Species News

As August comes to a close we say a fond farewell to the orca (or killer whale) with a bit of a bumper blog ... from Russia to the Antarctic and New Zealand to Patagonia we're covering the globe!!

Throughout August we've heard from a variety of researchers from around the world and our last project focus is on a long-term WDCS-funded project in the Avacha Gulf off eastern Kamchatka, Russia, where since 1999, researchers have been conducting photo-identification and acoustic studies on killer whales. In recent years, wide-area large ship surveys expanded the study to other regions in the Russian Far East (RFE) including: northeast Kamchatka, Commander Islands, Chukotka, Kuril Islands and northeast Sakhalin. During the field seasons 2005-2006, a total of 434 individuals were identified in the Avacha Gulf comprising at least three acoustic clans with different dialects. Most are resident-type fish-eating whales. Some transient-type marine mammal eating whales have also been recorded in Avacha Gulf and in other areas of the RFE. Transients as well as some residents show bites from the cookie cutter shark which may indicate long distance travel along the Asian coast or out to sea. Although Russian Far East killer whales can be divided into residents and transients as in the Northeast Pacific, there may be some fundamental differences due to the geomorphological characteristics of their habitat. The Russian Far East generally has a straighter shoreline with an absence of deep bays and small islands, unlike the fjordic western North American coast from Puget Sound to Alaska with its thousands of islands and islets. These differences may have an effect on killer whale distribution, size of home range, habitat use and social behavior.

Unfortunately, live captures of orca from Russian waters are still permitted to this day and in recent years at least two subadult females have been removed from the Avacha Gulf residents. A live-capture quota of 6-10 killer whales in the RFE has been granted every year since 2002 (8 for 2007) despite there being inadequate available information and data to support this decision, let alone the welfare implications of a life confined to a small concrete tank.

WDCS researchers will continue to focus their attention on these animals and to work towards a safer future for them and other cetaceans in the region.

Scientists elsewhere have recently recognized a new morph (body type) of killer whale, known as the ‘type D’ killer whale based on photographs of a 1955 mass stranding in New Zealand and six at-sea sightings since 2004. It is the most distinctive-looking form of killer whale, immediately recognizable by its extremely small white eye patch. Its geographic range appears to be circumglobal in subantarctic waters, school sizes are relatively large and although nothing is known about the their diet, it is suspected to include fish because groups have been photographed around longline vessels where they reportedly depredate Patagonian toothfish.

Briefly back to the southern resident orca (the ones in Canada!), scientists have recently reported using infrared technology to observe the orca and have found that they appear to glow in the dark! You can read the full post here!

Whilst we're here let's take a quick jaunt over to New Zealand where orca researcher Ingrid Visser gives us a brief update on what's happening with the killer whales in her neck of the woods.

"We've just had our first orca sighting of August.  Incredible, given that August is normally one of the main seasons for seeing them in this area.  They were travelling south and passed right by the Orca Research Centre, at Tutukaka.

One of the orca who visited yesterday is known as Funky Monkey – because of his funky dorsal fin – it is very floppy and wobbles all over the place.  This is because during his teenage growth spurt the cartilage in his fin hasn’t had time to strengthen and the fin is not yet rigid like an adult male’s dorsal fin.  I’ve known Funky Monkey since he was a youngster and it is great to see them growing up and watch as their lives unfold. There were approximately 10 orca in the group (I didn’t get a full head-count as they were spread out over about 2 km), including Roundtop an adult male orca who is known to frequently strand, yet typically gets off the beach without any problems."

And finally - let me leave you (and the orca blog) with some wonderful images of the seal-eating orca of Patagonia taken by WDCS's very own Rob Lott. Each year, the same orca return to feed off the seal pups, engaging a very dangerous technique of almost beaching themselves in their attempts to ambush the young pups!







And don't forget to join us again in September when it's the turn of the most magical Risso's dolphin!!

From the north to the south in a matter of days, WDCS researcher Oli Yates shares his experiences of the orca that make the Falkland Islands in the south-west Atlantic Ocean their home - at least for a small part of the year!

To the south east of the Falkland Islands there is a small, 2 km long island with a lot of charm. The island is uninhabited through much of the year but becomes a busy local attraction in the summer months as people travel there to see the bustling penguin colonies, marvel over the elephant seal bulls fighting for control of the harems and enjoy the sunshine along white sandy beaches.

Myself and a small group working with Falklands Conservation headed out to the island to confirm and document what had long been part of local knowledge – the island was home to another spectacular resident, the orca. Apparently small groups of orcas had been seen over the years, coming close to the sandy shores of Sea Lion Island. When we arrived we found that this was just the tip of the iceberg….

We set up patrols of the main two beaches to the east of the island starting at 5am and continuing through until about 6pm. Long days in some roaring weather conditions were filled with the joy of observing the wildlife of these beautiful islands. Each morning we were met by the sound of the Magallanic penguins enthusiastically calling from their burrows (they sound like donkey’s braying, hence the local name Jackass penguins) and the grunts of the elephant seals as we arrived on the beaches. Initially we only saw the orcas from a distance, a group of five or six individuals passed by with apparent disregard beyond the extensive kelp beds. These sightings offered no more than a confirmation of their presence and it wasn’t until the end of the first trip that we saw their real motives.

By this time, young elephant seal pups had started swimming in rock pools in and around rocky platforms that stretched out from the ends of the long beaches. We soon realised that at the margins of these rocky platforms, the water depth dropped off to at least two meters and got progressively deeper beyond the kelp. During our early morning observations, we found that two of the adult female orcas came to within centimetres of the rocky platforms! They passed silently up and down with just the tip of the dorsal fin protruding from the water. The young elephant seal pups were apparently unaware of the danger that awaited them, but we were breathless as we absorbed the situation.

To our amazement, one of the orcas would spend several minutes perfectly still almost completely submerged with her head just below the water right next to the rocks. During this time they would take the faintest of breaths before submerging in the shallows again. Meanwhile the rest of the group would remain at some distance, perhaps 200 m away playing in the kelp beds. Slowly, the largest female positioned herself in a pool next to the rocks that only filled at high tide. The pool had a narrow entrance, perhaps 1.5 m across and we watched in disbelief as the enormous animal lay motionless with her nose peeking out of the water.

Over the next two seasons we were given a lesson in why they had learnt this behaviour. As the elephant seals made their first forays into the shallows, the orcas lunged from their ambush and were rewarded with energy rich meals at the expense of the elephant seal population. We recorded two groups during our time at Sea Lion Island and a total of 12 individuals that repeatedly visited the rocky platforms and sandy shores to attack the young elephant seal pups. During the second season one of the juvenile orcas had disappeared. We feared this young animal must not have survived the winter as the mother was still present but alone. On our last day, one of the other females arrived with a very young calf staying right at her side.

Of all the animals we observed, only the lead female displayed all of the ambush behaviour that was so impressive. Perhaps what we witnessed was part of teaching the younger animals the tricks to surviving in the harsh Southern Seas.

From an area of the north Atlantic where we know very little to an area where we know substantially more, orca researcher Andy Foote brings us up to date with what's going on for the orca in the north-east Atlantic.

Killer whales in the Northeast Atlantic are, or have been subject to several threats during the past century. These threats fall in to two categories: ‘deterministic’ or direct threats that cause increased mortalities, and stochastic or random effects that typically result from small population sizes. The deterministic effects include takes by the whaling and live capture industry. The number of recorded catches of killer whales total 2,472 across the NE Atlantic, dating back to 1920. Catches of killer whales by Norwegian whalers were recorded from 1938 until 1981 when this species was no longer targeted, and totalled 2,435 for this period. Small numbers (51) were taken by the live-capture fishery from Icelandic waters and by opportunistic drive fisheries in the Faroes (64 animals recorded 1960-1983). The US navy targeted killer whales in Icelandic coastal waters during October 1956, following interactions with fishing activity, but the number of animals taken is unknown. The killer whale is now protected in these areas and has not been hunted for meat or for live capture for aquariums in these waters for 25 years. A less acute threat comes from contaminant levels, which have been found to rival those of the belugas in the St Lawrence Seaway as some of the highest on the world. The effect of such high contaminants is typically to reduce calf survival, especially the first born, reduce adult male survival and increase susceptibility to disease.

The impact of these deterministic threats is to some extent related to the size of the population, as larger populations are more robust and able to recover from periods of exploitation. This would appear to be the case with the populations or communities that follow the large prey stocks of pelagic fish such as the Norwegian and Icelandic stock of Atlantic herring. Smaller populations can be less resilient to these deterministic threats and this can in turn lead to stochastic effects having an influence on the long-term viability of the population. For example, a collaborative effort between the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust and myself has found that a small community of less than ten whales regularly sighted off the west coast of Scotland and Ireland are made up of four adult males and five adult females. This is an unusually high proportion of males, and probably results from the small size of this community in which events that are subject to a degree of chance, e.g. whether a female gives birth to male or female offspring, are more likely to become skewed and have a greater impact than in large populations. Stochastic genetic effects known as ‘drift’ are also higher in small populations, and this can lead to reduced genetic diversity which can be harmful in the long-term. This small ‘west coast’ community of killer whales have not been photo-identified with a calf since 1992, indicating that the skew in demography may be affecting birth rate. This community belong to an ecotype, which we believe specialises in preying on minke whales and other dolphins. This ecotype may therefore be subject to higher contaminant levels which become more concentrated up the food chain, and may have been subject to greater exploitation by Norwegian whalers who were primarily targeting minke whales but would take killer whales opportunistically on the minke whale hunting grounds. Other groups belonging to this ecotype have only been sighted in much more Northerly waters. If the west coast community are isolated from these other groups then they will probably not survive for many more generations.

A long-term photo-identification study by the conservation and research organization CIRCE has identified another at-risk community in the Strait of Gibraltar. This community is subject to several threats, which include negative interactions with the local tuna fishery that have led to the death of at least one killer whale. The main prey of this community is the blue fin tuna which is also severely depleted and may be restricting population growth. The work of CIRCE has led to this community being provisionally listed as a threatened population by the IUCN, and a recent upgrade in their conservation status by the Spanish Government leading to greater protection. The research effort led by CIRCE of which I am an affiliated member has in addition to the long-term photo-id, also included the collection of skin samples for diet and genetic analysis which will help identify if the Strait of Gibraltar community are a demographically independent population, or if these pods belong to a more widespread population.

This multi-disciplinary approach by CIRCE, which has bought together a range of specialised researchers to address key study questions and then work on a synthesis that brings all the findings together is a great example of the current collaborative nature of research on killer whales in the North Atlantic. This collaboration and communication means that the research findings are feeding directly back to the Spanish and Scottish governments and via our collaborators at the Marine Research Institute, Reykjavik and Institute of Marine Research, Bergen feeding back to the Icelandic and Norwegian governments and therefore influencing policy. There is therefore plenty to be optimistic about for the future of killer whales in the Northeast Atlantic.

The global status of orca was assessed by the IWC during its 59th Annual Meeting held in Anchorage, Alaska, during 2007 and concluded that ‘very little information on any aspect of killer whale biology in many areas hinders any assessment of their status’ thus prompting some of the research currently under way today.

Although known to inhabit all the world's oceans, documented sightings of orca are more lacking in some parts of the world than others. This is particularly the case in tropical waters and one area where little is known is in the Western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, although this gap is slowly being filled and more information is coming to light with a collaborative approach encouraged amongst researchers and other stakeholders in the region.

Colleagues and friends of WDCS have recently published a paper on "Killer whale occurrence in Venezuelan waters, 1982 - 2008" in the Latin American Journal of Aquatic Mammals (LAJAM). The study collected eighteen sighting records covering the time period April 1982 - January 2008 and brought to light one interesting incident (which was videotaped) involving an attack by two killer whales on a leatherback turtle. The encounter ended when the adult female (the other animal being a sub-adult) of the pair took the turtle in its mouth and dove to a depth of greater than 100m; it is not known what became of the turtle! During the entire encounter, an adult male was seen in the distance - possibly keeping an eye on the proceedings? Some of the sightings noted the apparent co-occurrence of killer whales with cold water incursions that would coincide with the presence of known prey species, such as tunas and billfish; as has been suggested for other areas of the Atlantic Ocean. The authors however, noted that there is currently not enough information to speculate on any seasonality to the occurrence of the killer whale in Venezuelan waters although it has been hypothesised that in Brazil, killer whales could use shallow, coastal habitats in the State of Rio de Janeiro as feeding grounds on a seasonal basis, consistent with the results of the study of interactions of killer whales with the longline fishing fleet off Brazil, which reported that interactions occurred primarily from June to February.

Driven by Angiolina Henriquez, from the Aruba Marine Mammal Foundation, and Jaime Bolanos from SEAVIDA, Venezuela, there is currently a collaborative effort underway to collect information on orca sightings in the Caribbean Sea. To date they can count on information of sightings from Aruba, Barbados, Curacao, Puerto Rico and a new one for Venezuela from three months ago but are hoping for many more in the months to come. If you or anyone you know might be able to help with adding more sightings to the database then they would be very pleased to hear from you. For a database form with the information that they are collecting and/or a PDF copy of the above quoted note in LAJAM you can contact Jaime Bolanos at megapterax@yahoo.com

WDCS's Vanessa Williams-Grey tells us more about what WDCS is doing to help the Southern Resident Orcas (that Rob Lott introduced us to in the last species blog entry) to retain their ‘endangered’ rating on the Endangered Species Act, and for better protection against vessel disturbance.

In January 2010, WDCS submitted comments to a formal consultation process initiated by NMFS (the National Marine Fisheries Service) in the US, formally requesting stronger regulations to protect southern resident orcas from adverse vessel impacts. In July, we further submitted comments towards a second review by NMFS, this time looking at whether the 2005 ‘endangered’ listing of this population under the Endangered Species Act should remain in place. We argued, in both cases, that the southern resident orcas require the maximum protection possible (including of course retaining their ‘endangered’ status) in order to prevent further depletion of an already beleaguered population.

It is clear that, since a multiplicity of factors – including prey depletion, noise and chemical pollution, vessel interference and the legacy of extensive live-captures during the 1970s – have combined to cause their decline, efforts to promote the recovery of this population will, equally, require a range of practical conservation measures including: Support for restoring Chinook salmon populations / Support for further reducing pollution levels / Support for a 200 yard vessel approach regulation / Support for improved vessel regulations including a 200 yard vessel approach regulation; a requirement to keep clear of the whales’ path, and a maximum time that vessels might spend in the vicinity of this population (20 minutes) / Support for an expanded no-go zone, protecting critical feeding habitat.

Support for time and space closures

4.2 Limits upon the time a whale watch vessel may spend with orcas
We would advocate that regulations include a stipulation that vessels must not spend more than 20 minutes with each group of whales.

We note that the Draft Environmental Assessment (NMFS January 2009) considers that there may be education and enforcement issues relating to implementation of such restrictions, but we would suggest that a well-targeted education and outreach programme would reach relevant water users and these measures would undoubtedly give the orcas some much-needed respite.

4.3 Support for land-based whale watching
Land-based whale watching is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to vessel-based viewing in locations as diverse as Hermanus in South Africa; Byron Bay in Australia, and Chanonry Point in the Moray Firth, Scotland. It offers a safe, free (or certainly low-cost), zero-impact means of watching whales. Notable land-based sites to view southern resident orcas include Lime Kiln Point State Park, San Juan County Park, and South Beach, and we would urge more publicity to be given to land-based viewing of these whales.

4.4 Support for adequate education, licensing, monitoring and enforcement provisions
It is, of course, imperative that the proposed regulations include adequate monitoring and enforcement measures for all vessels. With regards to whale watching, WDCS would like to see licensing of operators, including the phased introduction of a permit system whereby a fixed number of permits are issued for each licensing period, thus restricting the overall number of whale watch operators on the water.

We applaud the efforts to date of the Soundwatch programme but note that the programme lacks enforcement power. WDCS, therefore, stresses the importance of developing, as part of the regulatory process, properly-funded education, monitoring and enforcement programmes conducted by, or on behalf of, the responsible government agencies.

In conclusion, the southern resident orcas are at tipping point: malnourished, obliged to swim in polluted water, hounded by vessel noise and activity both above and below the surface, these whales face extinction if prompt action is not taken. Since the ESA and the MMPA prohibit ‘take’, NMFS has a legal – as well as a moral- obligation to protect these whales from further disturbance and distress. We hope, therefore, that our comments will encourage and support NMFS to enact the brave and precautionary legislation needed to reverse this shameful decline.