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J28 Polaris and J54 Dipper, March 2016 (Photo credit: Dave Ellifrit)

Another orca from the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale population has died.

Researchers believe that J28 Polaris died of a combination of starvation and septicemia resulting from birthing complications. The whale showed signs of poor condition in January 2016, about a month after her son J54 Dipper was born, and appeared emaciated in July. Her seven-year-old daughter, J46 Star, was seen attempting to feed both J28 Polaris and J54 Dipper as J28 Polaris’s condition steadily worsened.

By October 19, J28 Polaris had disappeared. Researchers believe that she died sometime between October 16 and 18, probably in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Her body has not been found.

J28 Polaris was about 24 years old. She gave birth to her son J54 Dipper in December of last year during the 2015 “baby boom.” J54 Dipper will not survive without his mother, despite his older sister J46 Star’s best efforts to save him. When last seen, he was barely able to swim on his own, and his body was covered in tooth marks – evidence that his sister J46 Star and cousin J47 Notch had been carrying him to the surface to help him breathe.

J54 Dipper’s rake marks (Photo credit: Mark Malleson)

It is possible, perhaps likely, that J54 Dipper is already dead.

J28 Polaris’s death was announced and her obituary read on October 28 at a press conference put on by the Center for Whale Research.

J28 Polaris with J54 Dipper on October 2 2016 (Photo credit: Ken Balcomb)

With J28 Polaris’s death, and J54 Dipper likely to follow her, the Southern Resident Killer Whale population will stand at only 80 individuals. To say that the future of this iconic population is uncertain would be an understatement.

Simply put, the Southern Residents are starving to death.

To learn more about why J28 Polaris died and why her young son will likely die, and what you can do to help (it’s easier than you think), please read on.

Southern Resident Killer Whales, like most populations of orca, are highly specialized hunters: they are limited in their prey choices and cannot easily adapt to a new diet when a prey species disappears. This is a major problem for the Southern Residents, because about 80% of their diet consists of Chinook salmon and Chinook salmon are in very short supply in the Pacific Northwest. Habitat loss in the Columbia-Snake River Basin and overfishing have decimated wild salmon stocks. In particular, the damming of the salmon’s breeding habitat has prevented the salmon populations from returning to their historic levels.

Without a healthy population of salmon, the Southern Residents will not be able to maintain their population, much less increase it.

The lack of food available for the Southern Residents is exacerbated by the pollution of their home waters. The Salish Sea is heavily contaminated with polychlorinated hydrocarbons (PCBs), mercury, lead, and other toxins. These toxins accumulate in the whales’ blubber in a process called biomagnification: as orca eat their prey, their bodies store the toxins that their prey have consumed, and the toxins that the prey’s prey have consumed, and so on. When mother whales do not have enough food to produce milk for their calves, they must break down their blubber to feed their babies. The concentrated toxins from the blubber pass into the milk and then into the calf, who suffers from resulting developmental and health complications.

While these two major problems – food scarcity and pollution – exacerbate each other, the lack of a dependable food source is by far the most pressing.

Luckily, there are active steps we can take, right now, to restore salmon populations.

Enter the Snake River Dams.

The Snake River is the primary tributary of the Columbia River, and the Lower Snake River and the Lower Columbia River both have four dams that spawning salmon must overcome in order to reproduce. Historically, about half the salmon in the Columbia-Snake River Basin were spawned in the Lower Snake River.

Research shows that breaching the Lower Snake River Dams will allow Snake River salmon to rebound to healthy levels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, reduce costs to taxpayers who have already spent a great deal of money attempting to salvage the underperforming dams, and more.

Dam removal has worked very well for ecosystem and salmon restoration in other rivers in the US, including the Elwha River in Washington and the Penobscot River in Maine. It’s clear that dam removal works, and its benefits go beyond salmon recovery.

Unfortunately, despite the research showing the benefits of dam removal on the Lower Snake River and dam removal in general, federal agencies have not yet seriously considered breaching the Lower Snake River Dams as a means of salmon restoration in the Columbia-Snake River Basin.

Salmon and orca researchers alike have expressed extreme frustration with these agencies’ hesitation to do what is needed to save the salmon and the whales, and a federal judge has required federal agencies to come up with a plan that adequately addresses the problems salmon are facing - including breaching the dams if need be.

To be perfectly clear: if salmon populations do not rebound, the Southern Resident Killer Whales will go extinct.

To be perfectly clear again: removing the Lower Snake River Dams gives salmon the best chance to recover.

If the Lower Snake River Dams are not removed, the Southern Residents will slowly and collectively starve to death.

It’s time to take down the Snake River Dams.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:

Call President Obama to demand the breach of the Snake River Dams:

Call 202-456-1111

Tell President Obama’s representative that you support the breaching of the Snake River Dams to restore wild salmon populations in the Columbia-Snake River Basin, rather than continued futile efforts to restore the ecosystem through other means.

That’s it. If you have phone anxiety, write a script and read from it. The person listening won’t mind. Believe me. I’ve been the person listening. They won’t mind.

Send a message to Governor Jay Inslee, or call him at 360-902-4111.

Send a message to Senator Maria Cantwell, or call her at 202-224-3441.

Send a message to Senator Patty Murray, or call her at 202-224-2621.

Sign the petitions against the Snake River Dams.

Support the Center for Whale Research so that they will have the resources they need to assist the Southern Residents in their recovery after the dams are breached.

Support the Whale Museum and their continued efforts to educate the public about the challenges the Southern Residents face. (Whale adoptions make great gifts!)

The Southern Residents are out of time. We need to take down the dams.

Please help if you can.

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