The Sightline Institute has just released a new Cascadia Scorecard that attempts to track progress towards sustainability in Cascadia, the ecoregion encompassing much of western Washington and southern British Columbia. Southern resident killer whales and chinook salmon are featured within the scorecard’s wildlife indicator along with wolves, sage grouse, and caribou. While the wolf population has grown recently, most trends are uncertain or variable, and on average the five wildlife species are at only 16% of their historic abundance.

Below are two graphs from the scorecard, one showing southern resident pod population trends, the other total chinook returns to the Bonneville Dam on the lower Columbia River. 

In an associated “Orca Update” released today, Lisa Stiffler analyzes some of the details in these trends.  She makes some interesting connections between SRKWs, west coast chinook stocks, and Pacific climate conditions.  It remains clear to me that we need to delve deeper into the salmon and orca population dynamics (beyond Ford et al., 2005 and Hanson et al., 2010), as well the potential influence of El Nino vs La Nina conditions on the Northeast Pacific.  Lisa also included a nice rendering of the most-recent official population time series:

Data Sources for the Wildlife Indicator

Orcas. Refers to “southern resident” population, unless otherwise noted. Population data from Ken Balcomb, senior scientist, The Center for Whale Research, http://www.whaleresearch.com. Historical abundance derived from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington State Status Report for the Killer Whale, Appendix A, March 2004, page 41, http://wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/diversty/soc/status/orca/final_orca_status.pdf.

Salmon. Refers to spring and summer chinook salmon at the Bonneville Dam, unless otherwise noted. Population data from University of Washington, School of Aquatic and Fisheries Science, Columbia River DART database, “Adult Passage Annual Summary,” http://www.cbr.washington.edu/dart/adult_annual.html. Historical abundance from US National Marine Fisheries Service, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, “Final Report of Updated Status of Listed ESUs of Salmon and Steelhead,” http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/trt/brtrpt.htm.

Dr. Rob Williams

Notes from an annual lecture at the University of Washington, March 3, 2010, at 7pm:

“Marine conservation in the Pacific Northwest: Whales, Salmon, and Sound” by

Rob Williams, 2009-2010 Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Chair

“A scientist is someone who asks ‘what if’ questions.” — Margaret Atwood

“If you want to study whales, you should put yourself in path of the whales.” — Alexandra Morton  (Her advice inspired Rob to settle on Pearse Island in Johnstone Strait.)

When I was a kid in the 1970s growing up on Vancouver Island, a great success was the ‘save the whales’ movement.  It was successful in that we gave it a name and a voice (Roger Payne), e.g. the Sound of the Earth LP vinyl record.  Such recordings helped us understand that sound and hearing is as important to whales as light and vision are to us.  Acoustic space is as important for our local whales as the coastal rainforest habitat is to B.C. bears.

Abundance estimates of local whales were rare historically in western Canada.  It is a complex region, there was no whaling, and Canada had left the IWC in the 1980s.  More recently, the Species at Risk Act made abundance estimates more important.

In the U.S., the Marine Mammal Protection Act outlines management objectives.  A key element of the Act is that Potential Biological Removal (PBR) limits annual anthropogenic mortality while meeting the management objectives.   Thus, it demands abundance estimates, e.g. PBR = Nmin * 0.5 (Rmax) * Fr

In Canada, the Species at Risk Act dictates that best available information must be used (whether from science, first nations, etc).  No quantitative abundance estimate is required, but filling in such data gaps was likely to be helpful.

So, I went off to Britain to get a PhD in abundance estimation.  Once back in Canada, I worked with a non-profit using line transects to estimate average number of cetaceans (6 species) on the B.C. coast within the gap between U.S. survey areas. We estimated populations of: 15,000 (?) harbor porpoises; 26,000 Pacific white-side dolphins (possibly moving into inshore waters of WA); 496 fin whales (all inside Queen Charlotte Island, ship strike risk), 1,300 humpback whales (density highest at S end of Queen Charlottes where shipping density is at a minimum);

Juxtaposing species density surfaces and shipping density creates a map of ship strike “risk” for that species.  Similar maps could be made for oilspill likelihood.  At the least, such maps can help us know where to pay attention and maybe where to focus conservation actions.

Acoustic habitat quality: does anthropogenic noise mask cetacean signals? Working with Chris Clark we tried to use noise to quantify acoustic habitat quality (masking metric).  The lowest 5% of sound levels characterizes the “ancient ambient” conditions.  Pop-ups were deployed in Prince Rupert, Caamano Sound, Johnstone Strait, Vancouver and Haro Strait.  Johnstone Strait had highest sound pressure levels, possibly due to a local bottleneck of shipping.

Williams talks in Kane Hall

Chronic ocean noise is an insidious problem that’s received less attention than military sonar.  Amazingly, the International Maritime Organization and IWC have resolved to reduce shipping noise 50% in this decade.  Technological solutions exist; we just need an incentive.  It seems there is an opportunity to lead on this issue.

There are many short-term effects of ship noise decreasing the active space of cetaceans that may be biologically meaningful: masking of communication, prey sounds, predator sounds, etc.  When Erin recently began her PhD, we observed a few hundred Pacific white-sided dolphins in Knight Inlet, we noticed many of them breaching and then porpoising away.  Transients chased them into a bay and attacked.  Acoustic detection of the incoming transients had life or death consequences for some of those dolphins!

How many salmon do killer whales need?  I participated in a UW workshop to analyse data from SeaWorld, IWC, and wild KWs.  Main result was that nursing costs mums ~40% extra energy.  It’s clear that SRKWS need hundreds of thousands of salmon.  Whose salmon?  Whales don’t see or hear the boundary, so there is a profound need for transboundary research.

Next: 2 year Marie Curie Fellowship starting this fall at St. Andrew to study masking effects of shipping with mathematics collaborators.

Scott’s favorite quote from Rob’s talk: “Whales need a quiet ocean with fish in it.”

Feinstein’s Water Bomb (Feb 12 article in the High Country News) indicates that things are really starting to heat up in California.  Water stress is manifesting in political lobbying and reversals that may jeopardize the Sacramento River salmon that K and L pod presumably pursue each winter.  Up here in the Northwest the water competition is due to human thirst for electricity.  In the Southwest, the driver is farmers’ increasingly strident demand for water.

Puget Sound Harbor Safety Committee meeting notes

Feb. 3., 2010, 10-12 a.m., South Federal Building

New container ship terminal in Tacoma (SSA Marine presention)

• Puyallup Tribal Terminal
• 3-4 berths (~850′ spacing, 51′ deep)
• 200 acres
• About the scale of Terminal 18
• Market demand is too low to proceed
• Permits should be in place in ~1 year
• Construction will take at least 2 years
• Port has already constructed one 1200′ berth
• 50-80k cubic yards of soil is contaminated (used to be a Navy Dock; Lincoln ditch)

Puget Sound Tidal Energy (presentation by Craig Collar, Senior Manager; manages renewable energy projects)

• Filed draft license application with FERC about 2 months ago
• 80% comes from Columbia hydropower, Initiative 937 dictates added generation be new renewables
• Only 2 of 7 initial sites are still of interest (dropped Speiden recently)
• Focused mostly on Admiralty Inlet as pilot plant
• Open Hydro turbine was developed in U.S. but is licensed by an Irish company
• Nova Scotia Power just deployed second largest Open Hydro device in Bay of Fundy (largest is in Ireland)
• Deployed at Falls of Inverness in Ireland (tug/barge held station in 10 knot currents)
• Site is ~1/2 mile outside shipping station
• At ~60m, this will be deepest deployment to date, globally.
• FERC 10 year license should allow us to run/maintain 2 turbines for a test period of 3-5 years, allowing reasonable amount of time for installation and removal.  We need data on how much maintenance is needed.  We could re-license again as a pilot, or shift to a commercial permit and more turbines in a second phase (~5-10 turbines in second phase)?
• Polyage studies indicate you’ll have to put order 100s of turbines into Admiralty inlet to appreciable affect the tidal exchange within Puget Sound.
• We need about 140MW, about half of that has already been provided by wind.  (1MW powers about 700 homes)

Other business

• Most other Harbor Safety Committees are funded by Coast Guard or State sources (e.g. CA)
• New article on “Industry Standards of Care” in U.S. Coast Guard quarterly publication Proceedings.
• Links to all U.S. Harbor Safety Committees are now on the Oil Spill Task Force web site.
• Upcoming meetings in Long Beach, Portland…

Vessel Traffic Safety related to the BP pier expansion

• Vessel Traffic Safety Risk Analysis model was developed and reported on by George Washington University (BP paid ~$1M for it, then asked for further analysis related to some U.S. Army Corp questions).
• EIS draft may be available later this year (Olivia Romano, BP is supportive of a presentation to the Committee by someone from George Washington U team that developed basic model)
• The data are all public, but the model is proprietary.

Dr. Jack Rensel, Rensel Associates Aquatic Sciences (works with Puget Sound fish farmers on permitting/etc., but not BC farmers)

Harmful Algal Blooms and Possible Effects on Fraser River Sockeye Salmon

11:04 Intro

Much of this talk is based on co-author Nicola Haigh’s 10-year sockeye database.

Target algae of interest: Heterosigma akashiwo, HAMP database

11:06 Background

Heterosigma is a microflagellate that kills farmed fish in Puget Sound, BC, and beyond (but not Korea).   Associated with eutrophication and sometimes kills plankton.  Migrates vertically up to 15m depth, cysts in silty sediments, sometimes blooms over entire basins for long periods (>1 week).

11:12 Initiation of blooms

Initiation often in S Straits of Georgia (and sometimes Bellingham Bay, or Case Inlet).  There are U.S. fish farms nearby in the San Juan area and near Vancouver.  Association with neap tides and southward pulsing dynamics in Straits of Georgia and Haro Strait.

11:17 Wild fish exposure

Some think wild fish will escape by swimming under when cells raft on surface, but cells can be mixed down and continue to be toxic to fish.  Sockeye are surface oriented, both as adults and as juveniles (near-shore).  Since farmed fish in 15m deep pens are dying, it is likely that wild sockeye are at risk, too.

11:19 Fraser River sockeye

Most important stock on the west coast (CA-BC).  They have 4-year predominant life cycle with juveniles readring 1 winter in lake prior to out-migration followed by 2 winters at sea.  Most smolts leave Fraser in May/June; adults return July and August.  Most juveniles migrate out northward, but some go south.  All stick close to coast and many go through the Gulf Islands (Groot and Cooke, 1987; map indicates minimal use of the San Juans).

August 2009 news: deep crash of Fraser River sockeye.  Why?  Total run peaked at ~24M in 1994; ~2M in 2007.  From Pacific Salmon Commission escapement data (1952-2007).

11:25 Harmful Algae Monitoring Program (HAMP) database

Sampling areas on outer and inner Vancouver Island.  Frequent occurrence of blooms in BC, while we go years without blooms in Puget Sound.  2007 saw a huge increase in blooms relative to previous decade.

11:29 Looking for correlations

Comparing time series of marine survival fraction (e.g. from Chilco stock total run size) and bloom index (e.g. S. Georgia Strait sampling area) the smoking gun is Chilco stock inversely correlated with bloom index in S Georgia Strait, and to a lesser extnt in Queen Charlottes and Broughton Archipelago.

What about Puget Sound?  Looking at years in which we had large blooms in both PS and BC, followed two years later by low run sizes.  A mystery is that there are no PS reports of major fish kills during large bloom periods (though at least some dead wild salmonids have been reported in every major bloom reported).

Prior to 1980, most adult sockeye came in through Straits of Juan de Fuca.  Northerly diversion rate has increased since (from ~20% coming in through Johnstone Strait to ~70%).

David Welch did a nice study of tagged smolts, but had to raise to bigger size and they swam through bloom areas in just a few days.  Wild smolts likely hang out longer in shallow, near-shore areas, increasing their exposure risk.

11:42 What is changing?

Masson and Cummins, 2007 show that Strait of Georgia is warming (~2C since 1970) throughout water column.

Warmer springs => earlier blooms => into juvenile sockeye timing

Nitrogen loading from human society increasing; Newton and Van Voorhis, 2003, shows that Possession Sound and Admiralty Inlet are nutrient sensitive.  Human population around Salish Sea is near 4M now, there are many combined sewer overflows (especially around very dense Vancouver), and Victoria won’t treat fully until 2020.

11:47 Monitoring and mitigation

Need ORCA buoys around Puget Sound

Clay is effective in Korea for flocculation; maybe could help in combination with the Solarbee circulators being used in East Coast estuaries.

Chilco stock should be tagged somehow.

Make better use of satellite data, e.g. NOAA CoastWatch Aqua MODIS

11:48 GIS demo shows how satellite data can contextualize tracks of fish migration.

11:55 Alternative hypotheses

Food web problems?

Sea lice (not a problem in PS due to lower salinity).  Contested, but HABs may pre-dispose smolts to sea lice infection.

11;57 Conclusion

HABS are unlikely to be sole cause of long term decline of sockeye recruit per spawner, but may be a major component of smolt loss, especially in 2006 and 2007.

Long term R/S decline since 1989 points to ecosystem oscillation or change.

12:00 Thanks

Mike LaPointe acknowledged for data from Pacific Salmon Commission.