A mother's tale about decline

In early November an orca was born into J pod in Puget Sound. The first baby picture, taken from Lagoon Point on Whidbey Island, showed a one-day old newborn tucked securely between mom, J14, and her 12-year old son, J30.

That lucky photo, shown on TV, newspapers and Web sites, shows the gentle but firm care given to this relatively tiny infant, and the indelible bonds among family members in this endangered population of now 88 orcas.

Most interesting is this infant's 12-year old brother helping mom take care of the little one. The next day a TV news chopper recorded the young male again next to mom, with baby still nestled in between them. At this age J30 has begun to sprout that tall male dorsal fin and his adolescent hormones are starting to kick in, and yet there he is, taking care of baby. It's not like he's practicing for motherhood.

In any other mammal, as males grow to maturity they tend to split off on their own or travel in bachelor groups. Or sometimes the females may move away, but never do both genders stay with their mothers permanently. Yet three decades of continuous field studies have shown that all male and female Southern Resident offspring stay with their mothers for life. The whole community is bonded together. Pods part company for weeks or months at a time, but when they meet again they often celebrate with energetic reunions called superpods. Mating takes place exclusively within the clan, across pods.

Their ancestors probably split off from a pelagic orca population known as the Offshores around 15,000 years ago to occupy this inland paradise as the glaciers melted back and diverse salmon runs began to course up and down every river and stream along its bountiful shores. Probably numbering around 200, they limit their diet to mostly salmon, especially chinook. They leave the seals and porpoises to a completely separate orca community called Transients, which eat only marine mammals.

In their traditional societies they have developed norms of behavior passed down the generations for millenniums that are followed consistently, without aggression or hostility. By any definition of culture Southern Resident orcas are a cultural community, based on traditions and rules that guide mating, diet, vocalizations, family patterns, habitat use and in fact every aspect of daily behavior. The only thing they lack is material wealth.

They are distinct from any other orcas worldwide. Similar patterns of overlapping but totally separate orca clans have now been found all around the planet, but none are quite like our Southern Residents, held together by bonds of affection so strong that offspring never leave their mothers' sides, and adolescent males help their mothers cuddle newborn infants.

But they could disappear in a geologic second. Between 1995 and 2001, this small clan dropped by 20 percent, and has only partially recovered since then. Those losses were directly correlated with depletion of chinook salmon all along the whales' range. In particular, the once massive runs of chinook that spawn up the Columbia River basin are nearly extinct. Federal and state biologists have concluded: "perhaps the single greatest change in food availability for resident killer whales since the late 1800s has been the decline of salmon in the Columbia River basin." As the salmon disappear, the orcas go hungry.

The four Snake River dams block salmon from 140 miles of river in 15 million acres of forest and high desert wilderness. Unfortunately there is no way to retrofit the dams with adequate fish-passage devices. Efforts to revitalize salmon runs anywhere will, among many other benefits, help provide sustenance for our indigenous orcas, but to survive the long winter months they depend on severely depleted Snake River chinook. Restoring Columbia basin chinook salmon by removing the Snake River dams is the best way to make sure the orcas will continue to raise their young and thrive in Washington waters.