"One of the most important food sources is spring chinook salmon from the Columbia River. Orcas use the mouth of the Columbia as a winter “buffet,” stopping on their annual migration from their home in the Salish Sea south to Monterey, Calif., and north to southeast Alaska.

“Every time they go by the Columbia, they stop and they forage for days and days and days on end,” Giles said. “They don’t behave like that in any (other) single location across their range.”

The decline of the orcas coincides with the drop in salmon numbers. Historically, two rivers were critical — the Columbia and the Fraser in Canada, where the salmon that the whales eat in the summer come from."


Northern Orcas depend on the Fraser. Southern Orcas depend on the Columbia.

Puget Sound - not so much. Puget Sound has a flaming metric butt ton of hatchery kings returning to it. Kings that we can't fish for because of political and non sound-science decisions that favor the tribes, orcas, political careers, and other fisheries (SE AK, etc).

You telling me that these Southern orcas only eat endangered ESA Stilly Chinooks while in Puget Sound??????