The resident orcas of the Salish Sea are in very real trouble, it’s humans who’ve created the reason why, and therefore it’s on us to find a solution.  That is, before it’s too late.  And we don’t have much time.  

First a slight digression.  Many of us have been wondering what Twitter is going to look like in the years ahead, given recent developments.  Let me give you a great example of why this platform can be enormously useful, regardless of how we may feel about its potential for harm (which in my view can be considerable).  Here is an excellent tweet that came across our feed this week.  For anyone who wants to use social media to add real value to the world…

            From Jeffrey Ventre @jeffrey_ventre

Resident killer whales co-evolved with 80-100 Lb Chinook.  An adult orca requires 250-400 lbs fish/day.  Imagine the extra energy needed to catch 400lbs of scarce 12.5lb salmon (the new average size) vs needing to only catch 3/day.  #FreeTheSnake @GovInslee @OrcaSOS @TheOrcaProject

You don’t have a lot of space or characters to get your point across on Twitter, which may be a big part of the reason why we often resort to quick, cheap shots without much content or appropriate context.  But if you know what you’re doing, as this user does, you can do an awful lot with 280 characters.

The point that’s being made here is enormously important.  The stresses we’ve placed on the orcas’ natural habitat, through things like overfishing and damming up rivers, has put fellow sentient/sapient beings in an extraordinarily difficult position.  When we think about what survival now demands of these whales, it can be no surprise that their numbers have fallen so dramatically (down to 74 individuals at present count).  Finding the energy required to raise their young to adulthood will be daunting.  As we’ve increasingly seen in recent years, many will not make it.

That we humans still debate how many salmon we should take for ourselves in a given year is offensive.  The situation is not of the orcas’ doing, it is entirely ours.  Given that, continuing to fish this dangerously depleted resource is hypocritical.  When it comes to the salmon of the Salish Sea, the only appropriate quota to be reserved for human needs is zero. 

Have no doubt about it – this is far, far more than just a conservation issue.  What we’re talking about here is a species that loves its children and mourns its dead as we do.  That thinks and plans ahead as we do.  That has unique languages and dialects.  That has its own distinct cultures, and knowledge that must be passed on to future generations if they’re to have any hope at all for survival.  Creatures so close to ourselves in intelligence that it makes no practical difference whether we or they are superior.  

Make no mistake, when you’re talking about a species so like ourselves – albeit physiologically very different – it’s not just a conservation issue or even the looming threat of losing an iconic species.  It’s a moral issue – one which compels us to stop impacting their habitat in ways that we control entirely and they not at all.  And to reverse where we can those actions that have so negatively affected them.  

It’s for this latter reason that the hashtags and references at the end of the tweet above are well chosen by the writer.  The last two are a couple of other great organizations we respect and are happy to support.  But the first one – #FreeTheSnake – is a reference to the urgent need to remove a series of four dams on the Snake River in Washington State, which produce at best a bit of low-value surplus electricity we could live without, but which have an exceedingly detrimental impact on the population of salmon in the basin where the orcas live.  The next one – @GovInslee – draws the attention of the present governor of that state.  A man to whom we can ascribe quite a good environmental record among public servants, which only makes it less comprehensible that these dams are still in place so long after it’s become widely known that we’d be better off without them!

As luck would have it, we have been handed the reigns and have stewardship of this planet, and all the creatures who have no choice but to accept the circumstances they’ve been given and to try to make the best of it.  We are the only ones who’ve been given the choice to exercise either an unbridled dominion of that world, or to serve as its proper stewards.  I would hope that by now the better option has become obvious.  After all, it’s not like we will go on unless everyone else does too. 

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Dani, Canadian Cetacean Alliance