We all know someone who is very picky about what they eat.
What if I tell you that federal, state and university investigators spent four summers proving that killer whales, or orcas — those black and white models for cuddly toys — may be the most fastidious diners around.
One of the Pacific Northwest’s prime attractions for tourists and locals, Orcinus orca can run more than 30-feet long and weigh in at 16,000 pounds. Marine scientists say they eat the equivalent of 4 to 6 percent of their own weight each day.
Photo Seattletours
It’s not how much these creatures eat, but rather what they eat that got the fish scientists from the U.S. and Canada all atwitter.
Like every other pescavore between British Columbia and Washington state, the orca love salmon. I’m not talking about the low end of the salmon food chain, like chum or humpies, or even sockeye or coho. Our black and white beauties go only for the best: the costly chinook or king salmon. Scientists say that they will bypass all the cheaper types.
I’m positive that study published in last month’s Endangered Species Research journal was solid work. Just look at the title: “Species and stock identification of prey consumed by endangered southern resident killer whales in their summer range.” (Click here for report.)
But Lynda V. Mapes, the Seattle Times reporter and author with a gift for capturing the natural essence of the Northwest, wrote about the scientists’ work in a far more palatable style.
With great delicacy, Mapes explained how the fish hunters followed the orcas in small boats and how they gathered killer-whale poop and regurgitation.
“DNA testing revealed that the orcas select chinook salmon nearly exclusively for food, despite far more abundant numbers of pink and sockeye in the area at the same time,” Mapes wrote.
She quotes the study’s lead author, Brad Hanson, biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service: “They would literally knock pink salmon out of the way to take a Chinook.”
We have so many orcas along the coasts of British Columbia and Washington State, in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, that we assign letters to the family or pods of whales. The learned pooper-scoopers followed the J, K and L pods between 2004 and 2008.
Mapes explained that scientists believe that chinook is prime cuisine because it delivers more calories for the effort. Chinook are the largest salmon with the most oily flesh.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the study was the finding that different whale families in different parts of the world’s oceans have vastly different dietary habits: some whale pods outside the Northwest, for example, dine exclusively on seals and sea lions, eschewing fish.
It’s only fitting, then, that here in the Puget Sound area – -where most diners and cooks would never consider farm-raised salmon and run screaming from the Atlantic version of the fish — the resident orcas dine like, and on, kings.
Salmon Nation provides a quick rundown of all the species here:
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In other whale news:
Meanwhile, the port watchers from the U.S. Customs service and other federal cops have cranked up surveillance to watch for whale meat being imported from the Far East.
This comes amid rumbles that a restaurant in Southern California, busted last year for selling whale meat from Japan, may not be alone in trading in this coveted, but illegal treat.
The Japanese openly skirt the international whaling moratorium which was passed on 1986 by claiming their whaling ships are actually research vessels and the slaughter of 1,000-plus whales each year is done in the name of science. They don’t discuss the fact that DNA-testing has proven that the same whale meat shows up in high-end eateries.
And a final whale tidbit:
The Sea Shepherd spends much of its time afloat trying to thwart the Japanese whale hunters. Last week, the ship’s captain Peter Bethune was indicted on five charges by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office for allegedly disrupting the hunt and other anti-whaling activists.
–Andrew Schneider
