Giant Blue Whales are Back on the West Coast!

The first known migration of giant blue whales from the coast of California to areas off British Columbia and the Gulf of Alaska since commercial whaling ended in 1965 has been documented by marine mammal scientists.

A blue whale spouts off Moresby Island, British Columbia. Photo by: John Calambokidis, Cascadia Research Collective.

In all the years that I have been, “messing about in boats,” from the Gulf Islands to Alaska, I have seen most of the marine mammals that frequent our coast, including close encounters(not intentionally!) with grey whales, humpbacks and orcas, but I've never seen a blue whale.

Researchers from Cascadia Research Collective in Washington, NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California, and Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans used the blue whale’s distinctive pigmentation patterns of their skin color and the shape of the dorsal fin to positively match individuals seen in the north Pacific with those off of California.

Researchers identified individual blue whales by the shapes of their small dorsal fins. (Photo by John Calambokidis courtesy Cascadia Research Collective)

Reaching lengths of nearly 100 feet, the blue whale is the largest animal on Earth today and the largest known to have ever existed.

They were nearly hunted to extinction throughout the world and are currently listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the Canadian Species at Risk Act, and on the authoritative IUCN Red List.

During the early 1900s in the North Pacific and along the West Coast as far south as Baja California, blue whales were nearly wiped out during commercial whaling activities. Because they were the largest whales, blue whales were a prime target for whalers.

John Calambokidis of the Cascadia Research Collective, who has a long history of blue whale research, said of this study, "We document 15 blue whale sightings off British Columbia and in the Gulf of Alaska made since 1997, and use identification photographs to show that whales in these areas are currently part of the California feeding population."

The scientists are still not certain why blue whales are now beginning to migrate from southern California to the North Pacific Ocean, although changing ocean conditions may have shifted their primary food source of krill further north.

Living between 70 and 80 years, blue whales reproduce every two or three years. There are an estimated 5,000 to 12,000 animals surviving today, with the largest population of approximately 2,000 off the U.S. West Coast.

Click here to view the research paper, "Insights into the population structure of blue whales in the Eastern North Pacific from recent sightings and photographic identification."

On a similar note click here to see one of the first underwater videos of a blue whale calf in the waters off Puerto Rico.

Robotic Fish to Study Pollution

Click here to watch a video of a robotic fish that has been developed to monitor water pollution. This WiFi and GPS-equipped fish can integrate and swim with schools of real fish.
Lets hope that if this fish swims in the open ocean, it will be able to avoid predators, as I am sure technology like this doesn't come cheap!

So, Vern, Whatever Happened to those Rivers Inlet Sockeye

I moved from Rivers Inlet to Sointula in 1993 and even today I’m often stopped on the dock or at the Co-op store where someone invariably asks me, “So what happened to the Rivers Inlet (or Smith Inlet) sockeye, Vern?” This always leads to an interesting discussion as to the cause of the collapse of one of the largest sockeye runs on the B.C. coast. The fishing heritage of Sointula has been involved with the salmon runs in Rivers Inlet for generations, just as the Wuikinuxv people have relied on the sockeye arriving literally at the door step of their longhouses for some nine thousand years.

Since 1996 there have been only thousands of sockeye returning instead of hundreds of thousands.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=51.669984,-127.32588&z=10&t=h&hl=en

The link above will get you to a Google image of Rivers Inlet and the foot of Owikeno Lake.

A number of causes for the decline of sockeye salmon in this seemingly pristine fjord have been put forward. Overfishing, logging around the larger spawning streams in Owikeno Lake and varying ocean conditions due to changes in climate might have all played a role in causing the stock to collapse. What is even more alarming is that after the complete closure of the sockeye commercial fishery in 1995 the stock failed to rebuild.

Most of the commercial salmon fishermen that I’ve spoken with have not been up to Rivers Inlet for over a decade now and have often asked if anything is being done to determine the cause of the collapse of a once very productive fishery.

There are people working diligently in Rivers and Smiths to try and figure out why the sockeye returns have declined so precipitously.

The Rivers and Smith Salmon Ecosystems Planning Society was formed to bring together different parties and interests to pursue the common goal of stewardship for salmon and their ecosystems. www.rsseps.ca

Recent studies by Rick Routledge and his team of graduate students from SFU along with members of the Wuikinuxv and Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Nations are trying to figure out through a combination of traditional knowledge and science why the salmon have all-but-disappeared from this region. Their studies have focused on early marine survival of sockeye. Evidence so far seems to indicate increased mortality in the early marine phase of the sockeye life cycle as one of the reasons for the decline of the Rivers Inlet sockeye population.

http://www.stat.sfu.ca/~routledg/rivers.htm

It’s all a matter of timing.

When Owikeno Lake sockeye smolts, which are usually about half the size/weight of other nursery lake smolts, emigrate downstream to the inlet it is critical for them to grow quickly before heading out to the open ocean. If they are lucky, when they emerge from the Wannock River they will encounter a bloom of zooplankton (in turn fed by a phytoplankton bloom) comprised of mussel and barnacle larvae and other tiny crustaceans. However, if there has been heavy fresh water discharge from the Wannock resulting in an extensive layer of nutrient-poor, sometimes glacially turbid lake water covering much of the inlet, then the smolts will be under fed and under size by the time they migrate to the open ocean.

To substantiate and extend these preliminary findings, the current ecosystem will have a focus on understanding the driving forces of spring-summer plankton productivity.

Further studies on the whole Owikeno Lake/Rivers Inlet ecosystem are planned and valuable financial assistance has been provided by the Tula Foundation.

http://www.tula.ca/RESEARCH/coastalecology.html

For most people, the enduring mystery of salmon is their epic struggle upriver as they fight to spawn and continue the life cycle. But for those who study salmon in the ocean, who harvest salmon and whose ancient cultures still rely on salmon to this day the ocean biology of Pacific salmon is equally grand and considerably more mysterious. Answering some of the questions about what salmon do in the ocean and why they are motivated to do so may also be of considerable importance to maintaining the health of our fisheries, particularly given recent sharp downturns in ocean survival for most salmon stocks in southern BC.

Coral Coldwater and the Finding Coral Expedition!

I am excited to announce that on June 8, 2009, Living Oceans Society will launch the Finding Coral Expedition. On this expedition, a blue-ribbon team of scientists will dive in mini subs to explore the dark depths of Canada’s Pacific in search of some of the most important, yet poorly-understood, organisms in the ocean: deep sea corals.

When most people think of corals, they think of tropical coral reefs. Recently, however, scientists have realized that there are vast amounts of coral growing in cold, dark waters away from the tropics. The deep sea waters off of the coast of British Columbia have these deep sea corals, which are known to provide critical support for many other marine species.

You can join the expedition on Facebook by adding Coral Coldwater (our unofficial expedition mascot) as your friend. Through Coral, you can follow the expedition’s progress - plus learn more about the trials and tribulations of a single, middle-aged deep sea coral just trying to make a go of it in the increasingly difficult world of the deep sea.

You can add Coral as your friend and after becoming friends with her, please invite your other Facebook friends to join the Finding Coral Expedition by adding Coral Coldwater as their friend too. Then, together, we will set out on the sea and search the darkest depths of Canada’s Pacific until we find Coral.

Living Oceans Society is working with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to develop strategies and policies to protect critically important ecosystem features like deep sea corals. However, these strategies and policies won’t be of much use if we don’t even know where those corals are, and what roles they play in the marine ecosystem. Living Oceans Society has spent the past five years asking the government to protect deep sea corals, with little success. This is why we’ve decided to take the initiative by jump-starting deep sea coral research.

Another mathematical look at ocean life

For you math-junkies who just couldn't get enough of Margaret Wertheim's depiction of corals as a mathematical model, check out this recent article by Jorge Picado that provides a mathematical description of seashells and snails.

Tsunami? NOAA's got our back.

There were many things that struck me as odd when I moved to the North Island from Winnipeg when I was eight years old. All the kids in my grade three class called their backpacks "pack sacs", and cutting in line was "budging". But weirdest of all was when the orderly fire drill I had come to know and love morphed into a crawl-on-the-floor, hold-onto-your-desk-and-count extravaganza. Turns out, there was no fire: we were having an earthquake drill!

Earthquake drills are still practiced in schools on the North Island, because here on the Pacific North Coast we are located in a prime earthquake risk zone. Scientists believe that a large earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone might take place in our lifetime. Along with our fear of earthquakes, comes a fear of the resulting tsunamis.

But fear not, fellow Pacific Coasters! The USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has got us covered. Following the disastrous tsunami in South Asia in 2004, the Bush administration authorized a $37.5 million upgrade to NOAA's international tsunami warning system. Last year, the final two buoys in the Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting system, or DART2 were deployed. Now there is a network of 39 tsunami-assessing buoys in portions of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea.

The idea behind the design of this system seems simple to me, and with the help of this diagram, it becomes even simpler to understand.
First, a passing tsunami creates changes in water pressure;
Next, a bottom pressure recorder monitors changes in pressure, and acoustically sends potential "events" to a surface buoy moored above.
The surface buoy relays information to a communications satellite, and this data is received in a tsunami warning center in the USA. Areas in danger can then be quickly notified.

How long does this process take? “From the time a buoy detects something to the time that information arrives at the warning center is usually less than five minutes from any ocean. Then it takes maybe 10 more minutes to process the data, come up with a determination of threat and send out a response.”1

So the idea is: if ever there is a tsunami about to crash into the Port McNeill harbor, our friends at NOAA and the tsunami warning center will inform us of this fact well in advance of any impending danger. Then, just in case I become blinded by terror and forget to run AWAY from the water, I will be reminded by my local constituency's contribution to the tsunami preparedness effort: tsunami evacuation route signs, pointing UP the hill. Genius.

Dead Cormorants in San Francisco

Lately, Californians have been finding hundreds of dead Brandt's cormorants washed up on beaches near San Francisco. Most of the dead cormorants are notably emaciated, and wildlife officials suspect that a dip in the birds' food supply could be what is killing them. Specifically, biologists point to a decrease in the availability of anchovies, a staple of the Brandt's Cormorant's diet:

Last year, some species of small fish were scarce, according to trawl information gathered by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Northern anchovies - popular food for Brandt's cormorants - hit their lowest numbers since 1990 as the bulk of the fish moved to Southern California, where they normally spawn in years of cooler waters.

Steve Ralston, research fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, said it took 10 trawls to catch one anchovy last year. In a typical year, more than 600 anchovies are caught in a trawl, he said.1

The fact that these seabirds are dying, likely as a result of our changing oceans, is just one example of the interconnectivity of life on our planet. Sadly, I think that we will continue to see more and more stories such as this one as our ocean ecosystem is affected by climate change and acidification, human use, and other impacts.