[video:youtube]http://youtu.be/9Zz8aEAg7dI[/video]

I made this into an easy-to-read, easy-to-share graph.

Please people, get this info out there. I have been beating the topic to death to anyone that will listen.

This media frenzy is based on BAD SCIENCE and has the potential of undermining a lot of the good that is being done in salmon recovery statewide by shifting much needed resources directly to SRKW priority projects.

Thanks! That's 1000 times more informative than the big splashy puff piece the Seattle Times published (which doesn't mention pinnipeds AT ALL).

It’s a good presentation but it doesn’t tell the whole story. So lemme make a few observations.

In the first several minutes of the presentation, the researcher suggests that the status of SRKW has not really changed much over the past 50 years or so. They go up and they go down, and this is just normal.

The implication is that we should not get too excited about their current status.

Wrong. The fact that the number of SRKW’s is somewhat close to the historic average does not reflect the circumstances they face.

As they discuss during the Q/A session, there is a huge concern about sex ratio, reproductive potential, condition factor, and prey availability. So even though there are 74 individual SRKW’s (which is close to the historic average), it’s a real problem when only 23 of those are female. And not all of those 23 are reproductively active. Some are older females who are well past their prime. So having a stock composed of 75% male is a real problem, even though their overall numbers are close to the historic average.

Further, many of the adults have low condition factor, which means they’re living just below the poverty line. And that’s not sustainable since it will certainly effect the ability of the females to reproduce, increases the probability of low birth-weight calves, and adversely effects the ability of any newborn calves to survive their first year. If you’ve been following the recent newspaper articles, this should sound familiar……

And I really disagree with their conclusion that reducing marine fishing won’t have a positive effect on SRKW’s. Fishing adversely effects SRKW’s in two specific ways. First, it reduces the numbers of their preferred prey, Chinook salmon (duh). Again, it’s not just a number game. When more Chinook are available, they’re easier to catch, and the whales don’t have to expend as much energy to catch them.

Second, marine fishing is usually done by boat. Boat traffic has a direct effect on SRKW’s by interfering with their normal behavior patterns, which is well known. But there also is another factor that nobody has considered. That is, fishing and boat traffic has a substantial effect on prey availability.

As many of us on this BB know, when boat traffic in the saltwater gets heavy, the fish disappear. Chinook salmon will dive real deep, real fast when there is a lot of traffic. If those Chinook salmon are not close to the surface, SRKW’s need to go find them. That means they need to dive deeper, and more often to find their preferred prey. In the absence of fishing and fishing boats, those Chinook would be much closer to the surface, and therefore easier for the SRKW’s to catch.

So I don’t agree with their hypothesis on the effect of reduced fishing. In fact, I can’t think of another factor that would help SRKW’s as quickly or as effectively as reducing Chinook salmon fishing in saltwater.

The ONLY way to get the SRKW's more fish in the short term is to quit fishing. Period. If you had a magic wand, or ore realistically a magic bank account, and fixed all the PNW salmon habitat to pristine in one year it would still be four years before the production of Chinook from the habitat came back.

We know we can't fix all the habitat at once, we know that even when "fixed" (like dam removal) it takes a few years for the habitat to stabilize, and we know that the predators will continue to increase it should be obvious that if we want to recover SRKW we have to kill a lot less fish, a lot more pinnipeds, and make significant investments in habitat restoration. Even then, climate change may blow it all away if (as is already happening) forage fish composition and quality in the ocean is changing for the worse.

Interesting, for sure. I'm pretty sure that's the most fact-based information I've seen/heard on the subject, but there were some familiar, suspicious assertions made, mainly to direct accountability away from human impacts. Being as those are the only impacts humans can control, and that the factors we can't control are exacerbating, it's not looking good for the SRKW.

The information about the northern pods (specifically that their numbers are increasing) is probably a very important piece of the puzzle. At the most basic level, it's reasonable to assume the growing population up north is consuming an increasingly large percentage of the chinook bound for Puget Sound. One of the panelists mentioned territory as a potential issue. As the northern pods grow, their territory will need to expand. When one much larger group of orcas competes with a smaller one, I doubt much is left of the smaller one before long.

Between natural processes beyond our control and our politically-motivated refusal to acknowledge just how significant ocean fishing impacts are, it looks to me like the writing is on the wall for the SRKWs (and, by association, Puget Sound chinook fisheries). We shall see.

I can. . .get the boat motors and sonars physically well-away from the SRKW's. This applies to fishing boats but more importantly to the whale watching fleet. Those whales don't get a moment of privacy during daylight hours from spring to fall. They are constantly harrassed by multitude of boats while they try to hunt. Have you seen it in action?

I'm not saying fishing has no effect, but 500 meter bubble zone allowing no boats nearby, will help them hunt more effectively, faster.

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fishing and whale watching boats are hardly the problem...

small boats only send out sound waves and such a couple hundred yards...

large vessels, like tankers, cruise ships, container ships, ferrys, ect, throw sound waves out 1000+ yards....

then you have prop wash from those boats going out the back for how far?

larger the power plant, larger the noise footprint, larger the prop wash footprint....

they could still keep the whale boats doing their thing if they mandated electric motors when in range, or in the area they closed... you can buy 150 lb thrust twin prop trolling motors that bolt to your cavitation plate, and can run and steer the boat just as if you were using the main motor...

that, and increase the hatchery production from the 20-30 percent it is now, to 80 percent, and watch what happens....

Yeah, making people stop driving boats and stop fishing is definitely the solution....

....I can't imagine what else might be harming the whales?

There are a couple different species (at least) of high-level predators in the Pacific that have been forced to eat fish that are less nutrient-dense. Full stomachs, fewer calories. This has had a detrimental effect on their populations. The SRKW not only need fish to eat, they need the caloric denseness. That is, flooding the sound with Chum just might fix the starvation problem.

Lots of interesting facts to consider, especially since they do not comport to the current hysteria about SRKW. NRKW are increasing in number, are in better condition, and are also fish, especially Chinook, eaters. Transient killer whales are also increasing in number, in response to increasing numbers of marine mammals (seals and sea lions). The transients are also the most polluted of the KW populations. So much for worrying about pollution in PS limiting the SRKW population.

I watched a Ch. 9 show about SRKW, Chinook, and PS pollution the other day, and people express concern about the effects of pollution on PS Chinook and the SRKW. I have to say that these folks either have very short memories or are very young. PS is extremely clean today compared to the days before the Clean Water Act, when B'ham, Everett, and Tacoma were known as the "armpits of Puget Sound." The pulp mills discharged mega-tons of sulphite waste liquor and mercury into PS, while other industries were dumping PCBs into the Sound, all while SRKW were about the same number and Chinook were 4 to 5 times more abundant. So I'm having some difficulty accepting the current concerns and explanations of effects on both Chinook and SRKW.

This presentation and Q and A corroborates the opinion I was already developing regarding PS Chinook and the SRKW. Thanks for sharing it.

REALLY! The solution is quite obvious I can’t believe everybody’s making such ass deal out of this. First we capture 2 healthy breeding pairs and bring them into captivity. It’s already been proven we can breed them successfully in captivity. Not sure what the gestation period is for the KW’s but let’s say 2 years. Within 10 years we got a 10 new whales. Now here’s the kicker. We make nisqually, Skokomish,puyallup, green, snobomish, and nooksack into major hatchery production centers raising healthy hatchery returns the likes we’ve never seen before. Start reintroducing the hatchery whales into a Salish sea plugged to the gills with tasty kings, damn it’s a win win. Year round salmon fishing in pugetropolis, rebounding whale populations, natives with a viable dependable source for commercial harvest. We all need to wake up and smell the rotting chums. Technology is the only way out of saving this planet we’ve FUBAR’d for the last 100 years😀.

One doesn't hear or read much about them but the population of Puget Sound's harbor porpoise has rebounded since the early 1970s. The linked NOAA page cites gill nets, competition from other predators, boat noise and water quality as possible causes in the decline but also attributes the rebound to better water quality and improved fishing techniques (meaning fewer gill nets). Here is the link: https://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/stories/2016/22_1228.html.

Thanks for throwing in some good news, Larry. We could certainly use some.

My point in recognizing the recovery of harbor porpoise is that they represent another marine mammal species which has recovered in Puget Sound in the face of the same conditions some say are contributory to SRKW's dire circumstances.

The SRKW not only eat our fish, they’ve used their long-range communications with the NRKW to arrange for a subset to secretly break off and join the northern group! Why do you hunk the SRKW population has gone down while the NRKW population has gone up?

WAKE UP!!!

#NeedOrcaHatcheries
#OrcasWillPayForTheirHatcheries

All this talk of feeding the SRKWs by planting ignore some basic biological facts.

Orcas are large animals with the fish eating populations actively selecting for large prey (big Chinook -say 30+#). In addition todays PS hatchery Chinook are quite small (average fish barely breaking the 28 inch barrier. Boosting the return of hatchery Chinook will barely move the needle on increasing the biomass of preferred pry for the resident orcas. In fact planting more hatchery Chinook over the next few years could actual result in fewer orca desired size Chinook.


As always society opts for the appearance of doing something rather than make the sacrifices needed to make desired changes.

We can all do ourselves a favor and watch the last two episodes of South Park.

They were pretty eye opening.