Puget Sound whales tell tales

Published 6:00 pm Saturday, November 19, 2005

Whales are at the top of the ocean’s food chain for a reason. They are big and resilient and seemingly able to handle just about anything Mother Nature throws at them. Human beings pose a more lethal problem.

“They are in a serious situation here and if we don’t make the environment sustainable for them, and for us, we’re just going to see everything go away,” said Ken Balcomb, the executive director and research biologist for the nonprofit Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island since 1985.

The Bainbridge Island Historical Society’s sixth annual Bainbridge History Series hosts Balcomb to discuss “Whales in Puget Sound” at 4 p.m. Nov. 20 at IslandWood. Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for those under 18 and free for BIHS members.

Balcomb, the senior principal investigator of the Orca Survey project, which he started in 1976, has noted how all marine life are on the decline, impacted by the consumer-driven lifestyles of humans and the pollution caused by our dependency on oil and natural gas. How whales fare is an indicator of this impact.

“The recent listing (of whales as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act) – in terms of the laws of our country – (shows) it is recognized that there is a problem,” Balcomb said.

“What it means is, “You better start thinking about this…Once it goes into effect…the approach changes. Everything is going to have to get looked at under this new status.

“Herring, plankton, the birds, the whole ecosystem is important because that’s what feeds the predator,” he said. “It’s a big rolling freight train, (the) consumption by people. We’re losing whole ecosystems.”

Whales often accumulate a high concentration of organic pollutants, including polychlorinated biphenyls – PCBs – from the food they eat.

Balcomb’s advice is straightforward: “Lead that environmental life and…use the least toxic materials you can find.”

At the center, Balcomb and fellow scientists document the pods of killer whales – known as the Southern Residents, an extended family comprised of the J, K and L pods – that frequent the inland waters of Washington State and southern British Columbia.

As of last July, according to the center’s website, the population stood at 90, about 25 percent higher than the 1976 population, the result of 10 years of capturing whales for marine parks.

Balcomb’s Orca Survey is a photo-identification study of killer whales in the Pacific Northwest. He perfected “non-invasive techniques” to study whales, dolphins and porpoises in the wild and pioneered the development of high-quality photo-identification methods in the study of killer whales, humpback whales and beaked whales. However careful he was, the methods were intrusive.

“We’re bringing fuel to power a boat to get out there. We’re making noise. We’re a little bit of the problem, relative to ships or military action and other vessel activities in the water,” he said.

Because the center has collected a lot of basic information, Balcomb no longer goes to sea. He gathers data by watching the whales swim by the center. Unfortunately, the U.S. Navy has not followed suit.

“The sonar operations it conducts in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Haro Strait are lethal…and the Navy knows it is,” he said.

During the Vietnam era, he was an oceanographic specialist in the Navy. He tracked whales with the passive sonar SOSUS system and contributed to the development of an integrated sound surveillance system.

“The Navy is tasked with defending the country in the best way they know. They have to practice these defense systems, and I acknowledge that. But they have to avoid at least the (whales’) high population density areas,” Balcomb said.

“Our whole Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary is a Navy test area. It makes you wonder why we call it a sanctuary.”