For decades, people have flocked to the United State’s Pacific Northwest and Canada’s British Columbia for a chance to see a very special group of orcas. The whales in question are the Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW), a population of animals that have called the Salish Sea and it’s surrounding waters home since before scientists even knew of their existence. Their power is unquestionable; both spiritually and physically these animals hold great significance to anyone who knows about them, but time is running out for these magnificent creatures. The Southern Residents are endangered, critically endangered, and without immediate action from lawmakers the world will lose one of the most important populations of killer whales it has ever seen.
So who are the Southern Resident Killer Whales exactly? Well, as aforementioned, they are a group of critically endangered orcas that live off the coast of British Columbia and America’s Pacific Northwest region. Three pods of whales, J, K, and L, make up this population of 75. These whales can get huge. Females can typically be as long as 16-23 feet (5-7 meters) and weigh between 3,000–6,000 pounds (1,300-2,700 kilograms), whilst males can grow around 20-26 feet (6-8 meters) and weigh around 8,000-12,000 pounds (3,600-5,400 kilograms). To maintain their weight and to stay healthy, one SRKW needs to eat 18-25 healthy adult salmon each day. But just like people, these orcas are very picky eaters, and 80% of their diet fully consists of Chinook Salmon. Primarily, Chinook Salmon from the Columbia Basin, where half of the fish are produced in the Snake River system.
Ok, so now we know a little bit about these orcas, their size, and their diet. So why are they endangered? The Southern Residents face a great many amount of threats today, from boat traffic, to pollution, to habitat loss, but none hit the orcas worse than prey depletion. As stated before, the SRKWs eat more Chinook Salmon than any other species of fish. But just like the whales themselves, Chinook Salmon are endangered too. In 2010 it was reported by the EPA that just 485,000 of the fish were in the Salish Sea, which is a 60% reduction in abundances since the Pacific Salmon Commission began tracking Chinook Salmon in 1984. That is a HUGE decrease considering how much the Southern Residents need to eat to survive. This is not just a whale problem, it’s a fish problem too.
The loss of Chinook Salmon to the Pacific Northwest has made a striking impact on the Southern Resident Killer Whales. To put it bluntly, because the fish numbers are plummeting, these orcas are starving to death. Since 2016, none of the new calves that have been born to this population have survived, and in that time frame 10 whales have died. It is important to note that toxins (DDTs, PCBs, and PBDEs) stay in the blubber layer, and if calories are burned through daily activity and not replenished, more toxins are released into the whales’ system, potentially causing reproductive problems and issues with the immune system, which can lead to death. Chinook Salmon loss is killing these killer whales, in more ways than one.
Chinook Salmon are endangered. But why? Over 200 years ago it was estimated that 10 to 16 million entered the Columbia River annually, with 4 million destined to enter the Snake River drainage. In the 1860s the Chinook Salmon population went down as people fished without regulations. Though damaging, a steep drop in population numbers would not be seen until the 1930s-1970s, when dams were built on the lower Columbia and lower Snake Rivers, creating a huge obstacle for young salmon trying to get to and from the sea. The salmon that did make it back from the ocean and into the system now had to face the entirely new challenge of actually migrating to the spawning grounds, as the dams had transformed the Columbia and Snake Rivers into a series of lakes that confused the salmon’s migration instincts and made them a more easy target for predators. While other issues such as climate change are affecting the Chinook salmon, it is apparent that these dams are too.
So what can be done to help both the endangered Chinook salmon and endangered killer whales? Simple, we must breach the dams. Breaching would put Chinook onto the road of recovery, giving the fish thousands of miles of habitat to re-establish themselves. This will also help Chinook Salmon battle climate change, another problem that will soon become even more threatening than it already is. And by helping the Chinook Salmon, we are also helping the orcas by providing them with their desperately needed food supply. The dams are also not very useful to the people living in the area; they do not offer flood control and produce low-value surpluses of electricity. Also, breaching the dams will cost the State of Washington nothing; the first two can be breached at the cost of another Environmental Impact Statement, which is estimated to be just around 80 million dollars and would just take 5 years to complete.
Time is running out for these whales. Just a few days ago on July 26th, 2018, a member of the Southern Residents – J35 Tahlequah – was seen pushing around her deceased calf, refusing to let it go. A five days later, J35 is still desperately pushing her child along the currents. This heartbreaking scene is one of many to come if something is not done for these animals.
The answer is clear: to save Chinook salmon, killer whales, and the
130+ animals that rely on Chinook for food, we must breach the dams this
year. If you want to help, please consider doing the following:
Breaching the dams isn’t just this simple. That water? Has to do somewhere. The power gained from those hydro-electric dams will be lost, driving up energy prices. Water gained for irrigation for hundreds of thousands of people will be lost. Don’t get me wrong, I want to save the whales but it’s no where near as simple as just getting rid of the dams.
These particular dams, the Lower Snake River Dams, are functionally obsolete with regards to energy production. They do not produce enough energy to maintain their own operating costs, while also preventing other more viable renewable sources of energy (such as solar) from entering the grid. Currently, there is a surplus of solar energy queued to enter the grid that can’t because of these dams. So from an energy and operations standpoint they’re useless.
Secondly, the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have set standards and protocols for dam removal, and the EPA in particular has this list of info regarding dam removal. This wouldn’t be a “smash the dams down and let the water go wherever” kind of situation. They would need to be meticulously disassembled over a several year period, allowing the water flow, volume, and temperatures to readjust.
Thirdly, we have known for over 20 years of the significant and positive environmental impacts of removing these dams, despite the Army Corps of Engineers claiming that environmental groups have been pushing for this only “recently.” This is not a mystery. This can be done and needs to be done immediately.
The dams are actually producing hydropower at a fraction of their capacity, and the cost of repair is greater than the cost of breaching. I’m on mobile so my links are ugly, but DamSense is a really great website that explains the economic and energy benefits of breaching the dams, plus it explains how the dams will be breached. As thelonelywhale said, there is a plan in place so they’re not just gonna throw some sticks of dynamite at it and call it a day.
I linked it in the original post, but here it is again if you would like to take a look:
All four of the Lower Snake River dams combined only produce an average of around 1,000 megawatts. The Bonneville Lock & Dam, on it’s own, is capable of producing that same amount of energy. There are other dams along the Columbia and Snake river that produce the same amount of energy, others produce twice that. (John Day & The Dalles Dams, for example, both are individually capable of generating more than 2,000MW’s of energy)
The Snake River dams do have a combined peak operating capacity of about 3,033 megawatts – but they rarely are ever used at peak capacity because they are not needed. The Northwest has a surplus of energy available, and there are dams along the Columbia river that easily produce twice the amount (if not more) of energy that the Snake River dams produce.
If the dams were breached in one day, there would not be any kind of significant loss. Other dams, and other forms of energy would easily be able to make-up the difference.
