SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 c 1R News G1 HOSTILE WATERS A SEATTLE TIMES SPECIAL REPORT PART THREE HUNGER The decline of salmon adds to the struggle of Puget Sound’s orcas Story by LYNDA V. MAPES Seattle Times environment reporter Photographs by STEVE RINGMAN Seattle Times photographer he crew of the Bell M. Shimada hauled in the net, long as a football field and teeming with life. Scientists, off the coast of Washington for a week on this June research trip, crowded in for a look. Each tow of the net revealed a changing world for chinook salmon, the Pacific Northwest’s most famous fish — and the most important prey for the southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound. There were salmon the scientists expected, although fewer of them. But weirdly also pompano, tropical fish with pretty pink highlights, iridescent as a soap bubble, that were not supposed to be there at all. What the scientists see each year on this survey T underway since 1998 has taken on new importance as oceans warm in the era of climate change. Decadelong cycles of more and less productive ocean conditions for salmon and other sea life are breaking down. The cycles of change are quicker. Novel conditions in the Pacific are the new normal. “It used to be up, or down. Now, it is sideways,” said physiological ecologist Brian Beckman, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. That’s bad news for endangered orcas that rely on salmon for food. When salmon decline, orcas suffer. See > ORCAS, G2 STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES, TAKEN UNDER NOAA PERMIT 21349 The breath of a southern resident orca is backlit at sunset last November off Vashon Island. These orcas, a signature of Puget Sound, are headed toward extinction. The lack of salmon, such as this big chinook (inset at top) returning to the Elwha River, is making all of the southern residents’ other problems — including noise and pollution — worse. G2 News SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 1R HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L < Orcas even abundant runs of salmon into dramatic downturns — or provide a bonanza of spectacular bounty. After decades of little change, more than a million chinook came back to the Columbia River system from 2013 to 2015, smashing records and capping 15 years of greatly improved returns. Yet as the full effects of The Blob developed, the runs crashed again. Now forecasts for chinook in 2019 all over the West Coast are even worse. The southern resident orcas eat only fish, mostly salmon. In winter, as much as half their diet is coho and chum, and even a little steelhead and some lingcod, skate or flatfish. What these predators need the most, however, is chinook. As the ocean becomes even more unpredictable, what will it mean for salmon? “What if the frequency of these events increases, even if they don’t get worse?” Ritchie Graves, chief of the hydropower division for NOAA’s Northwest Region, said of The Blob. “We lost 20 years of investment in improving the status of stocks. We are almost back down to where we were in the bad times of the late 1990s,” years of record-low salmon returns. And as chinook heading back to the Columbia crash, salmon already have been struggling in the great inland sea of Puget Sound, and its rivers. FROM G1 When salmon decline, orcas suffer. Salmon declining in abundance and size Chinook populations up and down the West Coast have slowly been decreasing since the 1980s. Not only are there fewer fish in regional waters, but individuals are shrinking in average size and weight, with the older, fatter salmon making up less and less of the population. CHINOOK ABUNDANCE FROM ALASKA THROUGH CALIFORNIA 7 million 39.4% fewer salmon than 1976 6 4,536,221 chinook 4 2,750,699 2 0 ’80 ’85 ’90 ’95 ’00 ’05 ’15 ’17 1975 West Coast chinook (average 4-year-old) 2009 West Coast chinook (average 4-year-old) In 34 years, chinook on average have shrunk by 20% in weight and 7% in length*. Weight: 25 pounds Length: 37.9 inches Weight: 20 pounds Length: 35.1 inches *Weight and length measured for 4-year-old ocean chinook from multiple salmon runs from Alaska to California. Sources: Ohlberger, Jan, et. al, “Demographic changes in Chinook salmon across the Northeast Pacific Ocean,” Fish and Fisheries, Center for Whale Research, Pacific Fishery Management Council (2018), NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NWFSC-123 (July 2013), Pacific Salmon Commission (2018) EMILY M. ENG / THE SEATTLE TIMES How many fish do orca need? Chinook are the foundation of resident killer-whale diets. Based on orcas’ individual caloric needs, researchers have calculated the minimum number of chinook needed to sustain the current populations of resident killer whales. The Salish Sea’s critical rivers for chinook The 75 southern residents would need at least 317,000 chinook per year to survive with a diet of only chinook. A recovered population would need at least 554,000*. CURRENT POPULATION Nooksack t 317,000 RECOVERED POPULATION Sk 554,000 Strait of Juan de Fuca from Alaska from Canada from WA/OR Seattle Duwamish River Green 871,292 total ya up ll i sq u t e lly s ua *Based on Williams, Rob, et. al, projection of a 75% increase in diet need. Sources: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Pacific Salmon Commission, Williams, Rob, et. al, “Competing Conservation Objectives for Predators and Prey: Estimating Killer Whale Prey Requirements for Chinook Salmon,” PlosOne ch Pu 252,866 De s 360,354 N 258,072 ish Based on preliminary data in 2018, 871,292 chinook were caught in all commercial, tribal, sport fisheries from Alaska to Oregon. Dosewallips mma Duckabush Ha ma m a H Dewatto sh mi ho 1,150,000 S no 2017 POPULATION S tillag am u Du ngenes s The 307 northern residents would need at least 1,150,000 chinook per year to survive with a diet of only chinook. 2018 CATCH F rase r CANADA U.S. ha Elw A changing ocean Back aboard the Bell M. Shimada, nighttime for some of the scientists was prime time for towing a net alongside the ship to gather samples of zooplankton to assess the ocean’s food supply for salmon. The crews got up twice each night, the ship ablaze with lights, to capture tiny animals migrating upward in the water to feed on plankton — the great green pastures of the sea, each individual tiny green life feeding these animals that feed everything else. Held to the light, a jar of seawater comes alive with a sampling of animals caught in the net. These are the tiny lives that feed the forage fish that baby salmon eat — and eat they must, to fatten and grow, before they get eaten by something else. Most juvenile salmon that leave the freshwater river where they hatched don’t survive to return as an adult to spawn, because they get eaten first by a predator. If a baby salmon doesn’t get bigger than a bird’s beak — and fast — it will never live to feed an orca. Scientists want to see four times as many juvenile fish survive as they do in the sea. But ocean conditions haven’t been that good in decades. Then, they got even worse. “When The Blob hit, everything changed,” Beckman said. The Blob, a gigantic mass of warmer-than-normal water off the Pacific Coast, began forming in late 2013. It depleted the ocean’s food supply and killed an uncounted multitude of animals, including sea birds and marine mammals. In June 2017, scientists caught so few juvenile chinook they thought there might be holes in the net. Freakish numbers of species, such STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Researchers aboard the Bell M. Shimada undertake a night survey using nets to capture zooplankton, tiny animals critical to the food chain that ultimately leads all the way to killer whales. ag i The search to understand why Puget Sound’s orcas are in decline continues, as scientists probe a range of threats, from inbreeding and disease, to pollution and vessel noise. But a key area of investigation is the primal necessity of regularly available, adequate, quality food. Across the Pacific Northwest, 40 percent of chinook runs already are locally extinct, and a large proportion of the rest that remain are threatened or endangered. Meanwhile, most other marine mammals are surging in population, adding to the competition both southern residents and fishermen face. Now, even the water itself has turned hostile. The southern residents evolved to take fish out of a vast area, on the outer coast of North America, from California to British Columbia, and throughout the inland waters of the Salish Sea, connecting the U.S. and Canada. They even come all the way to Seattle’s Elliott Bay. Top predators, they can travel 75 miles a day, following the salmon they eat nearly exclusively, since the fish were always so big, so fat, and so plentiful. But in just the past 150 years all that has changed. Humans have altered everything from the climate and the ocean food web to the estuaries and freshwater rivers where salmon begin their perilous years-long journey to sea and back. Despite being listed as a threatened species 20 years ago, the prospects of Puget Sound chinook remain unimproved. How much chinook do southern residents need? Scientists in the Cetacean Research Program at Fisheries and Oceans Canada estimate it takes the equivalent of at least 723 chinook to feed the entire population of southern residents every single day — but it could be as many as 868, depending on the age, body size and condition of the whales and the fish. A recovered population of killer whales would need even more fish, perhaps as much as 75 percent more, said Rob Williams, of Oceans Initiative, a Seattle-based science nonprofit. Without more food, the whales will be extinct within 100 years, Williams and other colleagues found in a 2017 paper. “Let’s not kid ourselves, we have a long way to go,” Williams said. 20 MILES EMILY M. ENG / THE SEATTLE TIMES as pyrosomes, a firm, plastic like tubular animal of subtropic seas, covered the decks. Those most dramatic influences of The Blob are dissipating, said Brian Burke, a supervisory research fish biologist at NOAA’s science center and chief scientist on the 2018 survey. Still, in some places where juve- nile chinook in past years had been most abundant, very few were caught at all. So powerful are the effects of ocean conditions, they can swing ABOUT HOSTILE WATERS Part Two told how a generation of killer whales was snatched from Puget Sound. Explore the series at st.news/orca-series See > ORCAS, G4 CREDITS The Seattle Times’ Hostile Waters series is exploring the plight of the southern resident killer whales, among the most enduring yet most-endangered symbols of our region. In Part One, we traveled north to a land where another resident population of orcas is thriving in quieter, cleaner waters. Fewer fish, more demand The Nisqually River slid toward Puget Sound, whirling and sparkling when suddenly, a sleek brown head popped up. The sea lion surfaced with a big chum salmon clamped in its jaws, shaking its head violently, sending chunks of the fish flying. It dived underwater to go get the pieces. Back up in minutes, the sea lion tipped its head back like a sword swallower and downed the rest of its meal. Sea lions never used to come up this river, said Willie Frank III, a member of the Nisqually Tribal Council. Today, seals and sea lions travel more than 20 miles up the Nisqually after chum. These are not just any fish. These chum are unique, among the latest winter salmon runs in the state. They are the prime fish the southern resident orcas are hunting when they come to Central Puget Sound in winter. But this chum run has declined so much tribal members barely get a fishing season anymore, said Frank, whose late father, Billy Frank Jr., was repeatedly arrested in the 1960s and ’70s defending the tribe’s fishing rights. Frank sees a parallel in the tribal elders and the southern residents, both struggling to find enough fish. “To see the little ones out there, and their moms, it breaks your heart,” Frank said of the whales. Now, a population boom in marine mammals — other than southern resident orcas — may be complicating the picture, as everything from seals to sea lions and Alaskan and northern resident killer whales beat the southern residents and fishermen to the catch. A paper published in 2017 was a shocker for many, when Brandon Chasco and other researchers showed that the resurgent population of marine mammals, thanks to the ban on hunting enacted in the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, may have had unintended consequences. Today, the chinook catch by marine mammals West Coast-wide is up 150 percent from 1975 to 2015, and down 41 percent by anglers. Whether to cull marine mammals is under regionwide debate. But the whales and salmon also confront much bigger problems. The salmon decline began with non-Indian settlement of the Northwest in about 1880. It’s not been a unilateral slide. Some runs are in better shape today than during the heyday of unregulated logging, irrigation, mining and industrial discharges to Puget Sound and rivers throughout the Northwest. But historic overfishing took its toll. So do hatcheries releasing hundreds of millions of fish that can compete with wild fish for food and habitat, and even spread disease. Dams impede, and some even wholly block, the rivers in which salmon spawn. Bulkheads harden With today’s story, a video shows how scientists — and a dog — are working to understand how hunger hurts, even kills. Reporter: Lynda V. Mapes Video editor: Lauren Frohne Photographer: Steve Ringman Graphic artist: Emily M. Eng Project editor: Benjamin Woodard Art director and designer: Frank Mina Photo editor: Fred Nelson Producer: Jeff Albertson Videographer: Ramon Dompor Copy editor: Laura Gordon SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 1R News G3 HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L Aboard the NOAA vessel Bell M. Shimada in June scientists used nets to survey sea life, part of a study of changing ocean conditions and their effects on juvenile salmon. A disruptive mass of warm water called The Blob that began forming in 2013 has dissipated, but its impact lingers. The Seattle Times’ Steve Ringman photographed some of the animals caught. PACIFIC POMPANO (Peprilus simillimus) nonnative, average 6.4 inches long This tropical fish still lingers in Washington waters, an after-effect of The Blob. CAPRELLID AMPHIPODS on kelp native, about the size of a corn kernel Tiny animals such as these crustaceans are part of the ocean food chain. PHOTOS BY STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES SEA NETTLE (Chrysaora fuscescens) — native to Pacific Northwest, average 6.2 inches long Even the jellyfish community changed because of The Blob. The sight of this native sea nettle was a relief to researchers in their survey off Washington’s coast. WOLF EEL (Anarrhichthys ocellatus) native, average 20.7 inches long Washington’s outer coast teems with a dazzling variety of animals, such as this writhing wolf eel, snapping its tiny teeth. CALIFORNIA MARKET SQUID (Doryteuthis opalescens) native, average 3.2 inches long These squid are normal in Washington waters but in 2018 were caught in huge numbers coast-wide for reasons not yet understood. SALP (Thetys vagina) native, this lone specimen was palm-sized A shimmering salp is native to Washington waters. It moves by pumping water through its gelatinous body. PYROSOME (Pyrosoma atlanticum) nonnative, average 5.1 inches long The presence of freakish numbers of subtropical pyrosomes was just one sign of massive changes in the ocean due to The Blob. G4 News SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 1R SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 1R News G5 HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L < Orcas FROM G2 shorelines. Estuaries and tide flats have been filled. Rivers have been straightened and walled off with dikes and levees. Thousands of inadequate highway culverts block access to miles of spawning habitat. Water withdrawals for irrigation and other uses diminish river flows. A warming climate is boosting summer water temperatures above safe levels for salmon in rivers all over the state. Preliminary findings by a total of 60 nonprofits, universities, tribes, state and federal agencies on both sides of the border in a marine survival study launched by Long Live the Kings and the Pacific Salmon Foundation are revealing devastating trends in the Salish Sea. While coastal stocks of chinook have cycled up and down with ocean conditions, chinook, coho and steelhead in the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound have declined up to tenfold since the 1980s and have remained depressed, the research project is finding. Many salmon die in Puget Sound, victims of everything from pollution to predators to habitat destruction and changes in the food web, long before they ever make it to the open sea. From the orcas’ perspective, their food supply has cratered in just a few generations, compared with the historic numbers of fish, their availability across the seasons, and even their size. Brad Hanson, a research wildlife biologist with NOAA’s science center, said people forget about how much the baseline for salmon and orcas has shifted, and how fast. “If you look at all the areas the whales take fish out of, it’s a huge swath of North America, all the way to B.C. These animals evolved to depend on all these different stocks,” Hanson said. Today, scientists are concerned about what they call seasonal serial failures: When, from one season to the next, in one river after another, there is not enough food regularly available for the whales. “If California is bad, and the Columbia is bad, and the Fraser is bad, that takes out six or eight months of the year,” Hanson said. “You are not going to make it. You are potentially losing calves, or individuals, and that is what we are seeing.” B.C. salmon stocks in general are at just 36 percent of runs in the 1800s, and Puget Sound stocks are also at a fraction of their historic abundance, Oceans Initiative’s Williams and his co-authors reported in a 2011 PlosOne paper. Farther south, the Columbia River was once the mightiest salmon river in the world with some 4.5 million chinook a year returning. Now even in a good year, typically less than a million chinook come back. California’s Sacramento River salmon runs — once an abundant source of vital winter food — have collapsed. There have been fishing reforms, but fishing still takes a toll on the orcas’ food supply. Commercial, sport and tribal fishing in all marine waters in the U.S. and Canada reduces the amount of adult 4- and 5-year-old chinook returning to Puget Sound rivers by about 20 percent, according to a 2012 study by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Fraser River chinook are depleted by about 15 percent. Even some chinook marketed as abundant, sustainable wild Alaskan salmon may have started their life as a hatchery fish in the Columbia or elsewhere in Washington. That is because most fish leaving Washington waters, especially the Columbia, head northward in their migration, where many are later caught in mixed-stock ocean fisheries. They are never seen in Washington again — except on a plate. Targeted fishing closures may help the southern residents, a panel of scientists concluded in 2017. But their confidence was not high, because whatever one angler doesn’t catch may just be caught somewhere else, or eaten by another predator. The researchers put more confidence in reducing vessel disturbance to make fish easier for the whales to locate and catch. How best to quickly get more food to the whales is still under active debate. Salmon abundance is more than a numbers game; it’s also about the size of individual fish, and seasonal variety of chinook available for the See > ORCAS, G6 STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES A sea lion rips into a chum salmon swimming home to spawn in the Nisqually River in January. A resurgence of seals, sea lions and even other orcas to the north is a victory for conservation, but also is taking a bite out of the southern resident killer whales’ food supply. Scientists are worried orca grandmother J17 won’t live through the year. Seen here in January, she has lost so much fat that the curve of her neck shows. The condition is called “peanut head.” Most whales this skinny die. Losing J17, age 42, also would put other whales in her family at risk because they rely on her to help find and share food. COURTESY OF THE CENTER FOR WHALE RESEARCH, UNDER DFO SARA PERMIT 388 Harbor seals, alert to any movement, are a favorite prey of transient killer whales which, unlike fish-eating southern residents, eat marine mammals. These seals lounge on Sentinel Rock off Spieden Island, north of San Juan Island. STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES 1 R G6 News SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 1R HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L < Orcas FROM G4 whales. Over time, that diversity has become greatly reduced. Of 396 populations of chinook that used to be available to southern residents all over the Northwest, 159 today are gone, leaving gaps in the calendar year in which the orcas’ preferred prey is no longer available. Chum also are depleted, with 23 of 112 populations no longer there, according to a scientific paper published in 2007. With so much diversity lost, recovering the whale population isn’t just a matter of pumping up existing stocks, said Mike Ford, director of the conservation biology division at NOAA’s science center in Seattle. For instance, in the Columbia over the past 20 years, fall chinook runs have mostly been doing better than in the previous 60 or 70 years. Yet the whales continue to decline. That’s because the southern residents need salmon year-round, throughout their home range. And spring chinook — the biggest, fattiest prize — throughout the Northwest are among the most depleted, including in the Columbia and its largest tributary, the Snake River. There’s no rescue underway that is right-sized to the southern residents’ food problem, said Andrew Trites, professor and director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the Institute for Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. Fixing just one place or piece of the problem will never save the whales, Trites said. “They live in a very large house and we need to look at every room.” Size matters, too. For chinook, also called king salmon, big isn’t what it used to be. The giants that used to lumber up and down the Columbia and cruise the North Pacific from California to Western Alaska have shrunk, Jan Ohlberger of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, and other STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES, TAKEN UNDER NOAA PERMIT 21349 Southern residents are the most urban orcas. This one swims past a Superfund site at Point Ruston, near Tacoma, in November. authors found in a 2018 paper published in the journal Fish and Fisheries. The researchers documented a widespread trend in both wild and hatchery fish. All are smaller and younger today, researchers have found, examining 85 chinook populations along the West Coast. Coast-wide, the weight of 4-yearold chinook on average dropped by 20 percent from 1975 to 2005, Ohlberger found. Giant salmon such as the legendary June Hogs of the Columbia, tipping the scales at 80 pounds as recently as the 1920s, today exist only in historic photos. A sampling of chinook caught in Washington from 1970 to the present by purse seine and troll gear indicates puny average weights, ranging from around 10 to 15 pounds. That’s just a snack for a 6-ton killer whale. researchers worried as J50 continued to decline, eventually developing a deformed, emaciated shape Hunger hurts, even kills known as “peanut head.” It comes suddenly: sharp, and By August, NOAA had developed unmistakable. A foul, sour, seweran elaborate, unprecedented resgas stench. The smell of death. cue plan. For the public, the plight “That is J50,” said Deborah Giles, of the young whale had new urgenresident scientist at the University cy after watching another southern of Washington Friday Harbor Labs resident, Tahlequah, swim for more and the science and research direc- than 1,000 miles carrying her dead tor for the nonprofit Wild Orca. calf, which had died shortly after It was Giles who last summer was birth, in a dramatic ritual that lastamong the first to alert NOAA scied 17 days. But before J50 could be entists to the declining condition of helped, the whale sank forever out the J-pod whale, just 3 years old. of sight. It was the third death for What Giles smelled that July day, the southern residents last summer. while out on a research survey Why she died is still unknown, offshore of San Juan Island with the and why Tahlequah’s mother, J17, southern residents, was the foul now also is failing is a puzzle. Why breath of an animal in comproare some members of the pods so mised health. extremely affected? Is it disease? Over the course of the summer, Starvation is not seen throughout the population. But malnutrition is occurring. Researchers began a health assessment of the southern residents using drone photography in 2008, tracking the orcas’ body condition in spring and fall. “There is this growing recognition they are in poor condition presently,” said John Durban of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla. Drone photos taken by Durban and Holly Fearnbach, of the Seattle-based nonprofit SR3, are telling, when compared with the orcas’ northern neighbors in B.C. and the waters of southeast Alaska. “The northern residents are not that far away, and even feed on some of the same salmon runs, but they also have access to different Continued on next page > SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 1R News G7 HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L ple would tell researchers everything, from what the whales were eating, to the orcas’ condition and, using DNA analysis, the species of fish. “Within four days we see the impact if they are not getting enough nutrition,” Giles said. “Any animal goes through feast and famine, that is normal. But their periods between feast and famine are bigger.” It used to be the whales showed up in the San Juan Islands in May, and were around nearly every day, even in large gatherings known as superpods, with J, K, and L pods all present at once. More typically today, as some of the salmon runs in the Fraser River the orcas feed on have declined, the southern residents arrive much later, and are split up and spread out, with only a few of the families together in any one location. They socialize and rest less, and travel more. Looking for food. < Continued from previous page fish,” Durban said. “It is very different with the southern residents, to look at the shifting baseline. You have to remind yourself what robust looks like.” Transient killer whales that feed on seals are flourishing as well. “They are very, very robust, fat killer whales,” Durban said. And while both the transients and the northern residents have been steadily reproducing, the southern residents have a high rate of failed pregnancies. In 69 percent of pregnancies tracked from 2008-2014, no live calf was produced, according to a 2017 study led by Sam Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. Wasser documented a connection between failed pregnancies and stress hormones in the whales’ scat and periods of low salmon abundance in the Columbia and Fraser rivers. Starving whales also burn fat to survive, releasing toxics into their blood where they can do damage to the whales’ immune system and reproductive capacity. So hunger hurts. Even kills. Giles, the researcher who sniffed out J50’s peril, led the field team of researchers on Wasser’s multiyear survey of killer whale scat. On a trip last July, she followed the whales’ fluke prints — large glassy patches on the surface created by the movement of the orcas’ tails as they swim along — guided also by the acute nose of Dio, a blue heeler mix at the bow. Handled by trainer Collette Yee, Dio is one of the dogs, all of them rescues, in Wasser’s Conservation Canines program, crack environmental detectives trained to track everything from invasive plants to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and grizzly bear scat. Before long, Dio located a particle that looked like a bloated, wet dog kibble. Giles set the scat spinning in a vial in the shipboard centrifuge, for analysis back at the lab. This sam- PHOTOS BY STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES, TAKEN UNDER NMFS PERMIT 17344 San Juan Island CANADA U.S. Washington Dio the blue heeler and his handler, Collette Yee, of Conservation Canines, search for orca scat in the water off San Juan Island. UAN ISLAND SAN J S Strait of Juan de Fuca San Juan Island 10 MILES Scientist Deborah Giles examines a sample of orca scat. Researchers have documented a link between stress hormones in orca scat, low salmon availability, and failed pregnancies. A river reborn On a stretch of the Elwha River outside Port Angeles, great clouds of insects hummed over spawnedout salmon carcasses. A kingfisher clattered from a branch, and diving ducks flew upriver. Eagles cruised overhead, and a big juicy dragonfly hawked after bugs. Fins cut the water: chinook, battling upriver. Back home from their great journey to the sea. A big male zipped across the channel, chasing off a rival. As the river sang over the clean, graveled bottom, other fish held steady in the current: females, guarding their redds, the telltale pale patches on the river bottom where they had turned over the stones with their tails, digging their nests. While recovery is slow here on the Elwha after the largest dam removal ever, all five species of Pacific salmon are recolonizing every reach of the river. Salmon and orcas are tough survivors, weedy even, surging to reclaim most any place returned to them. See > ORCAS, G9 G8 News SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 b 1R We are dedicated to improving the lands and waters of the Pacific Northwest that have always provided for us and our relatives, the killer whale. The ancestral teachings and values that govern Tulalip guide our vision to honor, restore and protect the natural resources that our people have relied upon for centuries. Through projects like the restoration of the 400 acre Qwuloolt Estuary, the Tulalip Salmon Hatchery, and our work to protect the Salish Sea we continue to uphold these values today. Every March through June, we release 10–12 million Coho, Chum and Chinook salmon into Salish Sea Partner with other tribes to facilitate a major vessel traffic study to help understand the impacts on killer whales Continuing work to remove pollutants that build up in killer whales Work on cross border issues with our First Nations relations, including opposing pipelines and increased vessel traffic For more information visit: www.nr.tulaliptribes.com SCIENCE • RESEARCH • EDUCATION • OUTREACH Since 1996, Orca Conservancy, an all volunteer organization , has been fighting for the recovery of the Southern Resident Killer Whales. GET TO KNOW US Extinction is Forever. Endangered means there is still time … • Primary litigants to grant Endangered Species status to the Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) * Successfully blocked the Admiralty Inlet tidal turbines from SRKW critical habitat * Successfully rallied for the dismantling of the Klamath Dams in 2021 * Member of the Our Sound, Our Salmon Coalition, we were successful in phasing out Atlantic salmon net pens in Washington State • Supported the recently approved 6-month moratorium on major fossil fuel facilities in King County ORCA CONSERVANCY EST. 1996 Join our fight to save the Southern Residents while there is still time! orcaconservancy.org DISCOVER • VOLUNTEER • DONATE Learn more at: www.orcaconservancy.org SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 1R News G9 HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L < Orcas Mouth of the Elwha River FROM G7 After a generation of the southern residents were trapped for aquariums, they battled back to a recent population peak of 98 in 1995. Their deaths at times correlate with chinook salmon declines. Today, only 75 southern residents survive. But chinook come back. Replacing highway culverts, ripping out dikes to restore estuaries, improving flows in streams — restoration work is going on all over Washington. Dam removal is on the table. Gov. Jay Inslee is seeking funding from the Legislature to study the effects of breaching the four Lower Snake River Dams. It will take a wide variety of strategies all over the state to rebuild salmon runs. Some of the region’s efforts already have been historic. Beginning in 2011, people did the once unthinkable, and in a grand experiment took out both dams on the Elwha. That opened 70 miles of unspoiled habitat to salmon for the first time in a century. There were doubters of the $350 million investment in the salmon, but the fish are proving them CANADA U.S. Elwha River Seattle Washington Oregon STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Now undammed, the Elwha River’s spring runoff gave way to clear water by August. An estimated 7,500 chinook came back in an ecosystem-scale recovery feeding everything from bears to orcas. wrong. Last summer, an estimated 7,500 chinook returned to the Elwha, the most in more than a generation. Mel Elofson, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal member and assistant habitat manager for the tribal fish- eries department, picked up an eagle feather from the ground as he watched the fish go upriver last August. With the return of the salmon have come the animals, with tribal members seeing more eagles along the river than anyone could remember. Elofson recently saw a bear eating salmon on the bank of the Elwha. “It was great to see that bear feeding in broad daylight,” Elofson said. The eagles and the bears aren’t 50 MILES the only ones to notice the big kings are back. In August, researcher Ken Balcomb, founding director of the Center for Whale Research, got a call to come document dark dorsals cutting the water offshore of the mouth of the Elwha. Twin monarchs of the Northwest, Puget Sound’s orcas and king salmon, were back in their home waters. At the river’s mouth, J pod was hunting. Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2515 or lmapes@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @LyndaVMapes. STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Crystal Chulik inspects a nearly 3-foot-long chinook last June at Bonneville Dam. Big fish like this one are what southern resident orcas need for a square meal. But most chinook are much smaller than they used to be. On the Columbia River, they may have as many as nine dams to pass. G10 News SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2019 b 1R PAID ADVERTISEMENT GOVERNOR INSLEE, IS THIS HOW YOUʼLL BE REMEMBERED? Will you be remembered as the governor who stood by while our Southern Resident Killer Whales starved to death? Or as the governor who took action to save them? It’s simple. Call for the breaching of the lower Snake River dams in 2019 to allow juvenile salmon to survive migration. Breach the dams. Save the salmon. Save the whales. Paid for by the Center for Whale Research, an IRS 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization based on San Juan Island. Visit WhaleResearch.com and DamSense.org for details.