There are several mostly volunteer efforts under way to get the chaos under some semblance of control. Probably the most visible of these is SoundWatch, a long-time Friday Harbor-based program operated under the auspices of the Whale Museum, which sends boats out to monitor the scene in the San Juan Islands in the summer, approaching boaters who violate the whale-watching guidelines and urging them to respect the rules.
SoundWatch and a local activist group, Orca Relief Citizens Alliance, have approached San Juan County officials about revisiting the possibility of regulating vessel traffic around the whales. “Now that we have this Endangered Species Act listing, there’s actually some new languages and new provisions that really give states and counties a little bit more local authority to enact conservation measures, as long as they are on par with the goals of recovery plans within the ESA, to do everything from speed limits to jet-ski bans,” Kari Koski of SoundWatch told me. “So the county is revisiting it, not really to say, ‘Let’s sock it to those commercial whale watchers,’ but more to say, ‘How do we level the playing field a little bit? How do we make it be more in the consciousness of boaters, every boater who’s on the water, that they need to be paying attention and be accountable for their actions around whales.’”
At public meetings to discuss possible regulations, however, some whale-watching operators were hostile. “The noise is not a new thing for the whales; the whales have been around noise,” one of them told NOAA officials. “I just have a hard time believing that these whales cannot conduct their daily lives with the activity.”
While the questioner was eager to dismiss the science behind the issue, his remarks reflected a real division within the whale-watching community over the question: How do we watch whales? At one end of the spectrum are activists like Orca Relief Citizens Alliance, whose leaders believe the whale-watching flotilla is actually killing orcas and argues vehemently for a ban on the activity in San Juan County; the Alliance simultaneously advocated land-based whale watching as a low-impact alternative. Perhaps at the other end of the spectrum is Ken Balcomb, the respected orca researcher on San Juan Island, who has been instrumental in cataloging the rise and fall of the resident orcas for some thirty years. Balcomb is skeptical about the effects of the boats on whales’ survival, especially since he fears the ensuing fight over it might obscure the real core of the orca problem, namely, a lack of salmon.
He is not a fan of David Bain’s research: “I just think he’s nuts. It just doesn’t make sense. It makes no sense. First, he’s making an assumption that that’s a significant stressor. I’ve seen them in vessel stress situations way in excess of what David Bain has seen, and that was at a time when there were fish. They weren’t having the population problems they are now. We’re going to see some more population drop. For the next twenty years, everybody’s gonna wring their hands, but one thing that’s for sure is that the human population will increase in that twenty years, and the shipping traffic, the resource exploitation, the building of fuel docks—the system’s going to keep on going, and the pressure’s going to increase.”
As far as Balcomb is concerned, all of the salmon-recovery plans on the table fall woefully short of the orcas’ needs, especially if sport and commercial fishing in the Sound continue at their current pace. “There’s a lot of talk now about Puget Sound Chinook recovery—there’s a plan and the goal is for a few hundred thousand fish. From a fisheries manager’s standpoint, if they can get a couple hundred thousand fish, they’d be happy as clams. But that won’t sustain these whales. They can go through that in a summer.”
Moreover, any salmon-recovery plan won’t really take effect until well into the future, at which point it may be too late for the orcas. Many salmon advocates, for instance, are eagerly awaiting the return of healthy runs on the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula as a potential fresh source of plentiful orca food following the removal of two salmon-killing dams on the river. But even then, they don’t foresee the Elwha producing enough salmon to affect the whales’ diet for at least 20 years.
“The recovery goal is way in the future,” says Balcomb. “If those fish were here tomorrow, it’d be great, but that’s not enough.”
For his part, Bain notes that, in reality, he and Balcomb are not so far apart; his work actually demonstrates that any vessel effects are absolutely dependent on salmon abundance. “There’s some modeling work that I’ve done that tries to convert these energy effects that we’ve measured into population effects, and what that modeling work shows is that when fish abundance is high, there should be no population effects. But when fish abundance is low, the population effects should be strong. So in my mind it’s a combination of the low fish abundance, combined with high levels of vessel traffic, that caused the decline. And then vessel traffic levels off, and the fish abundance went up, and that allowed the killer whale population to start to recover.”
He also notes that commercial whale-watch operators, although nervous about his research at first, have become comfortable with his findings. “You know, I’m willing to say that this effect is small, and it’s something we can do something about quickly, but it’s not going to result in any huge population increase. And if we want to get killer whales back to numbers that don’t merit an endangered-species listing, the big effort needs to go into restoring salmon. If the salmon abundance is high, then the vessel activity doesn’t matter on the life-and-death standpoint. It’s a synergistic effect. The two together are more of a problem than either one is alone.”
Research released in the summer of 2014 seemed to support Balcomb’s contention that the whale-watching boats are not stressing the whales to a serious extent. A University of Washington study, using scat samples collected by a boat that trailed behind the orcas and sniffed out the floating excrement with the help of a sharp-nosed dog named Tucker, found that the whales’ stress levels, indicated by levels of glucocorticoids and thyroid hormones, are highest when the whales first arrive in spring, which happens to be a time when whale-watch boats are abundant. Likewise, their stress levels are lowest in late August, when the boats are also numerous. Those stress levels rose and fell not with the presence of boats, but with abundance—or lack thereof—of salmon.
• • •
Most whale-watch captains, including Ivan Reiff, the bearded, forty-something owner of the Western Prince, a genial man with twinkling eyes, can see the regulations coming and, for the most part, seem resigned to them. For veteran captains like Reiff, people who believe they’re doing the right thing and want to help, not harm, the whales, it’s a no-brainer. If the whales go extinct, they won’t have much left in the way of business.
“I think it’s clear that regulations are on the way,” Reiff says as the Western Prince, a solid, white-and-red, 46-foot craft with comfortable seating for medium-sized tour groups, chugs around Johns Island. “We’ve already started the process. In a lot of ways, it’s just kind of the obvious next step to go, with them being listed. But you hope that the regulations become a tool to really deal with the people who have a blatant disregard for the whales. The worst thing that I’ve seen is some of the private boats just running right through the middle of the pods. It just makes you cringe. On the one hand, I feel like the whales have enough sense of what’s going on that the chances of a boat hitting them is very slim. Part of the reason I say that is I’ve seen so many times when private boats run right through the middle of them that I think, ‘Hey, if they didn’t hit them, then they’re probably not going to, because that was about as good of a chance of hitting a whale as you’ll ever get.’ So you hope that the whales know how to deal with it, but it’s still just not a good thing. It isn’t right. And that is really disheartening, seeing people just totally disregard them.
Captain of the Western Prince, Ivan Reiff, at the helm.
“Obviously, we have to do what’s in the whales’ best interests. The whole thing would be a lot easier if it was clear cut, as far as boats and whales in this area.
You’ve got a lot of information out there, a lot of studies, and they’re still arguing.”
David Bain thinks licensing the whale-watching boats would be a significant step in resolving the issues, since it would give regulators real leverage in stopping bad behavior. “It would also give you a way to cap the number of vessels and give you a way to cap the cumulative effects,” Bain notes. “It would in essence put a cap on noise levels, because you won’t have noise from different boats being added together. It would also put a cap on exhaust emissions. We don’t know if air quality is a factor or not, but it is something we should be thinking about.”
The end result may be fewer boats being allowed out in the orcas’ waters, as well as rules regarding how many times they may visit the whales and how loud or polluting their engines can be. That likely will affect everyone on the water: commercial operators, private boaters, even kayakers.
The only whale-watching option that won’t be affected will be the land-based kind. San Juan Island, in fact, has some of the best options available for that, especially in the vicinity of Lime Kiln Lighthouse on the island’s west side, where the state park and the county’s Land Bank holdings have reserved a long swath of coastline for watching whales. As it happens, it is also one of the best places to see whales, period. The orcas are known to come in right next to the shore along the whole stretch of land and give visitors an up-close look that they might not get out on a boat.
Kari Koski thinks that the whole spectrum of whale watching has a place in letting people experience seeing killer whales in the wild, but it isn’t easy for consumers to figure out the right thing to do.
“I think when people come into the Whale Museum and say, ‘Hey, we really want to see whales, we’re here from wherever, and it’s our dream and we want to do it, how should we do it?’ You know, you really need to sit down with those people and figure out what’s the best option for them. I think if you look at the spectrum, there’s no argument that shore-based whale watching is going to be the least impact to the whales—and some of the best viewing, too.
“We’ve got fabulous opportunities that not many places in the world do. We’ve got national parks, state parks, county parks, and our land, all open to the public in premier whale-watching areas that are unbeatable. It’s cheap, it’s free, you could go down to the county park down to the national park at South Beach and move your way all the way up to Lime Kiln and the county park and watch the whales as they move through and have a fabulous experience.”
The key with shore-based watching is that it can be time-consuming and requires patience; you may find yourself parked on a picnic table for a couple of days before whales wander by. (It’s what the local residents call “island time.”)
“Of the whole spectrum, land-based whale watching is fabulous,” says Koski. “You’re interacting on your own terms as a human in your own element, when you stand there on the rocks looking at the kelp and there they go; it’s a pretty thrilling experience.”
Still, some visitors may have limits on their time or children in tow for whom sitting on a grass bank for hours is not an option. “Then the next step is if you want to see them, then we probably would recommend that people go out with a commercial operator,” says Koski.
But that step requires some discretion, at least if you’re concerned about the whales’ well-being. “It’s important to ask the right questions when you make your reservations, saying, ‘Hey, it’s really important to us that you’re part of this association. And it’s really important to us that you’re following the guidelines. You say on your company label that you do, and that’s why we want to go with you.’ And then if you don’t feel like they’re doing it, you speak up.”
The whale-watching boats, for the most part, are captained by people like Ivan Reiff, who take their role in educating their customers seriously. Reiff sees it as a kind of outreach not just for the whales, but for the whole Puget Sound ecosystem. His trips always emphasize the whole spectrum of wildlife in the islands, from seabirds to seals to minks, otters and eagles.
“I wouldn’t feel right about what I’m doing unless it had some purpose,” Reiff says, steering the boat around Spieden Island and back towards Friday Harbor. “I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I’ve thought, well OK, you can invent a purpose and feel good about what you’re doing, and I don’t want to do that either. I don’t want to pretend like we’re doing a good thing and not actually be doing a good thing.
“I do think that we educate people, and that we endear people to these animals and that we are in some way helping to enable their survival. People may not buy solely organic and stop using fertilizer and all that stuff, but at least it comes into their mind, especially when they go to vote, when it comes time to choose people who really have the control over what we do with our environment, you hope that’s when it comes into play.”
At times, the customers are known to revolt, especially if they’ve conditioned themselves to expect whales. John Boyd, one of Reiff’s naturalists, recalls how, at a previous employer, some Girl Scout troop leaders from Montana, upon discovering that whales were not on the day’s likely agenda, went on an obscenity-laced tirade that culminated in their onboard removal by the captain while the boat was still in port.
However, for the most part, even though there’s always some disappointment at not seeing whales, customers aboard the boat tours are satisfied with just the chance to take in the abundance of wildlife and scenery. Deborah Smith of Towson, Maryland, was still soaking up the scenery as the Western Prince chugged back into Friday Harbor on one of the days when no whales were to be found. The friends from Mercer Island with whom she was staying had told her she’d enjoy the trip. She and a friend took a floatplane from Seattle to San Juan Island and then had been treated to an otherwise full menu of San Juan wildlife.
“I have not seen one thing that I did not like,” she said. “I’ve loved everything. I’m just in awe. We did want to see the whales, but we loved it, and we’ll be back.”
• • •
In calm seas off the west side of San Juan Island, my kayak bobs gently in a kelp bed. In the water about a quarter-mile distant orcas mill and frolic, most likely hunting their favorite Chinook salmon. I drop my hydrophone in the water to listen to their distinct calls. A loud, low clanging—whang, whang, whang—fills my headphones. It is the steady and overpowering sound of a cargo ship, one of the regular features of underwater life in the San Juan Islands’ Haro Strait. At first, a quick scan of the horizon doesn’t reveal the source of the noise. There are no whale-watching boats around and no large ships immediately visible. Finally, I spot it: a lone log-bearing ship, just visible in the distant haze, heading out to the open sea around the very southern tip of Vancouver Island. Whang, whang, whang. It is at least nine miles away. Finally, the ship rounds the bend, and the sea quiets for just a moment before the orcas’ distinct whistles, grunts, and rat-a-tat-tat-tats fill the water. These are J pod whales from the Salish Sea’s famous and endangered Southern Resident orcas, and they are making a lot of the well-known calls known as “S1.”
Seemingly energized, the whales head toward my kelp bed and surround it, chatting loudly and rolling in the kelp. It crackles and pops underwater as the orcas rip up fronds while “kelping” themselves, something the Southern Residents are fond of doing, apparently for the massaging effect. It is one of those moments of pure delight, the sort of take-your-breath-away experience, that comes with being in the territory of wild orcas. At the same time, the ship and its noise cast a shadow, a reminder that the recovery of these endangered whales is precarious, that lingers even as the orcas swim away from the kelp bed and, gradually, out of sight.
The close proximity of freight ships, including those bearing oil, poses a constant risk to killer whales.
The orcas, we know, face many challenges, especially the availability of salmon, to their survival in the interior waters of the Salish Sea, but their ability to hunt for their p
rimary food source is also affected by the noise thrown up by the engines and propellers of various boats. Much of the official focus has been on smaller boats, especially the whale-watching flotilla, and there has been very little attention paid to the effects of these enormous ships. While some researchers such as David Bain may dismiss the effects of big-ship noise on orcas’ hunting and communications capacities, because their sounds are at a lower bandwidth than those used by killer whales, other researchers are not so certain. What’s particularly noteworthy about large-vessel noise is how overpoweringly loud it can be as well as its long duration; while whale-watching boats may come and go in brief intervals, loud ship noise in Haro Strait can last relentlessly for as long as an hour.
Some researchers fear that, even more than with small boats, the underwater cacophony created by large ships may affect not only killer whales’ ability to communicate with each other but more fundamentally may interfere with their ability to hunt successfully. These concerns gain greater urgency when you consider what is on the drawing board for the port in Vancouver, Canada, the source of all the shipping activity in Haro Strait: more ships, many more ships, and among them tankers carrying a black sticky goo known as tar-sands oil.
• • •
Even when ships are present, the view that most people observe across Haro Strait, along the western shore of San Juan Island, when the killer whales are present, is generally a placid one. The only noise is the sounds of the currents rushing, the “kooosh” of the whales as they surface and blow plumes into the air, although at times the calm is broken by the engines of the boats that come crowding around the whales to get a close look at them, sometimes thirty at a time. If there are large ships in view, they are mostly distant and seem almost silent as they glide past.
Of Orcas and Men Page 21