The missing include Squirty, a 44-year-old mother whose three children now swim the channels around the San Juan Islands without her, and Oscar, a 42-year-old male who until this summer rarely left the side of his sister, Ino. They are among seven orca whales researchers say failed to return to Washington waters last month, leaving a large void in one Northwest pod that is missing six members and sparking concern over a potential drop in a dwindling orca population. Those who monitor the region's whales say it is too soon to give up on the missing orcas, but none seems optimistic that those that haven't shown up will return. "Hours spent away is understandable. Days is unheard of, and at this point, it's been weeks," said Kelley Balcomb-Bartok of the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. "We don't expect them back." He said the loss is traumatic for him, and he expects it is hard on the remaining whales, too. "I am convinced that these animals feel this," Balcomb-Bartok said. "They're very intelligent, very sensitive." Also gone from the group known as L-pod are Cetus, a 21-year-old male whose mother, Ophelia, earlier lost her three other offspring; Orcan, a 26-year-old male whose mother and three siblings returned; Luna, a 2-year-old whose gender is not known; and a calf. A calf also is missing from K-pod. If none of the missing reappears this summer, the dropoff for local orca numbers will be one of the largest in recent history. The J-, K- and L-pods make up the Northwest's "southern community," which summers in the waters surrounding the San Juans and southern Vancouver Island. Subtracting the seven missing whales and adding two calves born this year, the three pods have a total of 78 members, down from 99 six years ago. Brian Gorman, spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, suggests waiting until July 1, the traditional date for considering orcas officially "returned," before calling them lost. But he said: "I'm very pessimistic. I think we've got a major problem with the orca population. It's been going down for the past seven or eight years. We don't know why." The fisheries service is considering a proposal to include the western orca among animals protected by the Endangered Species Act. A decision on proposing the addition could be made next month, Gorman said. No one is sure where the whales go in the winter or why their numbers are declining. But suspected culprits include depleted fish runs, interference from whale watchers and contamination from pollutants. Also unknown is whether the dropoff is new or part of a cyclical pattern of growth and decline. Researchers have been tracking the local whales only since the 1970s. | | Orca whales - San Juan Islands Astrid Van Ginneken, who has been observing orcas through the Friday Harbor center since 1986, said she is certain they mourn the loss of family members. Once, on a whale-watching expedition in the polar circle above Norway, she saw what she calls a "funeral ceremony." A male and female orca brought a dead calf, balanced on the male's snout, to a circle of nine other orcas, then left it there. Van Ginneken said underwater cameras captured the nine orcas gently caressing the dead calf in the center of their circle before falling darkness and bad weather forced the researchers to leave the site. Orcas also have been seen caring for their wounded and letting sick pod members swim in their slipstreams, where the sick don't have to swim so hard. Last summer, Balcomb-Bartok watched as two males from L-pod cared for an orphaned calf, known as Tweek, whose mother had died while he was still nursing. Tweek's uncle and older brother, trying to keep the calf from starving in its mother's absence, chewed up salmon and spit it out in front of the calf's mouth. Tweek later died, but the attempts to feed the calf, Balcomb-Bartok said, are "a poignant example of the care and concern these animals have for their family." Researchers say they mourn along with the orcas the apparent loss to the southern community. "I've been with them more than 15 years," Van Ginneken said. "More than half the population was born while I was here." She thinks of Ophelia, whose son Cetus is missing. "She's lost her only remaining adult son," she said. "Now here is this female traveling alone." She thinks of Orcan, the 26-year-old who isn't back with his family: "I saw his fin grow big. I saw him become majestic." And she thinks of what the loss might mean to the other orcas. "They have no nest or den or home or whatever," Van Ginneken said. "Their togetherness is their home. To realize that one of these animals didn't make it ... there's such a void, such an emptiness." |
