Cooperative is monitoring Luna over the winter

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Cooperative is monitoring Luna over the winter
Tribes, Canada and the U.S. are watching over the killer whale

By PEGGY ANDERSEN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Luna, the U.S.-born killer whale who's spent two years alone in Canada's Nootka Sound, is being monitored over the winter by fisheries agents with help from local Indians, police and residents, Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans said yesterday.

The U.S. and Canadian governments are cooperating in an effort to reunite the 4-year-old male orca next spring with its family, L-pod, which spends much of the year chasing salmon near the San Juan Islands.

In recent weeks, the fisheries department said in a news release, Luna has been wandering throughout the sound to forage for food -- moving away from the dock at Gold River where it had become somewhat of a tourist attraction last summer.

Luna "was reported interacting with some of the local sea lions," the release said.

The agency has been working with its U.S. counterpart, the National Marine Fisheries Service, to determine the best means and timetable for moving Luna.

The agencies also have been consulting with a panel of experts formed to guide that effort and the successful 2002 move of another young killer whale.

Officials had hoped Luna would reconnect with its family on his own, but that has not happened. It has spent much of the past two years deep in Nootka Sound on the west side of Vancouver Island.

The decision to move it was made this year as its approaches to boats and seaplanes posed increasing risks. The whale also learned to disable boats, which irritated sports anglers.

The winter monitoring program is being led by local fisheries officers in cooperation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Mowachat/Muchalaht First Nation and supportive residents.

The U.S. and Canadian fisheries agencies worked together in summer 2002 to move another young orca -- a 2-year-old female called Springer -- back to Canadian waters from busy Puget Sound, where it had wandered after its mother died.

That effort was deemed a success when Springer returned to Canada's inland waters with her family last summer.

Luna's situation is a little different. It's older and its mother, still alive, has a new calf.

The region's killer whale pods -- known as the northern and southern resident populations -- are fish-eaters that spend months in the waters between Vancouver Island and the inland U.S. and Canadian coasts. It is not known where they spend winters, though they've been seen off California and Alaska.

The population of the U.S. group has dwindled from an estimated high of 125 animals to 84 today, including Luna, as it struggles with pollution, human encroachment and dwindling salmon runs.

NMFS declared the group a "depleted" population in 2002, which allows for more study.

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