Orcas Educator Guide

In Friday Harbor, a decade-old hydrophone system running 200 meters along Snug Harbor is constantly recording sounds that come through Haro Strait.

Val Veirs, the owner of Orcasound, uses custom software to detect interesting sounds recorded by his hydrophones. When a sequence of sounds displays a particular harmonic structure, it gets converted into an .mp3 sound file that is uploaded into a database for further research.

But how exactly do hydrophones work?

When underwater sounds push against a hydrophone, a small voltage is created. That voltage is pre-amplified and then sent up cables to computers for analysis.

The voltage (or sound) is sampled at a very high rate – 196 thousand samples per second – which is 4 times higher than compact disc sample rates.

According to Veirs, sampling high frequencies that are above the human hearing range allows him to study the intricacies of orca language; more importantly, he wants to show how noise such as boats and ships make it harder for orcas to communicate and hunt.

In studying orcas, Veirs uses a complicated set of algorithms to discriminate against 99.9% of the sounds that come through the hydrophones. Orcas produce sounds that have a very simple harmonic structure, and that’s what his software looks for.

“Orcas make sounds with frequencies that change in a smooth way, with most of the energy in 3, 4, 5 peaks,” says Veirs.

“And sounds that have a complicated harmonic structure – with many frequencies in it are discriminated by the software, because these are sounds not typically made by orcas.”

The Southern resident orcas in Friday Harbor are considered an endangered population segment by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Ultimately, Veirs wants to use his research to create public policy that urges boats to slow down, stay farther away from the orcas, and to use quieter engines.

“Once we understand that these noises may make it harder for the whales to forage, to communicate, then we have a chance to take some societal steps to give them a better chance of surviving…That is the best hope we have for them.”

Retired professor Val Veirs.

LIME KILN STATE PARK, SAN JUAN ISLAND – It is hard to describe what it’s like when you see a killer whale up close. “Awe” and “inspiring” are the two words that come to most people’s minds. If you ever want to have that awe-inspiring experience, then Lime Kiln State Park on San Juan Island, Washington is the place to go.

“This is the foremost whale watching park in the world,” says retired professor Val Veirs. “There’s no place else in the world you can go with a higher probability of seeing a whale.”

Veirs, who taught physics at Colorado College for more than 30 years, visited the San Juan Islands on vacation with his wife Leslie and never left. Unable to spend his retirement idly, Veirs turned his attention from particle waves to sound waves, and took up the hobby of recording underwater marine life. That’s when he heard his first killer whale.

“Somebody who was making recordings sent me a tape, it was back in the days of cassette tapes, and he played this tape and I said ‘Wow, that’s not what I’ve been hearing on my hydrophone, I’ve been hearing ferry boats and crabs, but I haven’t heard these marvelous sounds that these animals make.”

Now Veirs puts almost all of his efforts into tracking orcas. “Listening to the underwater sounds of the sea is an effort to try to understand the acoustic environment of the killer whales that very commonly visit this island,” he says.

Veirs recordings confirm what many scientists have theorized about orcas. Different groups of killer whales – known as pods – have different sounds. “There are about 85 animals in three pods, labeled J, K, and L,” says Veirs, “and each of those pods seems to have a signature or contact call. By listening to these a lot, you kind of develop a sense of the vocabulary.”

What that vocabulary is telling Veirs is that the Southern Resident Killer Whales of Puget Sound are in trouble – threatened by a lack of food, pollution, and underwater noise harassment. It is this third factor that interests Veirs, mostly because he hears it firsthand.

“If we were listening to the underwater sounds we might hear the waves lapping on the shore, but that would soon be interrupted by the high speed whine of a speed boat. And then echoing and rumbling we would hear a container ship coming in from Asia coming around the corner of Vancouver Island.”

Sound travels through the air at about 700 miles-per-hour. Underwater, it travels even faster – closer to 3,500 miles-per-hour. Veirs says, if you want to know what it’s like to be an orca, imagine living under the flight path of an airport and next to a train station at the same time. Veirs says his research shows that the whales are compensating for all that noise. “We’ve had three or four experiments which have documented the fact that the whales speak more loudly when the background noises are higher.”

Underwater noise isn’t just a nuisance for orcas. It’s critical for their survival, since killer whales rely on echolocation to find their food. Orcas emit a high-pitched click, which, like sonar, bounces off their prey and tells them exactly where a tasty salmon might be swimming nearby. “If it’s harder for them to hear their echoes then they won’t be able to detect,” say Veirs. “The fish that used to be 100 meters away now maybe it can only be 20 meters away.”

One thing that scientists would love to know is whether the orcas’ chirps and whistles are just general communication, or whether they are a more formal language. In other words, are the orcas actually speaking to each other? Val Veirs thinks he has the answer. In a recording made a few years ago, Veirs documented a mother orca “talking” to her calf, which was approaching Veirs’ research boat.

Analyzing the recording afterwards, Veirs was able to triangulate the calls and recreate the communication. “The reconstruction on the computer looks like, [the calf saying] ‘I’m going over there… I’m going over there.’ [Then the mother says] ‘Don’t go over there, don’t go over there,’ a little louder. And in that intense back and forth, the young whale turns away from the boat.”

Whether Veirs has documented the first evidence of an orca “conversation” or not, he is committed to continuing to study these iconic animals. “Our goals for this are multiple. One is kind of public education. Another is trying to move toward a deeper understanding of how the underwater noise may affect the behavior of the orcas.”

“Once we understand that, and we understand that those noises may make it harder for the whales to forage, to navigate, to communicate, then we have a chance to take some societal steps to give them a little better chance.”

Listen to various sounds the Orcas encounter around San Juan Island in this map below.

Produced by Kevin Bang, KCTS. View Listening to Orcas – KCTS 9 Quest in a larger map

Additional Links

• Salish Sea Hydrophone Network
• SeaSound Project of the Whale Museum
• Val Veirs Orca Call Catalogue

SAN JUAN ISLAND, WASHINGTON – It’s an image you often see on paintings and wood carvings – a giant totemic killer whale, with the images of sea creatures and faces artistically contained within the whale’s body.

The image tells the story of the Tlingit legend of the creation of the killer whale, which goes as follows: Natsilane was a charismatic and skilled wood carver who married the Chief’s daughter. Jealous of Natsilane’s popularity and talent, his brothers-in-law devised a plan to abandon Natsilane at sea during a traditional sea lion hunt. Left to die on a small rock in the middle of nowhere, Natsilane was summoned under the waves by a sea lion. The sea lion asked him to heal his son who was injured by a spear during the hunt. After pulling the spear point out, the Sea Lion Chief granted Natsilane great powers and helped him back to shore. Still angry about being abandoned, he began carving a great whale out of different types of wood. The first two carvings, when set in the water, simply floated away. But the third, made of yellow cedar, came to life. Natsilane sent it to exact revenge on his brothers-in-law. When the killer whale found them, he smashed their canoe and killed the brothers. But Natsilane felt badly about what he had done, and when the whale returned to him, he instructed it to never harm humans again.

The legend tries to explain something curious about orcas. They don’t attack people. The question is — why not? On a simple, biological scale they are bigger and stronger than we are, have sharper teeth, and they’re carnivores. Any similar creature might see humans as a tasty little snack, but not orcas.

Observation has shown that one answer may not be far from the ancient legend. Killer whales seem to follow rules that go beyond basic instinct and border on culture. Individual pods forage, communicate and navigate differently, much the way different cultures of people do. Researchers have witnessed “greeting ceremonies” between pods. They’ve even seen the equivalent of a funeral. It may very well be that within “orca culture” there is a social norm not to go after people.

A more scientific explanation might be that we’re simply not tasty enough to be included on the killer whales’ menu. Orcas, it turns out, have picky palates. The Southern Resident Killer Whales of Puget Sound dine on only the fattest Chinook salmon, even if it means allowing an entire school of skinnier salmon to swim by. Transient orcas, which have a broader diet, have shown similar selective behavior, in one case killing a gray whale but eating only its tongue.

A third possible reason is that we don’t resemble any food source killer whales typically depend on. There have reportedly been incidents where an orca attempted to hunt a human, but broke off the hunt immediately upon realizing it wasn’t a sea lion.

Okay, so we’ve established that killer whales are pretty darned smart — they have a culture with specific behaviors, a picky diet, and they know that we don’t taste very good. Still, humans pump toxins into their water, we bombard them with noise, and sometimes we kidnap their babies and put them in aquariums. Orcas have a pretty good reason to hate us, perhaps even enough to want to extract revenge, yet they don’t. The answer here might be friendship. There are many cases where nomadic killer whales have gravitated to humans, bonding with them and playing games. Trainers at places like Sea World say very little goes into orca training. The whales seem to understand people, and are eager to cooperate and create bonds.

In fact, the only apparent instances of orcas attacking people have happened at aquatic parks, where the whales have killed trainers. Many experts think these attacks are not malicious, rather a case of play getting out of hand. Howard Garrett of the Orca Network disagrees. He argues the attacks are deliberate, though not in cold blood. Cut off from their pods, confined in small concrete tanks, and hand fed instead of being allowed to hunt, Garrett thinks the pressures build causing the orcas to occasionally lash out.

Whether that’s the case or not, it’s clear that in the wild, orcas seem to have a pretty universal rule: don’t attack humans. The reason would appear to be both biological and cultural. Killer whales have been around about 11 million years. Compared to them, we are a relatively new species on the planet. Physically we’re no match for this apex predator, but they’ve apparently deemed us worthy of coexistence. We owe them the same.

At the very least, we can admire and respect these creatures, and be grateful to Natsilane for commanding the killer whale to follow the universal rule.

See the related Video, Science on the SPOT: Sound Waves – Listening to Orcas:

Photo Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce. Photograph by Captain Budd Christman, NOAA Corps

SEATTLE, Wash.—A few years ago, I worked as a naturalist on boats in the San Juan Islands, in northwest Washington State. I was lucky enough to watch the resident orca pods, named J, K and L in the wild with all of their unique natural behaviors.

Orcas are a particularly fascinating animal to study because of their social complexities. They live with their mother and her family their whole lives and each family has their own “dialect” of calls. Scientists have made the case in peer-reviewed journals for the existence of culture in some cetaceans including orcas.

Groups of orcas can share the same habitat but not interact with each other at all; the salmon-eating resident pods don’t intermingle with the so-called “transient” orcas that prey on marine mammals, yet they are regularly found traversing the same waters within days or even hours of each other. As far as scientists can tell, they are the same species, yet they avoid each other completely and stick with their own cultural diet preferences religiously.

Whether on a boat or from the shore at Lime Kiln State Park on the west side of San Juan Island, I was able to observe the orca's behaviors. Breaching is one of the orca's more dramatic behaviors, where it propels its full body up and out of the water, then lands with a great splash. Another unique behavior is called spy-hopping, where the orca sticks its head up and looks around.

There are also many subtle behaviors to observe. Sometimes I'd see a whale just floating motionless at the surface, or “logging." It's not often that you can hear an orca’s calls above the water, but on that day, I was lucky enough to hear a nearby logging whale vocalizing from the surface. Was she aware that humans could hear her? Was she perhaps trying to engage with us in some way? I couldn’t help but speculate about what might be going on in her mind even though I realize that her vocalizations probably had nothing to do with humans despite my “wishful thinking” that she was trying to communicate with me.

One summer, a few Southern Resident orcas started a fad of carrying a salmon around on their heads. One whale started it and soon, all of the “cool kids” were doing it. It didn’t seem to be hunting practice or serve any practical purpose. Was it a game to see how long you could carry the salmon without dropping it? We don’t have definitive answers at this point.

Another example of unique orca behavior involves a “rubbing beach” used by Northern Resident orcas. The beach is located at Robson Bight in the Johnstone Strait region of northern Vancouver Island, Canada. Pods of orcas visit the area and spend time rubbing their bodies across the smooth pebbles just below the surface of the water. Why do they do this? We can’t say for sure, but it could feel good to the orcas, much like a day at the spa. There are health benefits to massage for humans, so perhaps the orcas have introduced a similar concept here.

People have long speculated that there may be a rubbing beach used by Southern Residents somewhere, but if there is, no one has proof of it yet. In fact, I don’t know of any other orcas that have a rubbing beach like the Northern Residents. Perhaps it is a unique component of their culture, kind of like here in Seattle where we wear our polar fleece jackets to everything from a hike in the mountains to a fancy dinner downtown.
Though humans and orcas are very different species, what affects us also affects the orcas and their natural environment, and unfortunately their environment has become significantly altered over time. The environmental problems affecting Puget Sound and the waters throughout the world can seem overwhelming, but luckily I am a part of a culture at the Seattle Aquarium that values conservation and marine life. Culture is an important part of what it means to be human, and I think it’s pretty cool that we share that with orcas.

See the related Video, Science on the SPOT: Sound Waves – Listening to Orcas:

A pod of transient orcas swim past North Pender Island in Puget Sound. Credit: Ashley Ahearn

SAN JUAN ISLANDS, Wash. — Puzzled by orcas’ failure to thrive in Puget Sound, researchers have turned to a secret weapon with a killer nose.

Scientists have several hypotheses for why Puget Sound killer whales are not recovering after being added in 2005 to the federal list of endangered species. They suspect lack of food, vessel traffic and pollution are to blame, but no one knows for sure.

Researcher Sam Wasser and his team are finding answers in the whales’ wake. Or, more specifically, in the fecal matter they leave behind as they swim through the waters of Puget Sound.

“It looks like a combination of algae and snot, if you want to know the truth,” explains Wasser, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. “It varies in color but it’s very mucusy.”

But Wasser says poop’s not gross. It’s scientific gold.

“We can measure the diet of the animal, we can get toxins from the feces, DNA so we can tell the individual’s identity, it’s species, sex and all of this is in feces. So it’s literally a treasure trove of information,” says Wasser.

Tucker and trainer, Liz Sealy take to the bow on the hunt for whale poop. Credit: Ashley Ahearn

His team has developed techniques to analyze animal poop from all over the world. His center has helped prosecute ivory poachers in Africa, track wolverines in the Rockies and better understand predator-prey interactions between wolves and caribou in the tundra.

But finding wild animal poop, especially whale poop, isn’t easy, so Wasser has taken a creative approach to staffing his organization. Wasser looks down lovingly at his furry black sidekick.

“This is Tucker our scat detection dog. Say hi Tucker.”

Tucker is an 8-year-old black Lab mix. He’s what those in the dog world call “ball obsessed.” Tucker will do anything for a game of fetch – even if that means sniffing out floating whale poop from a mile away – because he knows that when he finds the poop he gets to play with his ball.

Tucker the scat-sniffing Lab from EarthFix on Vimeo.

Killer whales have been found to have the highest concentrations of toxic substances like DDT, flame-retardants and PCBs of any creature on the planet. Jessica Lundin, a graduate student at the Center for Conservation biology, says that if scientists can understand more about the contamination in these animals, they may be able to explain why they’re not recovering.

“These toxicants have been shown in the lab to have reproductive impairment, thyroid disruption and to be immunotoxic. Those are very concerning attributes, especially when we know this endangered population has incredibly high levels.”

I join Wasser and his team as they head out of their base, San Juan Island’s Snug Harbor, in search of poop samples. As we’re rounding a rocky outcropping another research pipes in over the radio with the identification numbers of a pod of killer whales spotted passing nearby North Pender Island.

Deborah Giles, a PhD candidate at the University of California Davis and an expert on killer whale behavior, notes down the location and steers the boat. White caps slap at the bow as we pick up speed.

But we’re rewarded when black dorsal fins emerge several hundred yards ahead of us.

“There they are!” Giles exclaims. “They’re at 11.”

Liz Sealy, Tucker’s trainer, is in the bow of the boat with the dog trying to pick up a scent as we criss-cross the waters where the whales last surfaced – on the lookout for poop.

“When he gets excited he’ll start standing up on the bow, wagging his tail, getting really animated. So for now he’s just checking the scene,” she explains.

Tucker wanders back and forth across the bow but doesn’t seem too excited. The researchers spend about 20 minutes bobbing along after the whales, but alas, Tucker comes up empty-snouted. The winds are too strong and the water’s too rough for him to lock onto a strong scent.

Despite this unlucky mission, the team will continue to collect samples from killer whales in these waters throughout the summer.

With samples collected in the past, Wasser’s team has been able to show that during periods of high vessel traffic – say Fourth of July weekend for example – the whales have higher levels of stress hormones in their poop. Combine that with smaller runs of Chinook salmon, which the whales prefer, and you’ve got problems.

Killer Whale food. Toxic chemicals accumulate in the blubber of marine mammals - the primary food source of transient orcas. Credit: Ashley Ahearn

“The data suggests that at times of low prey abundance there’s a cumulative impact of boat traffic. The whales are more stressed,” says Katherine Ayres, a graduate student with the Center for Conservation Biology. The researchers can also tell when the whales are undernourished and correlate that with lower fertility rates and higher mortality.

There are about 86 resident killer whales in the region and that number hasn’t increased since 2000 when the population crashed. Wasser suspects that the toxic chemicals in these whales may be playing a role here because they disrupt major hormonal pathways.

“They disrupt major hormonal pathways so that your body’s ability to regulate reproduction, metabolism all those things can be negatively impacted,” he says. “It’s accumulating effects that are occurring and we’re just trying to show the mechanisms that lead to that outcome.”

For Deborah Giles, that outcome is pretty clear. “There are females that haven’t had calves yet and really they should have been having calves by now. Also we’re losing males that are just coming into reproductive age. That’s a huge hit to this population.”

It’s tricky to pick apart the various factors that make life tough for orca whales. Lack of food, vessel traffic and toxic pollution all pose a threat to these animals but by studying poop, scientists can look at all these things collectively — providing some direction for policymakers who are trying to solve human global health problems.

Wasser says a sample of whale poop is kind of like a snapshot of pollution levels in our coastal waters and that’s a photograph we might all want to have a look at.

EarthFix is a public media project of Oregon Public Broadcasting and Boise State Public Radio, Idaho Public Television, KCTS 9 Seattle, KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio, Northwest Public Radio and Television, Southern Oregon Public Television and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

See the related Video, Science on the SPOT: Sound Waves – Listening to Orcas:

SEATTLE, Wash.—Nothing excites whale researchers and whale fanatics more than seeing a new calf born into the pod. However, researchers have learned that calf survival rates are incredibly low, especially for the orca’s first born. The mother’s young calf often dies because of something the mother passes on to her offspring—PCBs.

What are PCBs?
Polychlorinated Biphenyls, commonly known as PCBs, are manufactured organic chemicals that were primarily used as insulating liquids, such as coolants and lubricants in electrical equipment, but were also used in other common materials such as paints, cement, adhesives, and even the flame retardants used in some children’s clothing.

PCBs enter the water through spills, leaks, damage to equipment and improperly disposed trash. Though production of PCBs was banned in the 1970s because of its harmful effects to the environment, the chemical still presents a significant environmental threat today.

PCBs thrive in fish and marine mammals
What makes PCBs unique from other toxins is that its molecules are extremely fat-soluble, meaning they accumulate easily in fats.

They thrive in fish and marine mammals and can reach levels thousands of times higher than the levels of PCBs in the surrounding water, essentially making fish and marine mammals a PCB Petri dish.

Most of the PCB concentration in Puget Sound orcas is the result of PCB build up in their primary food source—Chinook salmon. These tiny toxins lower orcas’ immunity to diseases, decrease sperm count and disrupt many hormonal, developmental and reproductive processes.

Do the PCBs ever leave the orcas?
Unfortunately, once they’re in the orca, the toxins don’t go away. PCBs are considered a Persistent Organic Pollutant (POP) because once ingested, they persistently build up in the fatty blubber of the orcas. As PCB concentration increases, it severely decreases the orca’s lifespan, further threatening the existing members of an already endangered species.

What does that mean for the orcas?
Only sexually mature females have a chance of getting rid of any PCBs. One of the hormonal processes the PCBs disrupt is calf development. The toxin actually imitates the hormone that is the main form of estrogen involved in reproduction.

As a result, a small amount of the PCBs are transferred as the offspring develops. Even more toxins are excreted through the mother’s breast milk which is extremely rich in fat. In fact, studies show female blubber samples have one-third the levels of PCB toxins found in male orcas. Essentially, the offspring increase the mother’s chances of survival by taking some of her PCB concentration.

The trade off is that PCB levels in the developing calf, especially the firstborn, often lead to its premature death. It sometimes takes multiple attempts for female orcas to have a calf with low enough PCB levels to survive. Meanwhile, each time the mother gives birth, she has a better chance of surviving with fewer PCBs in her system.

This tragic cycle, paired with toxic effects of lower sperm counts, higher susceptibility to disease, depletion of the salmon supply and other factors, have resulted in the southern resident orca reproduction rate to drop significantly in recent years.

Orcas do not reproduce in litters or even on a consistent basis. Females begin breeding when they are around 15 years of age and give birth about every three to four years. Around age 40, most females stop breeding and their PCB levels rise at a greater rate.

Without these environmental setbacks, females could produce four-to-six surviving offspring during their reproductive years. Instead, orca survival rates are greatly outnumbered by mortality rates.

What can be done?
Unfortunately, there isn’t a quick fix. Although it’s been more than 40 years since PCBs were banned, their persistent properties cause them to stick around. In fact, researchers predict that PCB concentrations may not decrease to a safer level for at least another 30 years.

The task for humans now is a simple one we’ve all heard before: be kind to the environment. As individuals, dispose of trash properly, purchase environmentally-friendly household supplies and help spread the word about the challenges orcas face and ways to protect them.

See the related Video, Science on the SPOT: Sound Waves – Listening to Orcas:

On July 16th, my Mom and I left San Francisco by boat to tour the Southeast coastal islands of Alaska. I have been hearing stories about the untamed Alaska since I was a small child. My mom lived in Kodiak as a girl. Her father and my grandfather had his last tour of Naval duty on Kodiak. His assignment was to survey the numbers of Kodiak bears for the sake of conservation. So I was more than eager to see the wildness and wildlife of Alaska.

While at sea, I've seen common Alaskan wildlife. Humpbacks have spouted and breached, raven and eagles have dived at the water for a dinner of spawning salmon. But I keep looking at the water, hoping to glimpse Orcas. The next opportunity to do so will be tomorrow coming out of the port of Victoria, British Columbia. Orcas, or killer whales as they are commonly known, are not whales at all. They are the largest species of the dolphin family and they are prominent along the Southeast islands of Alaska. They have captured the spirit of natives in these lands. They are alive in their legends and are carved into totem poles that are being preserved in the towns and museums along the coast. Both the native people here and Orcas form matriarchal societies and many native people believe that members of their tribe are reincarnated as killer whales.

Resident Orcas are just one type of Killer Whale. Three groups of Orcas have been found to be genetically separate on the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA level here. Resident Orcas stay close to the shore of the Alaskan islands in herds of up to 200. They have strongly bonded familial ties and are the fisherman of the Orcas, as their diet consists only of fish. Transient Orcas, on the other hand, live also in groups of up to 200 but will split off for the sake of the hunt. They hunt small marine mammals and migrate a great deal more, going where they can find food. While residents have a small and predictable migration route, transients are harder to research because of an unpredictable migration route. Researchers in Alaska have been able to collect more data on resident pods because of their predictability. They identify each individual by their Saddle-patch, or the white markings adjacent to the dorsal fin. It is like a fingerprint, identifying individual Orcas. The third group of Orcas is even more elusive than the transient pods. They are known as the Offshore Orcas. They are known as the rogue of the species and have been very difficult to research because of their unpredictability and often solo migration.

I am most interested in Orcas because of the question of Orca culture. They are seen as very intelligent animals by Native tribes as well as researchers. There is a controversy in the scientific field if Orcas have culture. Traits of fishing or hunting seem to be passed down to offspring denoting learning and hence culture. However, the science community is still split on learning behavior. One story I heard while here paints them as creatures of learning and remorse. One sick Orca was found in a pod. Fisherman noticed the other pod-mates line up and the sick Orca went through the line giving attention to each pod member and then left the pod after what looked like "saying his goodbyes". Was this a goodbye ritual for sending off a dying pod-mate? Whether is was or not, such unusual behavior is well worth more research. Hopefully, I will be able to see some of their behavior myself before returning to San Francisco.

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