'Orca Sociology' with Howie Garrett, President Orca Network, from the 6th Annual Ocean Life Symposium Oct 2024 (Now in Podcast Format. Visual Version on YouTube)

This week, and in the following few weeks, you’ll be hearing speakers from the 6th Annual Ocean Life Symposium that was broadcast on public radio and shown Live on YouTube Oct. 18, 2024. Sea Storm Studios and Planet Centric Media teamed up with Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study to produce this annual event about the health and future of our oceans and the marine life that lives within them. Today’s speaker is Howie Garrett, President of the Orca Network based on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound Washington near the Seattle Bay Area. In this presentation, Howie raises the little discussed concept of 'Orca sociology'. He starts by sharing a report from the Center for Whale Research.

Orca Network's Whale Sighting and Education Project encourages observation to increase awareness and knowledge about the Southern Resident Community of orcas (J, K and L pods), Bigg’s Transient orcas and other cetaceans, and foster a stewardship ethic to motivate a diverse audience to take action to protect and restore their critical habitat. Orca Network, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is Connecting People with Whales in the Pacific Northwest. They are committed to a diverse, inclusive and equitable environment for their board, staff and volunteers. email Howard Garrett at howard@orcanetwork.org. His wife Susan Berta said, “We are all intricately connected, from tiny plankton to forage fish, salmon, orcas, tall firs and cedars, mountains, rivers and the ocean. It is time to reflect, to reconnect, and to respond as better caretakers of our planet.” 

Here is the longer YouTube

Planet Centric Media (non-profit)
Media for a Healthier Planet: Elevating The Interconnectedness of Life & Value of Natural Resources.

Mendonoma Whale & Seal Study
Founded by Scott & Tree Mercer to document the occurrence, diversity, & behavior of marine mammals.

Sea Storm Studios, Inc.
An audio/visual production company in the Sea Ranch, CA (US)

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

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- Opening music by Int’l composer/pianist Eric Allaman -

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Welcome to the Resilient Earth podcast, where we
talk with speakers from the United States

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and around the world
about the critical issues

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facing our planet and the positive actions
people are taking

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from the tiniest of actions
to the grandest of gestures,

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so that we can continue to thrive

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and survive for generations to come.

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I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, producer and host,
along with co-hosts and co-producers

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Scott & Tree Mercer of Mendonoma Whale &Seal study.

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Located on the South Mendocino and North

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Sonoma coast.

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The music for this podcast

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is by Eric Allman,
an international composer,

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pianist and writer living in The Sea Ranch.

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Discover more of his music,
animations, ballet,

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stage and film work at EricAllaman.com.

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You can find Resilient Earth

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on Spotify, Apple and Amazon podcasts,

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iHeart radio, YouTube, SoundCloud
and wherever you find your podcasts.

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This week
on Resilient Earth Radio and Podcasts,

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you'll be hearing a speaker
from the sixth annual Ocean Life Symposium

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that was broadcast on public
radio and shown live on YouTube

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back in October of 2024. Sea Storm
Studios and Planet Centric Media

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teamed up again with Mendonoma
Whale and Seal Study

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to produce this annual event
about the health and future

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of our oceans and the marine life
that lives within them.

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Today's speaker is Howie Garrett,
president of the Orca network,

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based on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound,

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Washington, near the Seattle Bay area.

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And in this presentation, Howie raises

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the little known
concept of orca sociology.

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He starts by sharing a report
from The Center for Whale Research.

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I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, the host, along
with my co-host Scott & Tree Mercer.

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And that's coming up next right here
on Resilient Earth Radio and Podcast.

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Joining us

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now on the Ocean Life
Symposium is Howie Garrett.

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He's the president of the board
of directors for Orca Network,

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and their goal is to connect people with
whales of the Pacific Northwest.

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And the Orca Network's
Whale Sighting and Education

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project encourages
observation to increase awareness

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and knowledge about the southern resident
community of orcas J, K and L pods,

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big transient orcas,
and also other cetaceans.

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And to foster a stewardship ethic
to motivate a diverse

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audience to take action to protect
and restore their critical habitat.

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He began working as a field researcher
with the center for Whale Research

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on San Juan Island in 1981, and in 2001
he and his wife, Susan Berta,

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founded Orca Network, a nonprofit
organization based on Whidbey Island

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dedicated to raising awareness
of the whales, the Pacific Northwest,

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and the importance of providing them
healthy and safe habitats,

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and their projects include whale sighting
network, educational programs,

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presentations, events, advocacy.

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Langley Whale Center, Central Puget Sound

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Marine Mammal Stranding Network,
and so much more.

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Welcome back,
Howie. Good to have you with us.

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Thank you.

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And good
morning, Leigh Anne, Scott and Tree.

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Good to see you.

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Good to see you, Howie

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Yeah.

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And we're going to now
turn everything over to you

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and give you the next 50 minutes
of presentation.

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Well, okay.

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Thank you.

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I will introduce the concept

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of orca sociology,

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which nobody has ever heard of.

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And, so don't be surprised
if you haven't heard of it,

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but I'd like to start out
with, a very intriguing incident,

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and I'm going to share a screen
This is from October 5th

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This is The Center for Whale
Research encounter report.

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And if you haven't encountered
their encounter reports,

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they're really fascinating.

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Some of the best photos
you'll see anywhere.

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Really intriguing photos.

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And this was, an encounter

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like, like never before.

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This was when,

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Mark Malleson was, way out

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on the west side of the Strait of Juan
de Fuca.

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Actually
on the western edge of Swiftsure Bank.

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Basically out into the Pacific Ocean.

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And, he was looking for L pod

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and especially for little L128,

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which was a calf
that was born probably September 14th

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or 15th and was first seen on September
15th with mom,

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L-90, and looking good.

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But it was a kind of bizarre,

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set of encounters
over the next three days

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because it was just L-90,

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who was, first time mom,
although 31 years old.

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And so, very old to be a first time
mom, probably had had some miscarriages

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or some, babies that, didn't make it
and were never documented before that.

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But, looked

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okay along, San Juan Island,
just the two of them,

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the mom and the calf, you know, up
and down the island for several days.

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Very unusual.

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Without any other L Pod members
anywhere nearby.

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So, it's important to document the calf.

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And so he, on a flat Beaufort,

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zero day went all the way out
to the west side of Swiftsure Bank.

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And he did find them.

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So I want to read this because,

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this is just objective documentation of,

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what happened,
the behavior of the whales.

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So, initially, Mark assumed

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it was the L90 with the L128.

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But upon closer examination of his photos,

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he realized it was L 83

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with a small, emaciated calf.

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L83 is another female,
not directly related, not a sister,

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not in the same macro line with El 90,

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who is the last survivor of her natural line,

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but another female about two years older.

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So about 33, 34.

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And he realized

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it was L83 with a small, emaciated calf.

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Just a couple

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of weeks earlier,
CWR staff had photographed L90’s newborn

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off the west side of San Juan Island.

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But this calf looked far from healthy.

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Rather,
the calf appeared lumpy and skinny.

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Mark quickly sent pictures of the capture

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right eye patch to Dave and Michael,
and they eventually confirmed

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the troubling reality that, yes,
this was indeed the emaciated

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L128 just born like three weeks earlier.

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L90 was nearby,
foraging as L83 approached.

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Mike one that's the name of the boat
with the emaciated calf

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draped across her rostrum

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as she carried the calf down
the side of the boat,

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Mark’s heart sank.

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He was certain
the calf had stopped breathing.

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L83 jiggled the calf

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as if to desperately,
desperately trying to revive it.

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As she continued past the

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stern of Mike one, Mark
thought he saw the calf

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take a faint breath
and returned to her side,

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emotionally drained from the sighting,

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Mark decided at 1323

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it was time to end the encounter
and make the 60 nautical

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mile journey back to Victoria Harbor.

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And I want to mention that Mark was

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who found J35 Tahlequah

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when she had her calf

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that died
within a half hour of birth in 2018.

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He saw that calf basically die
before his eyes.

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And now here's another calf

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that was brought to him.

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So that's what I want to point out.

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What is going on here.

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L83, not the mother,

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Another female carries
this calf over to Mark.

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I mean, that wasn't a random calf

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that was directly to
Mark in his little open boat

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right alongside the

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boat and around to the stern of the boat.

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So what was going on there?

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What I'm going to try to present to you

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is the idea that L83

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was trying to say something,

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that there was a message in that,

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and that is based on my understanding

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of orca sociology.

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So what is that?

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Where did that come from?

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And am I just trying to be a smartass?

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Did I come up with something?

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You know, that sounds, very intellectual,

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but, has no actual basis.

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Well, we try to describe this
because I really came upon it honestly.

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And it goes back to 1963,

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when I graduated high school

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and enrolled at University of New Mexico.

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And, I had no idea what I was going to do
there.

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I didn't really have a major in mind.

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I didn't know,
what I wanted to be in life.

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I didn't know how to be an adult, really.

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So I was just taking courses.

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And one was a sociology course.

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And, when it came time for the final,

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I passed in my, my final exam and,

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the after the grading,

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the professor came up to me
in this 400 seat lecture hall

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and told me
that I had gotten the best score

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in the class for anybody.

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Which blew me away
because I was never an A student.

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I have to admit,
I wasn't all that highly motivated.

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So that set my course right then.

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Okay, I am going to study sociology.

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I'm going to major in sociology
because I can pass the courses.

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I can I can get through college
if I major in sociology.

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So I did that, and two years later,

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I got an invitation from,

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our other brother, Rick, in Berkeley,

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where he and Ken, my older brother,
Ken Balcomb,

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had an apartment, saying,
why don't you come on out?

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And that was 1965, which,

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you may recall, was the height of the

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free speech movement
and all of the hubbub at

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Berkeley
and I was kind of interested in that.

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So, it was a good move.

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I moved to Berkeley
and enrolled at UC Berkeley and

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my first class

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was with a man named Herbert Bloomer

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who wrote the book literally

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called Symbolic Interactionism (a sociological theory that focuses on how people use symbols and shared meanings 
to create social worlds).

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Which is a subdiscipline of sociology
that was founded

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at the University of Chicago
in the 1920s.

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And, it was kind of an offshoot
of sociology because it was sociology’s

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answer to Charles Darwin's
Origin of Species,

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because previously

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sociology studied the structure
and the functions of society.

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But Charles Darwin
sort of put the science on the spot

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and said, well, you know,
how did it evolve out of nature?

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How did the humans societies come to be
and how do they,

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perpetuate themselves and maintain and,

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and, to continue, to build

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institutions and traditions
and everything we think of as society,

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out of nature, out of our ancestors,
our primate ancestors.

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How did that happen?

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And so this theory

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is, called symbolic interactionism.

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And I was fascinated by it
because what it helped

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explain to me is how the world works,
which was such a huge mystery to me.

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I did not know,

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how how, how to live in the world,
how to be how to adult,

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how to how to manage, how to get jobs,
how to build relationships,

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how to how to, succeed in life.

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And so I hope
that this would give me some answers.

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And I think it sort of did.

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So I was just absolutely engrossed.

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And I didn't actually

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get my degree until 1980.

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I, traveled I went on my own sabbatical.

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You could put it that way.

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Took some time off
and, dropped back into college

00:15:18:07 - 00:15:21:10
when I was in Colorado
Springs at Colorado College,

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which is kind of, the

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Ivy League of the Rockies, you know,
kind of private liberal university,

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which had, seminar type classes,

00:15:34:28 - 00:15:39:19
which,
you know, very small 15, 20 students.

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So a lot of time
to dwell into a particular field.

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And, of course,
I dwelled into symbolic interactionism

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as sort of the way

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that, that humans

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interact, using language, of course,
but anything else

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that is meaningful, meaningful gestures,

00:16:03:15 - 00:16:06:01
you know, anything from,

00:16:06:01 - 00:16:09:10
you know, how you comb your hair, how you choose
the clothes you wear.

00:16:09:10 - 00:16:13:25
Everything is symbolic and meaningful
in some way or another.

00:16:13:25 - 00:16:18:07
And it's all about interacting
and building,

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institutions.

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And the whole structure of society evolves
out of that.

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But it's a particular,

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capacity that has to happen.

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And so I

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was just totally fascinated by that.

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And that year, not long after I graduated,

00:16:43:19 - 00:16:46:19
Ken Balcomb, my brother,

00:16:46:25 - 00:16:50:04
came to Denver.

00:16:50:11 - 00:16:55:24
He had been studying
humpbacks, doing, you know, photo I.D.

00:16:55:26 - 00:16:59:06
studies with humpbacks in the Caribbean
and off Greenland.

00:17:00:04 - 00:17:03:22
And he, came through

00:17:03:23 - 00:17:08:22
Denver, so, and stopped off
his plane, had a stopover.

00:17:08:22 - 00:17:13:07
So we had lunch, and he said,
why don't you come out to Friday Harbor?

00:17:13:25 - 00:17:18:23
Because he had started
orca Survey in 1976.

00:17:19:08 - 00:17:22:13
So he was four years into the study
at that point

00:17:23:06 - 00:17:26:06
and, needed some administrative help.

00:17:26:28 - 00:17:29:28
And, he asked me to volunteer.

00:17:31:03 - 00:17:35:03
He could, find me a place to sleep
and, feed me meals.

00:17:35:03 - 00:17:39:05
And, so I figured, well,
that's the best offer I've gotten so far.

00:17:39:05 - 00:17:40:16
So I'll take it.

00:17:40:16 - 00:17:45:21
So we'll go up to Friday
Harbor and, study whales with him.

00:17:45:29 - 00:17:50:29
And I really didn't have any background
in whales up to then.

00:17:51:08 - 00:17:55:18
I had visited in
and I had seen orcas or that, but,

00:17:55:29 - 00:18:01:05
I really I didn't have any particular
interest or knowledge about them at all.

00:18:02:13 - 00:18:03:24
So I was just this

00:18:03:24 - 00:18:07:05
sort of blank slate
as far as whale studies,

00:18:07:20 - 00:18:10:21
but filled with these sociological

00:18:10:22 - 00:18:14:27
theories and concepts and,
and this way of, of seeing

00:18:14:27 - 00:18:18:17
that I had what they called
the sociological imagination.

00:18:21:09 - 00:18:24:19
So, of course that was useless out there.

00:18:24:19 - 00:18:27:21
And my job was,

00:18:28:05 - 00:18:33:10
just to, go out in the boats
and take photographs

00:18:33:10 - 00:18:37:10
with the long lens and get the photo
ID just for the catalogs.

00:18:37:10 - 00:18:43:01
And that contributes to the demographic
studies and builds the whole population

00:18:43:01 - 00:18:48:12
structure analysis and,
so that was fascinating.

00:18:48:12 - 00:18:49:23
But that was 19.

00:18:49:23 - 00:18:52:23
My 1st season was 1981,

00:18:53:08 - 00:18:57:08
and I was there for three years
and then went to New England.

00:18:58:07 - 00:19:02:18
But in those three years,
those were very,

00:19:02:23 - 00:19:06:07
very energetic, very fertile years

00:19:06:07 - 00:19:10:10
for knowledge, for understanding orcas.

00:19:10:25 - 00:19:13:12
Because the field studies begun by Mike

00:19:13:12 - 00:19:16:25
big and in 1972 73,

00:19:17:08 - 00:19:20:01
who founded pioneered the whole photo

00:19:20:01 - 00:19:25:02
identification method
that has proven absolutely invaluable for

00:19:25:20 - 00:19:30:09
not just whale studies,
but every animal, every species on

00:19:30:09 - 00:19:34:02
the planet can be studied
like photo identification.

00:19:34:02 - 00:19:37:04
But he he pioneered it and it became

00:19:37:04 - 00:19:42:06
very, enlightening,
just incredibly useful

00:19:42:06 - 00:19:46:04
for seeing the demographics,

00:19:46:28 - 00:19:51:01
the community structure,
the natural lines,

00:19:51:27 - 00:19:56:14
and several absolutely astounding
findings

00:19:56:27 - 00:19:59:19
were just coming into focus

00:19:59:19 - 00:20:03:06
in the early 1980s, 80, 81, 82,

00:20:04:20 - 00:20:07:28
such as, that the offspring

00:20:07:28 - 00:20:12:00
never leave their mothers side
in southern residents.

00:20:12:10 - 00:20:14:17
Of course, in other communities.

00:20:14:17 - 00:20:17:17
Now, we know that there are exceptions
to that rule.

00:20:18:06 - 00:20:21:28
But for southern residents,
the male and female offspring

00:20:22:10 - 00:20:27:22
grew up, became adults
and, stayed very close to their mothers.

00:20:28:00 - 00:20:31:02
And so that was fascinating

00:20:31:02 - 00:20:34:02
because that was unheard of.

00:20:34:21 - 00:20:37:03
And John Ford was had

00:20:37:03 - 00:20:41:15
just published his studies
on what he called dialects,

00:20:42:19 - 00:20:46:07
which was that there were variations
between the different pods

00:20:46:28 - 00:20:50:28
so that some pods have particular
signature

00:20:51:10 - 00:20:54:02
whistles that they use a lot.

00:20:54:02 - 00:20:57:02
And so you can ID the pod

00:20:57:14 - 00:21:01:18
by the acoustics, which was fascinating.

00:21:01:18 - 00:21:06:22
But he also determined
that the different communities

00:21:07:15 - 00:21:10:06
as the northern and the southern resident

00:21:10:06 - 00:21:13:13
communities, which are very similar in,

00:21:14:16 - 00:21:15:28
in many ways in

00:21:15:28 - 00:21:21:19
their diets and everything else
about them, but are completely distinct

00:21:21:19 - 00:21:26:12
and separate and do not interact
and have completely different

00:21:28:02 - 00:21:31:21
vocal vocabularies that their acoustic,

00:21:32:13 - 00:21:35:04
communications,

00:21:35:04 - 00:21:38:04
sound completely different.

00:21:39:18 - 00:21:42:18
And in the early 80s,

00:21:43:07 - 00:21:45:29
the first realizations began

00:21:45:29 - 00:21:50:29
to dawn on the researchers
that there were two completely

00:21:50:29 - 00:21:54:14
distinct populations in the same habitat.

00:21:55:00 - 00:21:57:28
In Patrick, populations

00:21:57:28 - 00:22:01:04
of orcas
that had nothing to do with each other,

00:22:02:01 - 00:22:05:02
residents and transients,
as they were called.

00:22:07:03 - 00:22:09:03
At first, for the first several years

00:22:09:03 - 00:22:13:05
they thought, well, to the one
to the transients that they encountered

00:22:13:27 - 00:22:17:02
must have been kicked
out, must have been rogue whales

00:22:18:11 - 00:22:21:11
that, were not,

00:22:22:00 - 00:22:23:21
somehow accepted.

00:22:23:21 - 00:22:27:12
Maybe, you know, males
there lost the competitions or something,

00:22:27:12 - 00:22:31:19
but that didn't fit what they saw
so that they began to realize that, oh,

00:22:31:20 - 00:22:35:03
these are a completely separate
and distinct population,

00:22:36:07 - 00:22:39:11
and they had seen enough to

00:22:39:12 - 00:22:42:22
at least suspect
that they had completely different diet,

00:22:43:17 - 00:22:48:00
that the transients had only mammals,
and that the residents had only fish.

00:22:48:15 - 00:22:50:03
They didn't phrase it that way.

00:22:50:03 - 00:22:53:06
They said specialized or primarily

00:22:53:06 - 00:22:56:06
only mammals and fish effectively but,

00:22:57:00 - 00:23:00:00
but that's what they were beginning
to see.

00:23:02:00 - 00:23:04:28
Well, I'm there with this sociological

00:23:04:28 - 00:23:07:28
imagination, and I'm seeing,

00:23:08:13 - 00:23:12:19
well, okay, they're using some kind
of vocal communication,

00:23:13:09 - 00:23:19:05
and they are supporting themselves
or have in ancient

00:23:19:05 - 00:23:25:02
history,
sorted themselves into separate cultures.

00:23:26:12 - 00:23:29:09
These were cultures,

00:23:29:09 - 00:23:31:11
as I was understanding.

00:23:31:11 - 00:23:34:13
And of course, that was, totally,

00:23:35:16 - 00:23:37:12
you know, beyond the pale.

00:23:37:12 - 00:23:40:12
Nobody was talking about cultures.

00:23:40:16 - 00:23:43:06
It was completely, you know,

00:23:43:06 - 00:23:49:03
these were just animals,
and you just study them objectively, study

00:23:49:03 - 00:23:55:09
their population dynamics, their lifespan,
their reproductive rates, their,

00:23:55:26 - 00:24:00:09
you know, their association
patterns, their behavior, their diets.

00:24:02:20 - 00:24:05:20
But nobody was talking about culture.

00:24:08:15 - 00:24:09:26
So at this point,

00:24:09:26 - 00:24:12:26
what I would like to do
is share a screen again,

00:24:12:29 - 00:24:15:29
but this time go to my presentation.

00:24:16:22 - 00:24:21:17
(looking for presentation starting point)

00:24:25:21 - 00:24:29:13
And you're listening
to the voice of Howie

00:24:29:13 - 00:24:32:18
Garrett, who's the president of the board
of directors for Orca Network.

00:24:32:18 - 00:24:35:13
And now we do see your presentation.

00:24:35:13 - 00:24:38:13
Yeah. Okay. That's great.

00:24:38:21 - 00:24:39:02
All right.

00:24:39:02 - 00:24:43:05
So this actually was given several years
ago, and,

00:24:43:10 - 00:24:47:20
it was, about Toki

00:24:47:22 - 00:24:51:21
Lolita in, Miami at the time.

00:24:52:10 - 00:24:56:19
So I started with the captive audience
and her natural history.

00:24:57:10 - 00:25:00:10
And what

00:25:00:18 - 00:25:04:28
I tried to produce this presentation

00:25:04:28 - 00:25:07:28
in 2016, in Friday Harbor.

00:25:08:25 - 00:25:11:25
And, so I was introducing

00:25:12:28 - 00:25:15:28
the sociology of orcas.

00:25:16:14 - 00:25:17:25
And I want to say here,

00:25:17:25 - 00:25:20:25
just in case there's, any concerns

00:25:20:28 - 00:25:23:22
that this does not replace

00:25:23:22 - 00:25:26:27
the the demographic studies everything

00:25:27:03 - 00:25:31:06
that is still ongoing
in terms of population studies,

00:25:31:24 - 00:25:35:14
the dynamics, Josh's presentation,

00:25:35:29 - 00:25:39:13
this is all important information.

00:25:40:16 - 00:25:42:24
That is the context.

00:25:42:24 - 00:25:45:24
This is the foundation for

00:25:46:02 - 00:25:50:03
for what I'm going to try to introduce,
which is a new paradigm,

00:25:50:15 - 00:25:54:01
but it's built on the decades of research,

00:25:55:11 - 00:25:57:00
that has been done.

00:25:57:00 - 00:26:02:12
The population studies
that we have already established

00:26:02:12 - 00:26:05:12
and documented.

00:26:06:18 - 00:26:12:25
And, You talk about the sociology

00:26:12:25 - 00:26:15:25
of Orcas is, kind of a taboo.

00:26:16:06 - 00:26:21:26
And part of the science of sociology
is taboos.

00:26:21:26 - 00:26:23:00
What are taboos?

00:26:23:00 - 00:26:26:04
Every culture has them, many of them.

00:26:26:29 - 00:26:29:29
So, that will come into play here.

00:26:31:10 - 00:26:35:23
But as I was saying, 
nobody talked about culturing whales

00:26:35:23 - 00:26:41:10
and dolphins in the 1980s
or 90s until 2001.

00:26:42:01 - 00:26:45:20
And that was when, Ruth Rendell
and Howe Whitehead

00:26:46:24 - 00:26:50:22
wrote and published this paper
in the very prestigious Journal

00:26:50:22 - 00:26:54:01
of Behavioral and Brain Sciences called

00:26:54:01 - 00:26:57:01
Culture in Whales and Dolphins.

00:26:57:01 - 00:27:00:07
And what they said
right there in the abstract is,

00:27:01:22 - 00:27:04:22
hello, the complex and stable

00:27:05:12 - 00:27:10:04
and behavioral cultures
of sympatric groups of killer whales

00:27:10:04 - 00:27:15:06
or signs or,
appear to have no parallel outside humans

00:27:15:23 - 00:27:20:04
and represent an independent evolution
and cultural faculties.

00:27:21:11 - 00:27:25:22
And that gave me, a big sigh of relief,

00:27:25:22 - 00:27:28:27
because that was basically what

00:27:28:27 - 00:27:31:27
I had been holding inside,

00:27:31:28 - 00:27:34:28
thinking and reality checking

00:27:35:02 - 00:27:38:02
for almost 20 years at that point

00:27:38:29 - 00:27:43:07
that yes,
they do live as members of cultures.

00:27:43:07 - 00:27:47:19
They do live in learned cultures
that they they,

00:27:47:26 - 00:27:51:28
they, that they,
they learn from their ancestors

00:27:52:07 - 00:27:55:09
and from their families
and from other members

00:27:55:09 - 00:27:59:20
of their cultures. But.

00:28:01:25 - 00:28:03:07
One thing that,

00:28:03:07 - 00:28:06:07
Rendell and Whitehead make clear

00:28:06:13 - 00:28:09:19
is that
they did not want to talk about language.

00:28:10:16 - 00:28:13:19
They say that, yes, language is essential

00:28:14:03 - 00:28:17:13
for human cultures, but there is no data

00:28:17:13 - 00:28:21:01
and no basis for speculating on

00:28:21:10 - 00:28:24:29
whether or not Orcas use language.

00:28:24:29 - 00:28:28:09
So they punted
completely on that issue. So

00:28:29:13 - 00:28:30:20
what they did

00:28:30:20 - 00:28:33:20
was establish the objective fact,

00:28:33:20 - 00:28:36:20
the the the field reality

00:28:37:05 - 00:28:40:05
that Orcas are found in cultures.

00:28:41:13 - 00:28:44:13
So that was a big start.

00:28:44:23 - 00:28:52:16
But it didn't seem to really trigger

00:28:52:16 - 00:28:55:16
any,

00:28:56:03 - 00:28:58:18
deeper look into what

00:28:58:18 - 00:29:02:16
what makes a culture
how how do cultures evolve?

00:29:03:11 - 00:29:05:25
And what what are they?

00:29:05:25 - 00:29:07:03
What keeps them together?

00:29:07:03 - 00:29:09:21
What maintains cultures?

00:29:09:21 - 00:29:13:16
Let's see, I've got, the top of this.

00:29:13:22 - 00:29:15:23
There's got it. There's a banner there.

00:29:15:23 - 00:29:18:20
You know,
there's a way to get rid of that.

00:29:18:20 - 00:29:21:20
I think,

00:29:22:18 - 00:29:24:01
Well, let's see.

00:29:24:01 - 00:29:25:10
Okay.

00:29:25:10 - 00:29:30:02
But anyway, there were other studies
that sort of, ventured

00:29:30:02 - 00:29:33:12
into talking about culture,
cultural identity

00:29:33:25 - 00:29:36:25
that's important in this species
in both the North,

00:29:38:17 - 00:29:41:15
north, the North Atlantic and the Pacific.

00:29:41:15 - 00:29:44:19
That was a study from 2016.

00:29:45:15 - 00:29:49:16
And,

00:29:50:14 - 00:29:52:13
the sperm whale study,

00:29:52:13 - 00:29:55:19
shows that, sperm whales form

00:29:55:19 - 00:29:59:15
clans with diverse cultures and languages.

00:30:00:06 - 00:30:03:06
So at least in sort of the popular media,

00:30:03:08 - 00:30:06:02
there is some, discussion

00:30:06:02 - 00:30:09:18
of, of whale cultures,

00:30:09:26 - 00:30:12:26
including the idea of languages.

00:30:16:16 - 00:30:18:17
So the question

00:30:18:17 - 00:30:21:16
presented to the Cetological community

00:30:21:16 - 00:30:24:19
was

00:30:26:06 - 00:30:29:04
how did this happen?

00:30:29:04 - 00:30:31:09
How did how did

00:30:31:09 - 00:30:34:09
Orca cultures develop?

00:30:34:13 - 00:30:38:25
It was
and still is a very big question.

00:30:38:25 - 00:30:42:29
About the whole issue of speciation

00:30:42:29 - 00:30:46:12
should there be separate species
and, you know,

00:30:48:02 - 00:30:51:10
there was a, a big debate

00:30:51:25 - 00:30:57:10
and a proposal to designate, residents
and transients

00:30:57:10 - 00:31:00:10
as separate species, give them new

00:31:00:27 - 00:31:03:27
Latin names,

00:31:04:08 - 00:31:08:15
and, that was by a whisker

00:31:08:15 - 00:31:14:07
that was, declined at the,
society for Marine Mammalogy.

00:31:15:26 - 00:31:18:26
But it sort of left the issue open.

00:31:20:17 - 00:31:24:21
But at least there is
this understanding that

00:31:26:22 - 00:31:30:15
Culture can guide evolution

00:31:30:28 - 00:31:34:28
that the the evolution of the species

00:31:34:28 - 00:31:38:18
of the different communities of orcas,

00:31:39:12 - 00:31:44:22
are determined or at least in, the great

00:31:45:23 - 00:31:47:25
to a great extent effected

00:31:47:25 - 00:31:51:28
by their culture, their cultural rules,

00:31:52:16 - 00:31:58:04
the taboos, for mating in particular,

00:31:58:21 - 00:32:01:21
that it's, you know, internal

00:32:02:04 - 00:32:04:26
made it mating practices,

00:32:04:26 - 00:32:09:24
so that, residents don't mate
with transients or with northern residents

00:32:09:24 - 00:32:15:19
or with any other community,
all maintain their insulation

00:32:15:19 - 00:32:18:19
and, cohesion.

00:32:19:16 - 00:32:20:25
And those are rules.

00:32:20:25 - 00:32:25:03
And those over time,
over thousands of generations,

00:32:25:22 - 00:32:28:29
affect
the evolution of each of those species

00:32:29:24 - 00:32:34:08
of those communities, I should say,
although are they species or not?

00:32:34:08 - 00:32:35:23
That's still an open question.

00:32:37:03 - 00:32:40:03
So we have slight

00:32:40:16 - 00:32:42:14
morphological differences.

00:32:42:14 - 00:32:45:22
The, the, you know, pigmentation,

00:32:46:18 - 00:32:50:10
the shapes of different, whales,
the sizes,

00:32:51:00 - 00:32:54:19
are different in different, communities.

00:32:57:19 - 00:33:00:04
So that was in the literature.

00:33:00:04 - 00:33:04:20
Orcas are the first non-humans
whose evolution is driven by culture.

00:33:05:15 - 00:33:08:14
This is 2016.

00:33:08:14 - 00:33:11:14
This is, becoming apparent.

00:33:12:06 - 00:33:15:04
So my problem

00:33:15:04 - 00:33:18:08
is that
I have this background in sociology,

00:33:18:08 - 00:33:21:08
but I'm now immersed in cetology,

00:33:21:23 - 00:33:24:27
and there is a big gap in between.

00:33:25:22 - 00:33:30:00
And sociologists
don't talk to cetologists, or vice versa.

00:33:30:23 - 00:33:36:01
They just, they speak different languages
and don't associate at all.

00:33:36:01 - 00:33:39:01
They're like residents and transients.

00:33:39:08 - 00:33:41:28
So what I want to do is

00:33:41:28 - 00:33:45:09
leap across that gap and,

00:33:45:17 - 00:33:48:12
see how sociology can help

00:33:48:12 - 00:33:51:20
inform cetology and,

00:33:52:29 - 00:33:55:29
vice versa.

00:33:58:05 - 00:34:02:23
So. This question

00:34:03:28 - 00:34:06:19
is, how did these

00:34:06:19 - 00:34:10:16
intact, cohesive
communities of Orcas develop?

00:34:11:28 - 00:34:13:15
Because

00:34:13:15 - 00:34:16:06
that's not found anywhere else in nature.

00:34:16:06 - 00:34:20:28
You won't find two populations
of black bears on the same mountain

00:34:21:19 - 00:34:25:16
that are completely separate and distinct
and have different diets

00:34:25:16 - 00:34:28:16
and never interbreed.

00:34:29:21 - 00:34:33:19
It's just not found in wildlife biology
anywhere else.

00:34:33:19 - 00:34:37:12
Other species of whales, toothed whales

00:34:37:12 - 00:34:40:12
at least may have this, but,

00:34:41:19 - 00:34:43:27
it's just not found
anywhere else in nature.

00:34:43:27 - 00:34:46:18
So what's the explanation?

00:34:46:18 - 00:34:50:10
So here was a paper
that argued that they are undergoing

00:34:50:10 - 00:34:55:07
ecological speciation
as a result of dietary specializations.

00:34:55:07 - 00:34:57:09
In other words,

00:34:57:09 - 00:35:00:09
first came the dietary specializations.

00:35:01:06 - 00:35:04:07
And that separated different communities.

00:35:04:23 - 00:35:09:06
And so then they just maintained
those separations,

00:35:10:08 - 00:35:13:08
as cultures.

00:35:14:07 - 00:35:16:16
Okay. That's one theory.

00:35:16:16 - 00:35:18:26
Dietary specializations.

00:35:18:26 - 00:35:22:10
And the other theory, came out in 2015.

00:35:22:28 - 00:35:26:02
Our data suggests that glacial cycles

00:35:26:12 - 00:35:31:20
influenced local populations
and have played a major role

00:35:31:20 - 00:35:36:00
in geographic radiations,
diversification and speciation.

00:35:36:01 - 00:35:41:13
And so maybe they got separated
by glaciers or glacial cycles.

00:35:42:09 - 00:35:45:09
And then the glaciers thawed.

00:35:46:00 - 00:35:50:17
But those separations continue
for some reason.

00:35:51:00 - 00:35:54:00
Well, that's not well explained.

00:35:54:08 - 00:35:58:01
Just an attempt
to explain the origins here.

00:35:59:14 - 00:36:01:17
So it seems like there is

00:36:01:17 - 00:36:05:10
this grasping for a cause,

00:36:05:10 - 00:36:09:03
a original cause for the separation

00:36:09:03 - 00:36:13:29
into the different communities of orcas
that we see

00:36:13:29 - 00:36:17:28
that are very well established
and documented around the world.

00:36:20:06 - 00:36:22:21
And here is this,

00:36:22:21 - 00:36:25:11
great graphic by Uka Gorter

00:36:25:11 - 00:36:28:13
that's now about ten years old, but that,

00:36:29:00 - 00:36:31:24
goes into the northern hemisphere,

00:36:31:24 - 00:36:35:04
southern hemisphere in the main

00:36:35:19 - 00:36:38:27
communities, of orcas that,

00:36:40:01 - 00:36:41:07
were known at that time.

00:36:41:07 - 00:36:44:07
There's a few more known now.

00:36:44:19 - 00:36:48:13
I was excited to hear a couple of weeks
ago of the discovery,

00:36:48:28 - 00:36:53:08
actually, from photos that go back
almost 20 years.

00:36:53:08 - 00:36:58:04
But, the scientific description
that Ingrid Visser wrote up

00:36:58:25 - 00:37:01:25
of a population of Orcas in Fiji,

00:37:02:20 - 00:37:05:20
or around the Fiji Islands.

00:37:05:26 - 00:37:08:28
And, one unique characteristic there

00:37:08:28 - 00:37:12:28
is that some of them have no saddle
patch at all.

00:37:13:10 - 00:37:16:20
There are a lot of variations
in saddle patch, as we can see.

00:37:16:20 - 00:37:22:08
But, this was the first community
I've heard of that had no saddle patch.

00:37:22:08 - 00:37:25:03
So they're still being discovered.

00:37:25:03 - 00:37:27:21
Different communities of orchids
around the world.

00:37:27:21 - 00:37:30:19
They inhabit every ocean in the world,

00:37:30:19 - 00:37:33:15
but they have not all
been described for science.

00:37:37:28 - 00:37:41:07
And about
ten years ago, this issue of the.

00:37:41:18 - 00:37:46:02
ACS newsletter
the killer whale, the top, top predator

00:37:46:18 - 00:37:49:18
edited by Robert Pittman,

00:37:50:24 - 00:37:54:17
really went a long way toward
describing the different communities

00:37:54:17 - 00:37:59:09
and sort of the whole phenomenon
of what our killer whale,

00:38:00:03 - 00:38:03:28
what is the radiation of killer whale

00:38:04:28 - 00:38:07:28
communities, cultures around the world.

00:38:09:05 - 00:38:11:22
And he says

00:38:11:22 - 00:38:14:25
in this, issue that the term eco type

00:38:15:27 - 00:38:19:28
then merely recognizes
scientific uncertainty

00:38:20:15 - 00:38:23:15
with regard to killer whale diversity.

00:38:23:17 - 00:38:27:18
And until we know more about killer
whale speciation,

00:38:28:16 - 00:38:32:13
was it dietary specialization
or was it glaciation?

00:38:32:13 - 00:38:35:21
you know,
what separated the communities originally,

00:38:36:21 - 00:38:41:10
the term eco type will remain
a placeholder or a work in progress.

00:38:41:10 - 00:38:44:13
So it's a word that describes

00:38:45:12 - 00:38:49:14
the different communities,
but it doesn't really describe them.

00:38:49:14 - 00:38:51:25
It just names
them, it's just a label for them.

00:38:53:12 - 00:38:54:19
And here, of

00:38:54:19 - 00:38:57:19
course, this is the well-known distinction

00:38:57:19 - 00:39:00:19
between Bigg’s killer whales and Residents,

00:39:00:21 - 00:39:03:28
their diets or vocalizations or sizes.

00:39:04:20 - 00:39:08:22
No dispersal from either
and no recruitment.

00:39:09:00 - 00:39:12:29
They don't compete for food,
but the result is Sympatric 

00:39:12:29 - 00:39:17:11
speciation in the same habitat,
crossing paths all the time.

00:39:17:26 - 00:39:20:04
Very well aware of each other.

00:39:20:04 - 00:39:24:14
But no interaction, no association at all.

00:39:26:29 - 00:39:29:18
And of course, this is a really

00:39:29:18 - 00:39:32:29
burning question in, in cetology

00:39:33:12 - 00:39:36:04
understanding orca culture.

00:39:36:04 - 00:39:39:19
The was by, Lisa Stiffler 2011.

00:39:40:11 - 00:39:45:09
Scientists have found increasing evidence
that culture shapes what Orcas

00:39:45:18 - 00:39:48:18
and how orcas eat what they do for fun,

00:39:48:23 - 00:39:51:09
even their choice of mates.

00:39:51:09 - 00:39:56:00
So that's established. They live in these complex

00:39:56:04 - 00:39:59:00
Learned cultures

00:39:59:00 - 00:40:02:08
and how how does that happen?

00:40:04:24 - 00:40:07:00
Well, we can look at maybe

00:40:07:00 - 00:40:10:17
some of the behaviors,
some of these social behaviors.

00:40:10:17 - 00:40:13:17
And this is about as good a photo

00:40:13:17 - 00:40:17:02
as you can get of, a ceremony.

00:40:18:06 - 00:40:21:10
Orcas have rituals, they have ceremony.

00:40:22:04 - 00:40:24:13
And one is,

00:40:24:13 - 00:40:27:13
a greeting ceremony when pods meet up.

00:40:27:23 - 00:40:31:17
Sometimes,
I mean, this, I've seen it a few times

00:40:31:17 - 00:40:35:24
back in the 90s, but,
it's it's pretty rare.

00:40:35:24 - 00:40:38:15
Pretty hard to see.
Maybe it happens out in the Pacific.

00:40:38:15 - 00:40:41:15
Out of sight now where they are more often now.

00:40:42:20 - 00:40:45:26
But they line up in their pod formation.

00:40:46:15 - 00:40:50:27
K pod, L pod, J pod in separate lines

00:40:51:18 - 00:40:54:18
facing each other for several minutes,

00:40:55:14 - 00:40:58:04
and then those lines dissolve

00:40:58:04 - 00:41:02:19
and they meet in the middle,
but not all in one group,

00:41:02:19 - 00:41:05:19
in a whole lot of separate groups,
each having,

00:41:06:09 - 00:41:10:25
from what I witnessed, 15
to 20 or so individuals

00:41:11:14 - 00:41:15:03
that, are rolling around, a lot of,

00:41:15:03 - 00:41:19:26
you know, kinetic,
touchy feely contact and, and,

00:41:21:00 - 00:41:23:23
it's mostly underwater and it's very loud.

00:41:23:23 - 00:41:26:00
If you listen to the hydrophones.

00:41:26:00 - 00:41:29:00
It's the loudest cocktail party
you've ever been to.

00:41:29:15 - 00:41:32:15
And eventually
they have to come up and breathe,

00:41:33:05 - 00:41:36:21
and then they disperse and meet up

00:41:36:21 - 00:41:41:28
into different groupings
with a different set of individuals.

00:41:42:10 - 00:41:45:10
Always a mixture of different pods still.

00:41:45:20 - 00:41:51:10
And then having this is sort of, 
ceremonial whatever they're doing.

00:41:51:10 - 00:41:54:10
Very, you know, close contact,

00:41:55:01 - 00:41:58:01
behavior underwater.

00:41:58:25 - 00:42:01:25
And then you eventually rise up and go off

00:42:01:25 - 00:42:04:26
and form into new and different groups.

00:42:06:04 - 00:42:09:02
And this is how it looks

00:42:09:02 - 00:42:12:02
when they come up for air.

00:42:12:12 - 00:42:14:15
I don't recommend this boat behavior,

00:42:14:15 - 00:42:17:29
but this was, what was seen,

00:42:18:24 - 00:42:22:23
much more commonly, in the 70s

00:42:22:23 - 00:42:26:28
and 80s and into the 90s
and very rarely today.

00:42:26:28 - 00:42:31:01
This kind of very
close association behavior

00:42:32:07 - 00:42:35:07
does happen, but it's rare.

00:42:37:25 - 00:42:40:21
So back to this study,

00:42:40:21 - 00:42:45:10
from Luke Randall
and Hal Whitehead in 2001.

00:42:46:08 - 00:42:49:04
And this was what I mentioned before.

00:42:49:04 - 00:42:53:08
Human culture is intimately linked
to both language and symbolism,

00:42:53:15 - 00:42:57:07
but there is currently no empirical basis
for discussing the role

00:42:57:07 - 00:43:01:00
or non role of language in symbolism
in cetacean culture.

00:43:01:23 - 00:43:05:14
Well, I would like to discuss the role
of language

00:43:05:14 - 00:43:08:14
and symbolism, in cetacean culture.

00:43:09:09 - 00:43:12:09
And that depends on

00:43:12:27 - 00:43:15:03
the concepts

00:43:15:03 - 00:43:18:03
that I learned in sociology

00:43:18:03 - 00:43:21:20
applied to study of Orcas.

00:43:22:09 - 00:43:25:04
Because of course human culture

00:43:25:04 - 00:43:28:04
and sociology are very much,

00:43:29:13 - 00:43:31:24
dependent on your,

00:43:31:24 - 00:43:35:19
you know, intertwined
with the idea of language and symbolism

00:43:36:12 - 00:43:39:08
as being the guiding forces

00:43:39:08 - 00:43:42:08
that create cultures.

00:43:42:25 - 00:43:43:22
And this was,

00:43:43:22 - 00:43:46:22
my teacher, this was Herbert Bloomer.

00:43:47:05 - 00:43:48:28
He wrote the book on it.

00:43:48:28 - 00:43:51:25
Like I said. And these were his

00:43:52:28 - 00:43:55:26
sort of, basic principles

00:43:55:26 - 00:44:00:17
of what is symbolic
interactionism? How do humans interact?

00:44:00:17 - 00:44:03:17
And of course,
the whole field of sociology

00:44:04:16 - 00:44:08:11
would never allow that any other animal on

00:44:08:11 - 00:44:12:13
the planet could possibly be
practicing symbolic interactionism.

00:44:12:13 - 00:44:14:29
This was all

00:44:14:29 - 00:44:17:29
totally about humans.

00:44:18:05 - 00:44:23:10
We asked for things on the basis
of the meanings that things have for us.

00:44:23:25 - 00:44:28:05
These meanings become modified
through an interpretive process.

00:44:29:13 - 00:44:32:28
The meanings of such things
derive from the social interaction

00:44:32:28 - 00:44:35:28
each one has with others,

00:44:36:16 - 00:44:38:06
and Blumer contrasted

00:44:38:06 - 00:44:43:23
this process with behaviorist
explanations of human behavior.

00:44:44:00 - 00:44:47:00
We could substitute orca behavior,

00:44:47:06 - 00:44:50:06
which does not allow for interpretation

00:44:50:06 - 00:44:53:06
between stimulus and response

00:44:53:18 - 00:44:55:15
when orcas are interacting.

00:44:55:15 - 00:44:57:28
In other words,

00:44:57:28 - 00:45:01:15
if we apply these concepts, they are

00:45:02:22 - 00:45:05:05
communicating meanings to each other,

00:45:05:05 - 00:45:08:05
and those meanings are interpreted

00:45:08:17 - 00:45:12:12
by each member, each listener, each,

00:45:12:29 - 00:45:16:24
each receiver of the communication.

00:45:19:01 - 00:45:20:27
And limited

00:45:20:27 - 00:45:23:27
symbolic interaction
is possible for humans

00:45:23:27 - 00:45:30:12
because we have highly developed brains,
we rely heavily on society,

00:45:30:12 - 00:45:35:11
and we are able to make many subtle
and sophisticated sounds.

00:45:37:00 - 00:45:38:27
Well...check

00:45:38:27 - 00:45:41:27
big brains. Orca brains are five times

00:45:42:07 - 00:45:45:07
the size of human brains.

00:45:45:19 - 00:45:48:01
They rely heavily on society.

00:45:48:01 - 00:45:51:01
They are probably the most social mammal,

00:45:51:17 - 00:45:53:28
known to science.

00:45:53:28 - 00:45:56:20
And orcas are certainly able to make

00:45:56:20 - 00:45:59:27
many subtle and sophisticated sounds.

00:46:00:14 - 00:46:05:00
Those are the prerequisites,
those are required

00:46:05:00 - 00:46:08:00
for any animal to be able to

00:46:08:21 - 00:46:11:18
use symbolic interaction,

00:46:11:18 - 00:46:15:15
to build cultures, to build associations

00:46:15:19 - 00:46:20:07
patterns, institutions, ceremonies.

00:46:20:16 - 00:46:24:23
Behavior, and

00:46:26:21 - 00:46:29:02
Orcas have all that.

00:46:29:02 - 00:46:32:02
They certainly can do it.

00:46:33:01 - 00:46:36:22
And the guiding ethic seems to be

00:46:36:22 - 00:46:40:07
we are strongest when we are together.

00:46:41:22 - 00:46:45:28
So there is a lot more
that can be said about that.

00:46:46:16 - 00:46:48:24
And, we're up to,

00:46:49:27 - 00:46:52:16
about 15 minutes before

00:46:52:16 - 00:46:55:23
the next presentation,
maybe some time for Q&A.

00:46:56:13 - 00:46:59:25
But what I want to say, Is that

00:47:00:12 - 00:47:03:27
that behavior with Mark out

00:47:04:20 - 00:47:07:20
west on Swift sure bank when IL 83

00:47:08:12 - 00:47:11:12
brought little emaciated

00:47:11:27 - 00:47:14:01
L1 28

00:47:14:01 - 00:47:16:11
at about three weeks old, but

00:47:16:11 - 00:47:19:11
either dead or dying.

00:47:20:28 - 00:47:24:12
Was she intending to tell him something?

00:47:24:24 - 00:47:26:27
Was there a message?

00:47:26:27 - 00:47:29:27
Was that a meaningful communication

00:47:30:06 - 00:47:33:15
to him, an attempt
at a meaningful communication?

00:47:34:12 - 00:47:37:06
But of course,
it depends on interpretation.

00:47:37:06 - 00:47:42:15
It depends on the reception
and the understanding of what it is.

00:47:43:08 - 00:47:46:02
Mark describes it objectively,

00:47:46:02 - 00:47:48:11
but went away pretty shook up,

00:47:48:11 - 00:47:51:01
from that experience,

00:47:51:01 - 00:47:54:01
and is probably still processing
what happened.

00:47:55:00 - 00:47:57:01
But yes, it's an anecdote,

00:47:57:01 - 00:48:01:09
but it's also a, it fits a pattern.

00:48:01:13 - 00:48:05:08
When there's enough anecdotes,
they become data. And

00:48:06:08 - 00:48:09:08
what happened in 2018

00:48:09:15 - 00:48:15:15
when J35 Tahlequah’s calf died
right in front of Mark's eyes again.

00:48:16:10 - 00:48:21:01
But she carried that calf around
for 17 days

00:48:21:24 - 00:48:25:24
in a very populated area
with a lot of boats around,

00:48:25:24 - 00:48:30:26
a lot of cameras and,
we don't know how much they know

00:48:31:10 - 00:48:37:17
about what, 
what our behavior means, what we're doing.

00:48:38:11 - 00:48:40:09
But they certainly knew.

00:48:40:09 - 00:48:43:09
She knew that they were being seen.

00:48:43:28 - 00:48:49:03
And, Ken called it a tour of grief.

00:48:49:28 - 00:48:53:27
And it just seemed

00:48:53:27 - 00:48:56:27
to be trying to say something.

00:48:57:07 - 00:49:00:04
And of course, we know,

00:49:00:04 - 00:49:04:12
Ken had studied his established since,

00:49:05:00 - 00:49:09:23
you know, since the population decline
between 1995

00:49:09:23 - 00:49:13:04
and 2001 of about 20% that triggered

00:49:13:20 - 00:49:17:05
the endangered species listing that

00:49:17:13 - 00:49:20:23
the primary overriding problem

00:49:21:10 - 00:49:24:10
is lack of sufficient Chinook salmon,

00:49:24:22 - 00:49:28:21
that they have specialized
for thousands of years on Chinook salmon

00:49:28:21 - 00:49:32:27
that have been abundant in these waters
Year-Round for thousands of years.

00:49:33:15 - 00:49:36:23
But now, due to multiple multiple habitat,

00:49:37:22 - 00:49:39:01
degradations,

00:49:39:01 - 00:49:42:15
damming of rivers, overharvesting,

00:49:43:02 - 00:49:46:22
that, there are just very few Chinook.

00:49:46:22 - 00:49:50:25
Many populations are completely extinct
and many are endangered,

00:49:51:18 - 00:49:56:07
whether it's just a small percentage
or a single digit percentage

00:49:56:18 - 00:49:59:28
of the former numbers of Chinook salmon,

00:50:00:25 - 00:50:04:23
they can eat other species,
but they don't have the caloric value.

00:50:04:25 - 00:50:07:18
They don't have the nutrition.

00:50:07:18 - 00:50:10:09
And of course, a

00:50:10:09 - 00:50:13:09
pregnant female carrying a young

00:50:14:06 - 00:50:17:09
and then lactating to, nurse

00:50:17:09 - 00:50:21:07
that young needs twice
as much as all the rest.

00:50:21:07 - 00:50:24:16
And, 
so that's when they are most vulnerable.

00:50:24:16 - 00:50:28:05
And that is what is limiting

00:50:28:05 - 00:50:31:11
the population of the southern residents

00:50:31:11 - 00:50:34:11
now is reproductive failure

00:50:34:11 - 00:50:38:09
is basically miscarriages
and infant mortality.

00:50:39:02 - 00:50:43:09
So, that seemed to be the message.

00:50:44:00 - 00:50:48:13
I mean, it seems pretty clear to me
that they know what's happening.

00:50:48:14 - 00:50:51:25
They know, what's what's happened to

00:50:51:25 - 00:50:54:25
their families. They are down to 73 now,

00:50:55:11 - 00:51:00:12
which was where they were
when the studies began, basically in 1976.

00:51:00:12 - 00:51:03:12
They were at about 70 or 71,

00:51:03:21 - 00:51:06:18
and they went up in the mid 1990s

00:51:06:18 - 00:51:09:18
to almost 198, 99

00:51:10:12 - 00:51:16:00
and then dropped off, to 2001,
where they were back to 73.

00:51:16:00 - 00:51:18:01
And that's where they are now.

00:51:18:01 - 00:51:21:13
So, they know what's happening

00:51:21:13 - 00:51:24:20
and I'm sure they associate
human activity

00:51:25:10 - 00:51:26:28
with what’s happening.

00:51:26:28 - 00:51:28:19
And they know Mark.

00:51:28:19 - 00:51:31:24
Mark has been out there
with them for over 20 years.

00:51:31:24 - 00:51:34:09
They know him. They know his boat.

00:51:34:09 - 00:51:37:18
I think she was trying to ask him,

00:51:38:24 - 00:51:43:23
or tell us to do something or stop doing

00:51:43:23 - 00:51:48:04
whatever it is that is, decimating
the salmon populations.

00:51:48:15 - 00:51:52:22
Thank you for raising
all of that awareness for us, Howie.

00:51:52:22 - 00:51:55:17
That is critical information observation

00:51:55:17 - 00:51:59:22
that you and others are doing,
not only with the Orca network.

00:52:00:01 - 00:52:01:23
And this is Howie Garrett.

00:52:01:23 - 00:52:03:03
He's the president of the board

00:52:03:03 - 00:52:06:25
of directors
for the Orca Network in Washington state.

00:52:07:09 - 00:52:11:23
And he has been talking with us
for this past hour

00:52:12:12 - 00:52:17:11
about all these critical, complex
social issues that, impact

00:52:17:20 - 00:52:22:21
the orcas and other ocean life,
that lives in our seas,

00:52:23:01 - 00:52:27:29
and that bringing this awareness
to our audience is so important.

00:52:28:11 - 00:52:32:07
And this is why we are doing this
annual symposium

00:52:32:07 - 00:52:38:03
every year, is to bring voices
like yours out here on YouTube, on radio,

00:52:38:03 - 00:52:43:03
we’re an independent public radio station,
a small one in Northern California

00:52:43:03 - 00:52:46:13
on the south Mendocino
coast and northern Sonoma Coast.

00:52:46:24 - 00:52:49:24
This is KGUA 88.3 FM.

00:52:49:24 - 00:52:54:24
I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, a filmmaker
and audio producer and also along with.

00:52:55:03 - 00:52:59:25
Experts of whales as well with the Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study’s

00:52:59:25 - 00:53:03:07
Scott and Tre Mercer,
who are with us today.

00:53:03:07 - 00:53:06:07
They have an extensive background
that I'll go into.

00:53:06:07 - 00:53:07:22
But before I do that,

00:53:07:22 - 00:53:11:21
I want to bring them to the stage here
and get you guys to talk

00:53:11:21 - 00:53:14:24
with Howie about all the critical things
that he was just sharing with us.

00:53:15:04 - 00:53:15:12
Yeah.

00:53:15:12 - 00:53:19:10
Howie, in my way of thinking,

00:53:19:10 - 00:53:25:11
there is no question that these,
these animals, these highly intelligent

00:53:25:11 - 00:53:31:07
social animals are definitely
communicating an important message to us.

00:53:31:22 - 00:53:35:10
To me, the question
is, what are we going to do about it?

00:53:35:10 - 00:53:38:25
Or are we going to listen to this,
or are we going to ignore it

00:53:39:06 - 00:53:45:21
and just carry on with the way we're doing
things now and put them at further risk?

00:53:46:26 - 00:53:48:10
You know that that is my hope.

00:53:48:10 - 00:53:53:07
Is that enough of us
will listen to them and take action.

00:53:54:07 - 00:53:57:02
But my question
Howie is, I may have missed this,

00:53:57:02 - 00:54:01:19
I apologize if I do, but L90

00:54:01:19 - 00:54:08:01
was the mom of L128, the calf and L83.

00:54:08:01 - 00:54:09:21
I was wondering - is there,

00:54:09:21 - 00:54:14:20
Is there a relationship
between L90 and L83?

00:54:15:27 - 00:54:19:26
It's not, a direct
natural line relationship.

00:54:19:26 - 00:54:21:13
They're not sisters.

00:54:21:13 - 00:54:26:11
L90 has no more members
of her natural line at all.

00:54:26:28 - 00:54:29:22
Remaining. So.

00:54:29:22 - 00:54:32:22
the mother, her siblings, all have died.

00:54:32:26 - 00:54:36:20
So I, you know, we don't know

00:54:37:20 - 00:54:40:17
how they define their relationship,

00:54:40:17 - 00:54:43:22
but certainly, you know,
they have been together

00:54:43:22 - 00:54:46:23
in the same community,
the same pod, of Lpod

00:54:48:10 - 00:54:51:00
for, you know, ever.

00:54:51:00 - 00:54:55:13
And so they, you know,
they're all one big extended family.

00:54:55:13 - 00:54:58:16
So maybe a distant cousin,
you know, I mean,

00:54:58:16 - 00:55:01:25
how would we may,
you know, define describe that.

00:55:01:25 - 00:55:07:24
But, they're they're just an intertwined
family, that, you know, they,

00:55:08:01 - 00:55:11:25
they know each other, you know, more
intimately than we ever could.

00:55:12:17 - 00:55:14:25
So, yes, she's family.

00:55:14:25 - 00:55:17:18
I just don't know the exact relationship.

00:55:17:18 - 00:55:20:19
I understand that
that is very fascinating.

00:55:20:19 - 00:55:24:00
And also, you know, quite sad
what has happened.

00:55:24:12 - 00:55:27:05
And, and you are quite certain

00:55:27:05 - 00:55:31:11
that this is due to the inability of L90

00:55:31:11 - 00:55:35:16
the mother to successfully, 
nurse the calf,

00:55:36:12 - 00:55:39:12
because she herself is probably

00:55:39:13 - 00:55:42:13
not as well nourished as she needed to be

00:55:42:19 - 00:55:45:19
to raise this calf properly.

00:55:45:22 - 00:55:46:21
Correct. Yes.

00:55:47:26 - 00:55:49:06
There is likely

00:55:49:06 - 00:55:52:28
this complication
of the compounding effect of the,

00:55:53:03 - 00:55:58:28
toxins, the organic chlorine, PCBs,
pbdes,

00:55:59:13 - 00:56:02:14
hormone disrupting or blocking,

00:56:03:00 - 00:56:07:08
pollutants
that are in the water in the ecosystem,

00:56:07:26 - 00:56:11:27
were dumped in
when they were banned on land.

00:56:12:09 - 00:56:16:24
The barrels of, of this toxin
were dumped into the water.

00:56:16:24 - 00:56:19:24
Well, OK, we’ll just flush that toilet and it’s gone.

00:56:20:11 - 00:56:24:09
But no, it filtered out
into every living thing.

00:56:24:25 - 00:56:27:22
They're molecule by molecule

00:56:27:22 - 00:56:31:18
are lipophilic,
which means they attach to fat cells.

00:56:31:19 - 00:56:36:18
And, of course, whales have huge amounts
of fat cells, there are whole blubber layers.

00:56:37:07 - 00:56:41:00
So in, normally they sequester

00:56:41:12 - 00:56:44:14
into the fat layers.

00:56:45:13 - 00:56:48:20
But when, hunger sets

00:56:48:20 - 00:56:51:21
in, when,
you know there is lack of nutrition,

00:56:52:03 - 00:56:56:12
those fat cells are drawn
into the bloodstream for energy.

00:56:57:20 - 00:56:59:02
And that

00:56:59:02 - 00:57:03:00
releases all of these pollutants
that then flood the system.

00:57:03:15 - 00:57:08:03
And, you know, block the hormonal action

00:57:08:03 - 00:57:11:23
in the development
of the calf in particular.

00:57:12:05 - 00:57:15:05
But even in adults that are hungry.

00:57:15:09 - 00:57:17:26
So it's a compounded effect.

00:57:17:26 - 00:57:20:12
But the (?) is

00:57:20:12 - 00:57:24:12
the transient Bigg’s killer whales,
which are even,

00:57:25:09 - 00:57:29:20
more heavily loaded with the pollutants
because they eat higher on the food chain,

00:57:29:24 - 00:57:32:24
eat seals that are already heavily,

00:57:32:29 - 00:57:35:22
loaded with these pollutants

00:57:35:22 - 00:57:38:05
so they have heavier loads,

00:57:38:05 - 00:57:40:26
and yet, they are thriving.

00:57:40:26 - 00:57:46:10
They are reproducing and increasing
at a rate of 4 or 5% a year.

00:57:46:26 - 00:57:49:26
They're doing incredibly well.

00:57:49:27 - 00:57:54:08
And they have all the same issues
with sound, you know, and everything else.

00:57:54:08 - 00:57:58:24
The difference is they have a lot of food
because there's plenty of seals,

00:57:59:11 - 00:58:01:28
and sea lions and porpoises.

00:58:01:28 - 00:58:04:01
And so they've got lots to eat.

00:58:04:01 - 00:58:08:24
And so they do not draw down
their fat supplies for energy.

00:58:09:06 - 00:58:12:01
They've got to have fresh food
all the time.

00:58:12:01 - 00:58:16:19
So that's the case that shows
the different is in the food supply.

00:58:17:14 - 00:58:21:27
And I want to address that in the last
minute or so here that we've got,

00:58:22:10 - 00:58:25:15
Howie, you mentioned before
about the salmon

00:58:25:15 - 00:58:29:12
being a big part of their diet
and now with the, you know, dams

00:58:29:12 - 00:58:32:15
that are being removed
from some of the rivers,

00:58:32:26 - 00:58:36:19
is that going to help
increase the salmon population

00:58:36:29 - 00:58:39:17
for these whales
so that they do get more nourishment?

00:58:39:17 - 00:58:43:02
And then I want you to 
kind of give a quick summary

00:58:43:02 - 00:58:46:23
as we move into the 11:00 hour,
on the Ocean Life Symposium.

00:58:47:20 - 00:58:48:00
Right.

00:58:48:00 - 00:58:49:22
Well,
thank you for bringing that up Leigh Anne

00:58:49:22 - 00:58:52:11
because that is a very,
very important point.

00:58:52:11 - 00:58:54:12
And the Elwha dams were brought down.

00:58:54:12 - 00:58:56:18
And I did a presentation here on that..

00:58:56:18 - 00:58:59:29
And that has already produced results

00:58:59:29 - 00:59:04:00
of more Chinook and steelhead,
which orcas also eat.

00:59:04:20 - 00:59:07:07
And now the Klamath dams are down.

00:59:07:07 - 00:59:09:07
So we'll start to see those results.

00:59:09:07 - 00:59:12:27
In fact, already as salmon has gone up
past the former dam site.

00:59:12:27 - 00:59:16:29
So, that that is already showing results

00:59:16:29 - 00:59:22:02
and that is going to increase
the overall salmon for the orcas.

00:59:22:12 - 00:59:26:02
But, yet
remaining the big low hanging fruit

00:59:26:02 - 00:59:29:11
are the four snake River dams.

00:59:29:26 - 00:59:31:26
They really need to be removed.

00:59:31:26 - 00:59:34:03
And that's a huge issue.

00:59:34:03 - 00:59:36:17
But, and we don't have time for it now.

00:59:36:17 - 00:59:39:05
But those four dams need to be removed.

00:59:39:05 - 00:59:41:05
Removed, or breached.

00:59:41:05 - 00:59:45:08
And it's really not a big process,
but there's 5000mi²

00:59:45:25 - 00:59:50:22
of pristine
salmon spawning habitat above those dams.

00:59:50:22 - 00:59:55:28
But the smolts, after a year
or so of growth at 6 or 8in,

00:59:56:10 - 01:00:00:29
can't make it to the ocean
because it's 140 miles of slack water.

01:00:01:22 - 01:00:03:15
Those dams. And Howie, 

01:00:03:15 - 01:00:05:28
You mentioned a documentary.
Just real quick.

01:00:05:28 - 01:00:09:00
If you can give the title of that
and it'll be coming out as soon

01:00:09:00 - 01:00:10:07
as it gets distribution?

01:00:11:09 - 01:00:11:19
There

01:00:11:19 - 01:00:14:25
is a documentary coming out soon, I hope.

01:00:14:25 - 01:00:15:13
We don't know

01:00:15:13 - 01:00:19:11
exactly the distribution yet,
but it's called The Snake and the whale,

01:00:19:28 - 01:00:23:15
and it goes into all these issues
that we've been talking about.

01:00:24:15 - 01:00:25:03
Excellent.

01:00:25:03 - 01:00:28:12
Well, thank you, Howie Garrett,
president of the board of directors

01:00:28:12 - 01:00:33:03
of Orca Network, for joining us today
on the Ocean Life Symposium,

01:00:33:03 - 01:00:37:08
along with Scott and Tree (Theresa) Mercer
of the Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study.

01:00:37:08 - 01:00:42:00
We appreciate you being here with us today
on public radio and and on YouTube.

01:00:43:14 - 01:00:44:08
Yeah. Thanks, Howard.

01:00:44:08 - 01:00:46:02
Our best to Susan!

01:00:46:02 - 01:00:46:28
Alright.

01:00:46:28 - 01:00:48:22
Your wife, Susan. Berta.

01:00:48:22 - 01:00:51:22
Bye Howie.

01:00:58:26 - 01:01:01:15
Thanks for listening
to the Resilient Earth podcast,

01:01:01:15 - 01:01:06:25
where we talk about critical issues
and positive actions for our planet.

01:01:08:00 - 01:01:11:15
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01:01:11:29 - 01:01:16:24
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01:01:17:05 - 01:01:22:05
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