The Gift That Keeps On Giving

It has been over a year now since BP's Deepwater Horizon well flooded the Gulf of Mexico with 5 million barrels of oil but the horrible gift BP gave to the Gulf just keeps on giving in so many ways; not the least of which is the alarmingly high death rate among Bottlenose Dolphins. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported that over 150 dolphin carcasses have washed up on Gulf coasts since January. Scientists attribute this unusually high number directly to the effects of the BP oil spill and the dispersants used to clean it up. And who knows how many other dolphins have died as a result of this disaster but whose bodies have sunk to the oil slime covered sea floor.

BP executives and shareholders have moved on, regaining their six figure bonuses and dividend payments respectively, but sadly dolphins continue to die. And while BP executives measure time in fiscal years, and their shareholders mark the passage of their lives in decades, the time it will take to repair the damage that BP has done to the once pristine waters of the Gulf of Mexico can be measured in centuries.

Orca Watching Is Cool, Eh?

First, let me state that I was born in Canada and although I have lived in the United States for most of my adult life I still love the land of my birth. There are too many good things about that majestic country north of the 49th parallel to list here...but the regulations that the Canadian government currently has in place regarding Killer Whale watching are not among them!

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has so far not announced whether they will adopt the same regulations recently put in place by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: specifically, starting next month all boats are prohibited from approaching Orcas any closer than 180 metres(commercial vessels are exempt which is another story)whereas in Canadian waters boaters may still come within 100 metres.

Since Orcas know no international boundaries, I hope that the Canadian government will adopt the same restrictions, and I urge the many Canadian readers of this blog to contact Fisheries and Oceans Canada and urge them to do so.

Watching Orcas from a boat or kayak is cool: I know because during the summer that I worked in Namu, B.C. when I was in college(a very long time ago), I got up close and personal to Orcas many times; but if I were to do it today I would do so from afar. Let's hope everyone, Canadian and American alike will follow suit.

I Say Gray. You Say Grey. Let's Hope The Future Isn't...

Gray (or Grey) Whales have certainly been in the news a lot lately, and not in a positive way. First comes a report from Southern California that the number of sightings of Northern Pacific Gray Whales has dropped alarmingly this year, to about one-fifth of normal. This observation, combined with the fact that the International Whaling Commission in June is going to consider allowing NPG whales to be hunted again, has created concern among all those who care. The California Coastal Commission has pressured NOAA to update the Gray Whale study to determine whether the species is in decline. Unfortunately, these results will not be known until after the IWC makes its decision.
Meanwhile, much to the astonishment of marine biologists, a Gray Whale (gender unknown) has been spotted in the Mediterranean Sea off Israel. Since the North Atlantic population of Gray Whales was hunted to extinction in the 18th Century, it is presumed that this whale swam across the Northwest Passage (now largely free of ice thanks to global warming), through the Atlantic Ocean, and into the Mediterranean. Sadly, the whale appears to be alone and emaciated, which is not good, and the chances for its survival are poor.
With both of these troubling matters preying on your mind, please keep these and all other whales, and dolphins in your thoughts and prayers. Let’s hope our future isn’t gray…or grey.

Looking Up At Mountains Versus Looking Down

After exploring some 200 of the estimated 45,000 seamounts that dot the ocean floor worldwide, scientists from NOAA and Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi were surprised to learn that these submerged peaks have an abundance of biodiversity. This comes as no surprise to whales and dolphins as we have always known about the profusion of life that exists on these underwater mountaintops, which brings to mind another fundamental difference in the way our two species view our surroundings. I commented about this last October but it bears repeating now: it is how differently we view mountains. You humans are surrounded by peaks that tower over you, making you seem small and insignificant. For you to see the view from their tops you must climb their sides, a journey that is arduous and often fatal. Whereas we spend our lives swimming high above seamounts. From our vantage point, we can see the majesty of a mountaintop—the biodiversity noted in the NOAA/Texas A&M study—while its base holds no appeal for us, because it is rooted firmly in the deeps, where we dare not go. It causes me to wonder if that is why the soul of man is cloaked in darkness and self-pity, while that of my kind is filled with light and hope; you spend your entire lives looking up at mountains wishing you were on top, while we spend our lives looking down on them thankful we are not at the bottom.

Whale Poop Tells All

I thought both you and I could use a brief respite from the tragic tone and tough message of my recent postings. Lord knows there is too much pain and sadness in the sea of troubles that separates your world from mine. So today, I will talk about an amusing story that comes to us from Seattle, Washington, where Dr. Brand Hanson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (whew, his business card must be a foot long), has been studying whale poop. Poop you say? Yes, poop I say. You know, those little (little being a relative term), irregularly shaped nuggets of excrement that my kind leaves behind (pun intended). Unlike you humans, we obviously do not have tidy porcelain bowls to collect our waste. Instead, it floats off into the sea, or in this case, into Dr. Hanson’s net. (I hope he has a doctoral candidate to collect it). At any rate, using the poop of my cousins, the Resident Orcas of Puget Sound, Dr. Hanson has determined that they prefer Chinook salmon from British Columbia’s Fraser River to those spawned in rivers further south in the United States. He suggests this is because Fraser River Salmon are fatter but I have another theory: given that the Fraser River salmon are Canadian, they are friendlier than their American counterparts, and therefore more unsuspecting of the Orcas’ intentions. And what do they get for this greater sociability? They get eaten and turned into whale poop. Too bad for them, eh?