Saving Seafood

The big problem for endangered orcas? Inbreeding

March 21, 2023 — People have taken many steps in recent decades to help the Pacific Northwest’s endangered killer whales, which have long suffered from starvation, pollution and the legacy of having many of their number captured for display in marine parks.

They’ve breached dikes and removed dams to create wetland habitat for Chinook salmon, the orcas’ most important food. They’ve limited commercial fishing to try to ensure prey for the whales. They’ve made boats slow down and keep farther away from the animals to reduce their stress and to quiet the waters so they can better hunt.

So far, those efforts have had limited success, and research published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution suggests why: The whales are so inbred that they are dying younger and their population is not recovering. Female killer whales take about 20 years to reach peak fertility, and the females may not be living long enough to ensure the growth of their population.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

How ORCA can help NOAA Fisheries observers

December 1, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries observers  face a daunting task on commercial fishing vessels to do their job and record key data as the crew hauls in catch. Project ORCA may change this soon… and ORCA 2 is coming next.

The killer whale, also known as orca, is the ocean’s top predator. There is another ORCA, though, the Onboard Record Collection Application project – or ORCA for short – that will reign supreme by making paper forms obsolete for observers on commercial fishing vessels, as they transition to a tablet for instantly and accurately enter the vital data they collect .

The project is an initiative of the West Coast Region Observer Program (WCROP) which also has the support of the Pacific Islands Region Observer Program ((PIROP)), and the Pacific Fisheries Information Network to Develop Electronic Reporting for Pelagic HMS Fisheries Observers.

The joint project goal to develop electronic reporting (ER) for HMS fisheries observers (e.g., drift gillnet, setnet, deep-set buoy, and longline) is a focus area of the HMS PSG. The WCROP and PIROP place NOAA Fisheries-trained observers aboard fishing vessels with the primary focus of monitoring the incidental take of protected species, and additionally to record details on fishing activity, gear configuration, as well as the catch and disposition of target and non-target fish.

Recording key data on commercial fishing vessels is often a daunting task for NOAA Fisheries observers, who need to do their job as the boat rocks and the wind blows hard, while shuffling through different waterproof paper forms, to register different details. That’s about to change, though, as observers on the West Coast are transitioning from paper forms to a more efficient and accurate tablet-based system.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Orcas thrive in a land to the north. Why are Puget Sound’s dying?

November 16, 2018 — Bigger and bigger, with a puff and a blow, the orca surfaces, supreme in his kingdom of green.

Northern resident orcas like this one live primarily in the cleaner, quieter waters of northern Vancouver Island and Southeast Alaska, where there also are more fish to eat. They are the same animal as the southern residents that frequent Puget Sound, eating the same diet, and even sharing some of the same waters. They have similar family bonds and culture.

The difference between them is us.

The southern residents are struggling to survive amid waters influenced by more than 6 million people, between Vancouver and Seattle, with pollution, habitat degradation and fishery declines. The plight of the southern residents has become grimly familiar as they slide toward extinction, with three more deaths just last summer. Telling was the sad journey of J35, or Tahlequah, traveling more than 1,000 miles for at least 17 days, clinging to her dead calf, which lived only one half-hour.

Read the full story at the Bristol Herald Courier

Learning from gorillas to save killer whales

November 9, 2018 — In 2018, the southern resident killer whale population in the Pacific Northwest’s Salish Sea was at its lowest ever. The world watched in September as an orca named Scarlet, or J50, wasted away and died, leaving just 74 of her kind left. Some wondered if this was “What extinction looks like.”

Meanwhile, endangered mountain gorillas in Africa hit a milestone in the opposite direction. Their population climbed to more than 1,000—the highest in nearly a century.

Building on work begun by primatologist Dian Fossey of Gorillas in the Mist fame, Gorilla Doctors, a program led by the University of California, Davis, has been providing personalized veterinary care to these animals in the wild since the late 2000s. The gorillas have their own long-term health records, and the international team of veterinarians that observe and treat them know each one as they would their own family members and friends—down to the individual.

Read the full story at Phys.org