A marine biologist with the Vancouver Aquarium is raising concerns over the fate of two southern resident orcas.
Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard, director of marine mammal research at the aquarium, says that it isn’t likely the whales known as J17, an adult female, and J25, a younger adult male, will survive throughout the summer.
“I hate to be doom and gloom but I think these two animals are very unlikely to recover,” he says.
“There’s nothing we can do about it in the short term.”
Barrett-Lennard says that based on photos taken in a boat by the Center for Whale Research, J17 and J25 are so malnourished they are showing a significant depression behind their heads – what researchers refer to as “peanut head.”
“When the depression gets pronounced, there is a very small chance of recovering – we seldom see whales that get that thin recover,” he says.
He says that feeding the whales dead fish during the winter is largely impossible, so a strong Chinook or Chum salmon run in the whales’ feeding territory would raise their chances of recovering through the summer months, a season where whales can gain weight they may not maintain through the winter.
“Getting through the winter is pretty critical for them – it’s not looking good.”
Barrett-Lennard says the next 10 years will be precarious for the overall survivability of the 75-member group known as J-Pod.
On top of foraging for food, the whales’ reproductive habits are important for the future survival of J-Pod. Barrett-Lennard adds that orcas are quite good at avoiding incestuous mating, but with few potential mates available in the group they are struggling to avoid a shrinking gene pool.
He suggests losing the southern resident killer whales would be like losing a tribe of Indigenous people, complete with their own language, cultural habits, hunting and foraging systems.
“It would be incredibly sad if we lost this population of killer whales: they’re iconic for First Nations and iconic for everybody in this area, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle,” says Barrett-Lennard.
“They’re the killer whales we see from ferries, the ones we’ve known since we were kids if you grew up in this area.”
He says that while he’s been critical of governments in the past, he says the Canadian and U.S. governments have both generally “done the right thing at this point," though it may be too late already.
Despite the grim forecast, Barrett-Lennard doesn't believe J-Pod’s population and the southern resident killer whales have not been handed a proverbial death sentence.
“These animals aren’t doomed – there’s a chance they will recover and I think we have to keep doing what we’ve been doing, particularly preserving the few salmon left for the whales and doing our best to not to disturb them with underwater noise.”
