Front Burner - Why B.C.’s orcas are at risk, and what’s at stake

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

There are, at most, only 76 southern resident killer whales left in the world. Right now, there’s growing concern about the fate of J17 - the matriarch of one of the most studied orca families, J pod - as she was recently spotted emaciated. Killers: J pod on the brink is a new CBC podcast that dives deep into what’s putting B.C.'s orca population at risk - from climate change to politics. Today on Front Burner, producer Catherine Rolfsen on why these marine mammals matter.

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With secret labs and expert guests, co-hosts Oz Wallachian and Cara Price, talk about how new technology is changing everything, from falling in love to diagnosing cancer. Listen to Sleepwalkers on your favorite podcast app or wherever you get FrontBurner. A mother orca whose calf died after birth is still carrying her baby. She still has this stress and this pain that she must be going through. For hundreds of kilometers, still carrying her lifeless calf through the waters of the Pacific Northwest. I remember this so well from last summer.

A mother killer whale carrying her dead calf for 17 days. 17 days. It was heartbreaking to watch. That mother is part of JPOT, a family of endangered southern resident killer whales who live off the coast of Washington and British Columbia. Right now, there are a lot of worries about the grandmother of the baby calf we were just talking about, J-17. She's showing signs of peanut head. That's the loss of blubber so pronounced that her white eye patches trace the outline of

her skull. The latest photos of J17 show her in really emaciated condition. The survival of these orcas has all kinds of implications on the environment and even kept the Trans Mountain Pipeline from getting built the first time around. I'm Jamie Poisson. Today, I'm talking to Catherine Rolfson. She's the producer of a new CBC podcast about these really majestic creatures. It's called Killers, J-Pod on the Brink. Today, we're going to talk about why these whales matter. This is Frontburner. Catherine, that image of that mother I was just talking about, the one of her carrying her dead baby calf, it was so powerful.

It looked like grief to me. Were you able to find out why she did that? It was hard not to label it as grief. I mean, journalists did it, activists did it, scientists did it. So we asked a lot of our guests about that. We spoke to a whale researcher, John Ford. And certainly the length of time was unprecedented, I think. He's really the preeminent whale scientist here on the West Coast. He's been studying them for 40

years. He's a little more measured. He says you just can't know whether whales have an emotion the same way that humans have an emotion. Maybe it's a little too anthropomorphic. We really don't know what's driving those kinds of behaviors and what they feel, whether they have an emotion like grief. But he doesn't rule it out. I think it's a really strong instinctive drive more than anything for the whale to support its calf. To keep her baby afloat, alive or dead, which in and of itself is kind of poignant. But Jamie, here's the thing. To me, it doesn't really matter what J35 was feeling or intending,

whether you anthropomorphize her, because what she did, it was received by us humans as a message. Right. We had our own emotions when we saw it. We projected our emotions. We couldn't help but connect with what this mother whale was doing. All of a sudden, J35 just popped up very close. It almost was like she brought it over to me in her mourning or in her grief. There are a lot of connections between whales and humans. They have babies at the same rate.

They live for similar lengths of time. They're very cohesive family groups. We know that they're intelligent animals. They have large brains. And so it is normal to project onto them. But at the bottom of it all, it became a message during that summer about the plight of her pod. And I think it also became sort of a bigger message about the state of our environment,

the impact of humans on the environment. You remember last summer, all the forest fires? As if the wildfire danger hasn't felt real enough, people in Prince George woke up to dark skies. It is pitch black again. It's not much. It's in part due to the massive Shovel Lake wildfire burning to the west. It felt like the whole world was on fire right around that time. Climate change evidence was

everywhere. And so that display became somehow symbolic to some people, I think. I want to pull on all of those threads with you today, but let's talk about this pod for a second. J-Pod is one whale family group, but I understand there's also K-Pod and L-Pod as well. And these make up the southern resident killer whale population. In the podcast, you talk about how they're on the brink. How many of them are we talking about here? Right now, there's a maximum of 76 members of the southern resident killer whale clan. And the reason we say a maximum is we just don't know right now. Right now, they're not in our inland water, so we can't identify them. The last time we saw them, there was a new baby calf, so that brought the numbers up to 76. But there's also two of them that were missing the last time we saw them, so it could be as low as 74.

And you just spoke about this new baby calf. Is the population growing at all? Well, the new baby is a huge hope. So when that baby was spotted just off the coast of Tofino, we've got these baby pictures. They were circulated in the media from this whale watching crew that spotted it. We're waiting and watching because babies have a low chance of survival in their first year. So I think it's too early to say that that's a really hopeful sign and that that baby will survive. We do know it's a female. So that's great news because this pod really needs females to survive. Do we know why these calves have such a low rate of survival in their first year? We really don't. There's a lot about the survival of these whales that is a little bit of a mystery still.

But we do know that these whales, their population as a whole, faces a whole slew of threats. And what are these threats? Okay, so scientists, experts, and even our own government really break it down into three broad categories. The first and the most significant is access to food. Then there's pollution in the water and noise or disturbance from boats. So I can break those all down a little bit. Yeah, can we start maybe with the noise issue? Absolutely. That one really is the most politically significant right now, I think.

So first you need to know that southern residents are highly vocal animals. They are so beautiful to watch them speak to each other. Yeah, and they really do. They speak to each other. They use those calls to communicate. They also use them to find mates and, crucially, to find food. So both by locating prey, finding out where the salmon are, and also by coordinating amongst themselves to hunt. And noise from ships can really disrupt that.

So there's this really striking example we got our hands on from Orca Lab that has hydrophones along BC's coast. And it was of northern resident killer whales, so cousins of the southern residents, and a cruise ship passing by. And you can just hear how that big ship drowns out their vocalizations. But what's really crucial is that for the southern residents, their hunting grounds here in the Salish Sea,

they're right in the middle of busy shipping and ferry routes. The waters are noisy and so these animals therefore have become the symbols of the campaign against increasing vessel traffic and particularly, you know, at the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. Right, right, because these whales have been at the center of the debate over the Trans Mountain Pipeline project. Last year, a court ruled that the National Energy Board had failed to consider the effects of increased tankers on the whales. Let's be clear. Our government inherited a flawed environmental review process. The government's now re-approved the pipeline. We directed the National Energy Board to examine the impacts TMX could have on the marine environment and provide recommendations. And how are they saying they're going to address the whales here? Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson tells me that

they're committed to more than making up for what he calls incremental marine traffic associated with this project for these whales, with things like moving shipping lanes further away from foraging areas, increasing the minimum distance for whale watching boats to these killer whales, and slowing down vessels. And there's this big program out of the Vancouver Port Authority called the ECHO program. It's a voluntary ship slowdown initiative. So it gets boats to slow down through crucial orca habitat. That's because if you slow ships down, the noise usually is reduced. And so they've shared some pretty striking examples of a container ship before the voluntary slowdown began.

And then the same ship a month later during the voluntary slowdown. And you can really hear the difference. You know, do people think that this is enough? Not for many Indigenous groups here on the West Coast, not for the environmental groups that have been opposing this project. Within hours of the Federal Cabinet approval, they were back at the podium again, already announcing that they're heading back to court

to fight this latest approval. My name is Chief Leader George Wilson. I'm Tsitsia'ama of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. And once again, you heard that these whales, they're going to be at the heart of this case going forward. So we're not done hearing about them. Our obligation is not to oil. Our obligation is to the land, to the water, to our people, to the whales you see pictured on this poster, remembering the mother whale that carried her dead calf on her head for 17 days. She was bringing us a message. And you know, when we're talking about the increase of tanker traffic and the effect that it has on whales,

we're talking about also their inability to get food, right? Exactly. That's what's at the heart of it. It's not just the noise bugging them, it's the noise interfering with their ability to hunt. So when we talk about food and access to Chinook salmon, there's also the decline in Chinook salmon stocks that's a big problem. But then you have to unravel, is it that there's not enough salmon full stop? Or is it that the killer whales are not able to find them because of things like disturbance and vessel noise? One thing about your podcast that I found really fascinating and that I didn't know before is that these whales have this historic and deeply personal meaning

to Indigenous populations. Yes, we heard this over and over again. We spoke to the Lummi Nation in Washington State, as well as the Tsleil-Waututh Nation here on the North Shore near Vancouver. And in the Lummi language, the name for orca translates to our relative under the water. And it really is a family relationship. They consider them to be their relatives.

They're just as close as a niece or a nephew. A lot of their commitment to oppose this project and to fight for the whales is about that family relationship. is about that family relationship. I argue that they're closer than you will ever be with your children and your parents because they don't leave. They stay together forever, and they've been a part of this place. They belong here more so than you do. They belong here more so than you do. They belong here more so than anybody else. And we lived as one with them, but we look at them as they were here before us. For settler culture here on the West Coast, our love for whales is a little bit newer, actually.

One of the things I got to delve into was how we really used to hate these animals. We used to think that they were competing with fish. So, in fact, our government, our federal government, at one point set up a machine gun on the coast in 1961 to shoot these whales. Wow. Because they thought they were stealing our fish. That gun was never used. It was taken down. But it's just an example of how we used to whale capture, putting them in aquariums.

Later on, having the whale watching industry to now where they are, they're the mascot of our hockey team. They're in ads and gift shops everywhere. And I always love talking to people in Vancouver about how these whales play such a large role in their day-to-day lives. Whales play such a large role in their day-to-day lives. You know, people always talk about taking the ferry and often more times than not seeing these orca whales. It's such a classic BC moment when you're on the BC ferry. The captain comes on the loudspeaker and says, there's been an orca spotted off the port side

and everybody rushes out onto the deck and the ship just about lists because everybody's watching. You know, one question that's in the back of my mind talking to you is, what role, if any, is climate change playing? That's something that the research is quite early. We hear a lot about our warming oceans and also about ocean acidification. So that's the chemical shift as our oceans absorb the carbon that's in our atmosphere. And what scientists right now are trying to unravel is what we can say about how climate change and ocean acidification is doing to tiny little animals that are part of the southern residence food chain. So for example,

there's something called a pteropod. It's this ghostly underwater free-floating snail. They're really beautiful. And we know that their shells are being dissolved by the more acidic waters here along the West Coast. And we also know that salmon love to eat these tiny snails. So if these species are in trouble, then it's going to ripple up the food chain to the southern residents. What's interesting to me is that the situation for these killer whales is really dire, as we talked about. But at the same time, other types of killer whales are thriving. The northern resident killer whales, for example.

And why is that the case? Some people have theories that the northern residents are actually getting a first crack at the Chinook runs and eating the bulk of them. The southerns are downstream and they have to try and make a living on what's left. They also live in a far less polluted and a far less busy environment on the north coast. And then those big killer whales, those transient killer whales, those are the ones that we've been seeing. I don't know if you've seen the news coverage, but they've been entering Vancouver waterways right in Burrard Inlet. Oh, look at that.

Oh, look at that. So these whales, they've been hunting for seals and sea lions. That's the bulk of their prey, And those animals are actually doing well. They're rebounding in the Salish Sea. So that's a good news story. And the big killer whales are following them in here. It also begs the question, though, why are they able to thrive in this urban environment if the pollution is so detrimental to the southern residents? The best answer we got is maybe it does just speak to how much more important food is because they have a bountiful, plentiful food supply, whereas the southern residents don't.

And one thing you talk about in your podcast is that some of these whales are so emaciated that they get this thing called peanut head. It sounds cute, doesn't it? Yes, it's not though. It's not cute. They're called that because their skulls are so indented from the loss of blubber, shaped like a peanut. So we saw a young whale last summer, J50, that was showing signs of emaciation, struggling to keep up with the pod.

And it launched this international effort to keep up with the pod. And it launched this international effort to try to save this whale. Veterinarians from both sides of the border were out on boats trying to figure out what was wrong with it. They eventually got an antibiotic dart and shot it with medication. Human intervention is something that we bring to the table only as a measure of last resort. We're now down to 75 whales in this population, and we just can't afford to lose another female from this population.

All of that was to no avail, and it eventually did just drift away from its pod, and it has now been declared dead. And we are seeing the same thing happening again this summer with this really important matriarch whale, J17. She's the mother of J35, the mother that carried her calf. She has been showing signs of peanut head. The last time they spotted her family, and bear in mind that these whales stick in their family groups for life, they hang out together, she wasn't there. So there's worries now that she may be dead as well. she wasn't there. So there's worries now that she may be dead as well. You mentioned earlier that there were efforts to try and slow down boats to cut down on noise. Is there anything else that's

being done to try and protect these creatures? There is a lot being done. I mean, I think I've mentioned they've become political poster children. So governments have been paying attention to these whales. Here's some numbers, and I'll flesh these out in a minute, but the government of Canada has a $167.4 million whales initiative. And in Washington state, they have a $1.1 billion US dollar plan to save them. So a lot of resources are being spent on these whales and some of the initiatives are things like making sure whale watching boats stay further away, restricting commercial and recreational fisheries. Implementing area-based closures for salmon fisheries in a few specific areas of importance to South Resident Killer Whale foraging. And that's led to protests in the streets here in

Vancouver, a lot of unhappiness amongst sport fishermen. Are we going to accept this from Minister Wilkins? Are we going to accept this from Minister Wilkins? And I would imagine these court challenges against the TMX pipeline for some people are also an attempt to protect them. Absolutely. Yeah, I think they're going to remain at the forefront of that story over the next few years as those court challenges make their way through the courts. There's also been three interim sanctuary zones here in crucial habitat

on the south coast. In the U.S. there's similar measures, salmon restoration, and I don't know if you've been following this story here in B.C., but we're going to great lengths to save the salmon. in BC, but we're going to great lengths to save the salmon. There's tens of thousands of salmon right now trapped behind a rock slide in BC's interior. And the government has been using helicopters and they're talking about using something called a fish cannon to get them past that rock slide. So the food source, there's a lot of resources and attention being spent on that. To end this conversation today, if these southern resident killer whales go extinct, what would the consequences be?

Well, a lot of people we talked to said that it would be a failure of humans. It would be symbolic of our stewardship of the oceans and of the species with whom we share this coast. So I'll give you a little personal story, Jamie. We were talking about seeing whales off of ferries. When I was first gathering tape for this podcast, the very first interview, I was on a little ferry going to Quadra Island and we got that call, there's whales off the port side. And I actually grabbed my four-year-old daughter and we ran to the side and she saw killer whales for the first time. And it was just one of those amazing moments and she was so excited. And now reflecting back, I do wonder how many of those amazing moments and she was so excited and now reflecting back I do wonder how many of those sightings is she going to have when she grows up and and what will her children

see in our oceans interviewing so many people who care so passionately about these animals really made me realize how much we have right now and how much we stand to lose Catherine thank you so much for this conversation. You're welcome. Killers, J-Pod on the Brink is available wherever you get your podcasts. I also want to tell you about some related news about a different kind of whale. This time is the endangered North Atlantic right whales who spend time around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There have been eight deaths reported since early June. Three of those whales had injuries consistent with ship strikes, which is a leading cause of death for these mammals. There's now pressure building on the shipping industry to deal with this.

That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and see you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was,

please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.