...and in more recent times the whales have learned how to strip a fish from fishermen's long lines as the tuna are brought up from depth. Annoying to the fishermen, perhaps, who receive thousands of dollars per fish, but a sensible adaptation from the whales' point of view.

The following is from comments sent to me by Howard Garrett (see previous post), of OrcaNetwork, which speaks to the varied ways the orcas live and find fish:

When Rendell and Whitehead wrote Culture in Whales and Dolphins (2001) they summed up the findings that each orca community eats its own severely restricted diet, uses their own discrete repertoire of vocalizations, and maintains their own prescribed mating practices. The paper, published in the Journal of Behavioural and Brain Sciences, established that: "The complex and stable vocal and behavioural cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties."

But they didn't want to venture any guesses about how orcas communicate, or how they transmit their cultural rules and traditions. They realize that "...understanding process (cultural transmission) is crucial to our understanding of the product (culture)" but they just don't even want to talk about it: "...no attempt is made to deduce what particular form of social learning underlies the observed patterns." And…"we know virtually nothing about the actual learning mechanisms cetaceans employ."

Then they hint at what they suspect: "Human culture is intimately linked to both language and symbolism, but there is currently no empirical basis for discussing the role or non-role of language and symbolism in cetacean culture …"

And they say: "Cetacean cultures appear to possess other attributes that have otherwise been restricted to humans. In particular, we are aware of no phenomena outside humans comparable to the distinctive, stable and sympatric vocal and behavioural cultures which appear to exist at several levels of killer whale society."

Over the next month we will continue to explore the intelligence and culture of the orcas as we discuss the proposed guidelines for increased protection of our locally endangered population.