From the Archipelago: The Bottom Line

June-July 2000

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

by Alexandra Morton

As I sat in Port McNeill waiting to go home on a neighbor's boat, I got a call on the VHF radio. A dead whale had been found floating just outside Echo Bay. I instantly thought, 'orca?' The radio transmission was weak, but with a few questions I learned it was probably a Gray whale. A young man working as a diver for one of the fish farms had found it outside his bay and, guessing I would like to have a look at it, had kindly tied it up on a beach.

The whale looked huge on the beach, almost 40 feet long, and I felt a little overwhelmed by the task before me-to discover its cause of death. In my sixteen years out here, I had never seen a dead whale in the Broughton Archipelago before. Fortunately, I once worked on a dead killer whale alongside a team of very experienced people, so I had some idea of how to proceed.

Whale autopsy, Alex at right Photo Cory Parker

 

The first step was to take measurements. The entire community turned out to see the whale and so I had lots of help recording this mature, male Gray whale's vital statistics. I photographed the underside of the tail, which was conveniently lying exposed, to send to people working with Gray whales. Researchers sometimes use pigmentation patterns on the underside of the tail to tell Gray whales apart. I noticed large scoops freshly bitten out of the tail and still bleeding. Killer whales had clearly attacked this whale, but had departed before fatally wounding and eating it.

The next step was to take samples of vital organs and wrap them in tin foil for toxicology work. My previous colleagues had huge knives on long poles, but for this Gray we had only two kitchen knives. The first cut was the hardest, because I have never stuck a knife in a whale and I found myself silently apologizing. The blubber was about 10 cm thick, light pink and difficult to slice. It was like Styrofoam. A large piece of the blubber sank after I peeled it off the whale. That seemed unusual to me, because blubber is supposed to be full of oil and therefore lighter than water. Then I began the belly incision. After about a foot, the cut began tearing open by itself, under pressure from the gas inside the stomach. My helper, Claudia Maas, and I ran as a mountain of intestines slithered out and began inflating.

Gingerly at first, then with increasing vigor, we began sorting through the whale's insides, trying to read what we could from them. The liver was somewhat jellied, the huge ribs bruised. It looked as though the orca had rammed this whale, causing internal bleeding. There were shrimp in its stomach, and a mass which closely resembled a large bale of peat moss. Compacted and almost dry, I was confused to find alder catkins, hemlock cones, bark, teredo casings and chunks of wood inside a whale. It looked as if he had scooped a mouthful from beneath a log booming ground. Graeme Ellis from the Pacific Biological Station recalled a young gray whale dying on the west coast of Vancouver Island from ingesting so much woody debris that it caused an obstruction in the whale's digestive tract.

So at the end of two very aromatic days I had three possible causes of death: starvation, killer whale attack and a lethal mouthful. Likely the whale died of a combination of these-perhaps being in poor condition after a winter in Mexico of not feeding, then roughed up by a pod of orca which left before the whale died. After the attack the whale may have been somewhat dazed and made a bad choice of sea floors, scooping up a lethal mouthful. I will pass on the lab results when available.

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One of the joys of remote living is the gatherings which periodically bring us together. A few days before Easter, various familiar boats made their way up the channel towards Echo Bay for the Easter weekend, carrying excited children from neighbouring inlets and other friends. Easter Sunday dawned weakly behind torrential rainfall and my four year old looked worried. Would there still be the big egg hunt at Bill and Yvonne Proctor's? Bill and Yvonne have the only flat land for miles and every Easter they host a wonderful party loved by young and old of many surrounding communities and homesteads. Just before noon a band of blue sky marched gaily up the pass and boats of all sizes and shapes nosed into Proctor's Bay and rafted together. As the children ran about with their baskets, ravens swooped and soared above them, both packing away eggs as fast as they could. When they could find no more, both groups rested to enjoy their booty. Inside the Proctor home the tables and counters groaned with a potluck feast

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The fish which support this archipelago have been erratic and unpredictable lately. The herring spawned at unusual times mid-way between the new and full moon phases, and at low tides instead of high. The oolichans have not showed up yet, but we are still hopeful. The dolphins have been chasing fish I have not identified yet, and they fish them with a technique new to me. The fish do not form the tight, frightened balls like herring and capelin, so the dolphins are corralling them against the surface using air bubbles. I have heard of this technique in humpback whales, but I have not seen it before. The dolphins release a big explosion of air bubbles beneath a school, which chase the fish up to the surface. There I can see the dolphins racing through the fish, catching them. However, these fish dispersed before I could net one. I did manage to get some scale samples and hope that I can learn what these fish were from the scales.

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The black bears are out on the tidal flats eating grass, and the tiny chum salmon have emerged from the gravel and are flowing downstream to the ocean. Chums and pinks don't feed in the freshwater, making them a real gift to the other freshwater fish and insects. These salmon use the rivers to lay their eggs, leaving their spent carcasses behind to feed insects, which then feed other species of salmon. In spring, after spending the winter completely self-contained within their eggs, they simply hatch, wriggle free from the gravel and swim out to sea.

Unfortunately, these tiny salmon, along with the newborn herring, have to run the gauntlet beneath the lights of fish farms now dotting the coasts of their migration. Whereas predators were once distributed more widely, the fish farm lights have concentrated predator and prey beneath the lights. Salmon, herring and oolichans are declining despite heavy fishing restrictions. I believe a solution might be for the farmers to turn off their lights during the seaward migration of these essential species.

Five Canadian Senators came through Port McNeill recently to learn more about the problems faced by the coastal communities. I was impressed by these people although I was prepared to feel quite differently. They were keeping a grueling schedule traveling in a small seaplane down from Prince Rupert in a westerly squall the afternoon before meeting with me and others at 8:30 am. Then they were off by bus to Alert Bay and later the same day south to Duncan. They seemed genuinely concerned and interested, asking penetrating questions. However, they were coming from an east coast perspective. With the exception of the unsinkable, indomitable Pat Carney they did not seem to know that we still have fish on this coast!

It is an increasingly common misconception that the fish are gone from this coast. While this is going to be true in the not too distant future if we are not careful, it is not time to give up. Extraordinary twists of DNA precisely adapted to this coast are still replicating their precious code despite our mistakes. I had an opportunity to get one of the Senators aside to ask a question which has burned deep in my mind. "How is it that Ottawa can place trust in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to protect vital fish stocks when DFO has presided over the destruction of one of the most important sources of protein to exist on earth in modern times-the east coast cod stocks?" The Senator simply replied, "Because it is bureaucrats judging bureaucrats, and they will never condemn the system-they depend on it."

That one minute conversation made it clear why an impeccable argument will not alone generate change. We are all acting to protect ourselves. I want whales, the bureaucrat wants bureaucracy. Well, if that is the source of the problem here-the reason we are all witnessing the destruction of life on earth-it is time to identify the bottom line. What does Homo sapiens require for survival? Because it is all gravy after that.

Alexandra Morton is a marine mammal researcher in BC's Broughton Archipelago, and a regular WaveLength columnist ©