In this episode of the "How to Protect the Ocean" podcast, host Andrew Lewin discusses the significant return of the Southern Resident orca population, specifically L-Pod, to Penn Cove, Washington, after more than 50 years. This return is particularly poignant given the tragic history of the area, where in the 1970s, a brutal capture event took place. During this event, 80 orcas were corralled using bombs and boats, resulting in the deaths of five orcas and the capture of many others, including Tokite, also known as Lolita, who spent 50 years in captivity before passing away in 2023.
The emotional response from the local community and researchers upon witnessing the orcas return to Penn Cove was captured in videos, marking a full-circle moment for a population that has faced significant trauma. While the reasons for their return remain unclear—whether it was due to food availability or exploration—the event symbolizes hope for the future of the critically endangered Southern Resident orcas, whose numbers have dwindled from around 150 individuals to just 71-73 today.
Lewin emphasizes the importance of protecting the orcas' habitat and food sources, particularly their preferred prey, salmon, which has been declining due to various environmental factors. The episode highlights the resilience of these intelligent creatures and the joy of their return, serving as a reminder of the ongoing efforts needed to ensure their survival and recovery.
Link to article: https://www.greenmatters.com/news/penn-cove-orca-capture
U of Washington and Orcas: https://marinebiology.uw.edu/2022/10/13/from-detection-to-protection-orca-research-and-conservation/
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from tragedy and trauma comes hope. Over 50 years ago in the 1970s, the Southern resident orca population, Elpod, were corralled tragically and with a lot of trauma associated with it, using bombs and boats to corrout this orca population into Penn Cove in the Northeast Pacific, just off of the state of Washington coast, to be able to capture 80 orcas to send them to various aquariums so that people can connect to them and start this failed experiment that we've known to become as a failed experiment of orcas in captivity. It was brutal. Five orcas died, a lot of orcas were captured, including Tokite, or known as Lolita, who spent 50 years in the Maraimi Seaquarium by herself, still using the same calls as her Elpod mates. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2023 and recently, as last week, while many people were worried about the election in the US, the Elpod came home to Penn Cove. There were a couple of videos that were posted that showed the emotional response of people, the emotional response of people of Penn Cove and the researchers to see this full circle moment of the orcas coming back to Penn Cove. Did they avoid it because of what happened 50 years ago? We'll really never know, but they are back and people are happy to see them. We're gonna talk about why that's important for orcas, for people in this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And this is the first time you're here, you are in the right place if you wanna know more things about ocean. You can find out more on this channel, on this podcast. However, you're listening to us, we're on YouTube, we're on Spotify, we're on all your favorite podcast apps, but we're also at SpeakUpForBlue.com. If you wanna find out more information about the ocean, go to SpeakUpForBlue.com. And if you want more information sent to you Monday to Friday, all about ocean news, jobs, new podcasts that we put out, new videos that we put out, you can sign up for our newsletter, go to SpeakUpForBlue.com/newsletter, that's SpeakUpForBlue.com/newsletter. You can get access to videos that I don't really publish a lot of, but I've just started a vlog on the YouTube channel. If you go to that newsletter, you can get access to it. It's talking about the changes in government in the US and how we can start talking about it in science communication, how to approach science communication, and how to speak to your audience. That's what I talk about. I'm gonna do more of these vlogs, probably about once a week or so, just to talk more about how we should be doing science communication from my point of view and my experience, and hopefully that'll help you start your journey, because we need more and more people to start talking about the ocean. Speaking of talking about the ocean and ocean news, have some good news. Like I know a lot of us who listen to this podcast and part of this audience, were a little disappointed by the election results from last week, and I completely understand, and I completely am with you for a lot of different reasons other than climate change action and ocean action. However, I thought I would start off with a bit of a good news story. This is a story where I feel like has a lot of hope for the future. It starts off with a lot of trauma and tragedy, but has some hope for the future. And that story is about the Southern resident orca population, the L pod actually of that population, that came back last week to Penn Cove. If you've never heard of Penn Cove, Penn Cove is a famous site, notorious for an event that happened in the 1970s, when people were allowed to capture orcas for the purposes of showing them in captivity, right? For the sea worlds of the world and everything across the US, there were other aquariums, marine aquariums that were holding these animals, and people can go up and look, and I mean, they still have them in some areas. People can go and look at these animals and just be like, oh, these are really cool and connect with them. That was an experiment that we know failed. If you have never seen the movie Blackfish, the documentary of early 2010s, I highly recommend that you watch it. It is a little bit graphic. It does talk a lot about the capture and how violent that capture was, especially in Penn Cove. There were 80 total orcas captured, but there were five in Penn Cove that were killed during the capture. They got tangled in netting, and they drowned. One was a mature female, four were calves. Very, very tragic area. The Elpod, which the animals were from, had never come back to the Penn Cove since that tragic event, until last week. Last week, there was a video that was circulating of Penn Cove, and these orcas coming in. Some of them are breaching. You can see some calves having a good time. We don't know why they came back, and we really don't understand if there's a significant reason and significant time, or was it just 'cause there was prey that they were following, or they were just kind of navigating into new territories, 'cause maybe there wasn't prey somewhere else. We don't really know. But the people of Penn Cove were pretty happy. In fact, the video I'm gonna show you has a bell. That bell is to signify when whales are in the area. They haven't been able to do it for orcas for over 50 years, and they're happy to ring the bell. A bit of an emotional video, so here it is, check it out, and I'll talk to you after. (dramatic music) (bell ringing) (bell ringing) (bell ringing) (dramatic music) (bell ringing) Wow. (dramatic music) Wow. That was so crazy. - As you can see, the person who's never seen an orc population that's seen before, according to her video, she was able to record for the first time, and such a monumental event. Congratulations on capturing that on video. We appreciate you sharing that with us, and we just love the fact that this is a huge event to see these animals coming back after 50 years. They hadn't been there in over 50 years. Now, we do not know if it's a place where they would have gone normally before that event. We don't really know if it's a place that they just didn't want it. They weren't interested in, you know, after a while. We just want to see that the fact that they come back. It signifies maybe more to us humans, that they've come back as a way of almost like a bit of a forgiveness. Like, hey, we know what you did last time, 'cause some of the orcas that were from that time were still alive, and let's be honest, the event that started that, right, that led to the PENCO event of the capturing of 80 Southern resident whale populations affected the Southern resident whale populations so much so that they're now critically endangered. Now, there are other things that have signified and have led to the contribution of that critically endangered status. They used to have 150 individuals. They're now down to just in the low 70s, 71, 72, maybe 73. Depends on how many calves they had this summer. I know they did lose some this summer, but there have been some major impediments to that rebuilding. One, these whales are long-lived species. They don't reproduce as much, you know, they reproduce one or two calves a year, and that has been a struggle. There's not a lot of food left for them. They are the Southern resident whale orca populations are very stubborn of what they eat. They like, I believe it's salmon, chinook salmon or co-host salmon, I can't remember. It's a specific type of salmon. That salmon population has dipped. We don't have as many as we used to, and that's because of a number of reasons. There's dams along the shoreline in the rivers that they usually go to and just fishliders that are just ineffective for what we want. There's climate change that affects the pH levels, affects the temperature. We don't know what's happening out in the ocean with the salmon, which basically get born in rivers, go out to the oceans for two to three years and then come back to spawn. So all that life cycle, when they go out to the ocean, they come back, sometimes they come back in huge amounts, sometimes they come back like a million of them, sometimes it's like 12 million when they come back. So that really fluctuates and it's just not enough to sustain a population. Then you also have the bioaccumulation that happens of toxins because of plastic pollution, 'cause of other toxins of bad water quality in certain areas that bioaccumulate in the salmon, and then that, as the salmon get eaten by the orcas, that bioaccumulates in the orcas and orcas have been known to die due to toxins, due to plastic suffocation and so forth. So there's a lot of things going against these orcas, which are a long list species, take a long time to mature sexually, so they're able to reproduce. Even the calves have trouble surviving within that first couple of years. So it's been a very tragic time since that first event on August 8th in the 1970s, and it just 'til now. It's just the recovery just hasn't been there and they haven't gone over 80 orcas in a long time, individuals of that southern resident population. So being able to maintain that, being able to build off of that and grow off of that has been a struggle, continues to be a struggle, and we need to do a lot more to protect the ocean and protect those orcas, to protect their habitat, to protect their food, to protect them. We can have those orcas stick around and grow in their population so that they're not. They can get out of that endangered status, critically endangered status. So that is a big problem. That's besides the point. The point right now is we're seeing a bit of a full circle moment, right? We're seeing that full circle moment where these animals are coming back into the cove. It's very joyful. As you saw in the video, you saw the bell ring, people were happy to see these orcas. They're playing, they're jumping around, like nothing ever happened. You know, we, again, we don't know why these orcas are in Penn Cove, it could be for a variety of reasons. Could be due to food, could just be due to exploration. Who knows what it is, these animals are very curious. These animals are very intelligent, emotionally, as well as being able to hunt and being able to locate food and proper habitats. So maybe this is a new thing. Maybe they'll come here. I don't know, but it's just one of those happy feel good moments for a population that has had a lot of trauma, a lot of tragedy over the last 50 years, especially in that day in Penn Cove where five of the orcas were killed, trying to be captured, and a number of those animals being captured on that day. It's just a story I want to share. It's a quick one. There's nothing really more to go into it. If you want to follow this story and follow these orcas, there are a lot of creators on TikTok. I'll try to list them all that I know of that and put them in the show notes that you can follow that. There's Cascadia Research, which is a company that looks after orcas and does a lot of research on orcas. There's Noah that does a lot of research on orcas, University of British Columbia, University of Washington does a lot of work on orcas and that population, the southern resident population, as well as the northern resident population, and the transients. It's really good to get to know a lot of the different ones because they're so cool. There's such a cool animal. They're one of the only animals that we know of that will actually hunt for another member of its pod for them to eat. So they're not just out for themselves. They're out for the pod. It's a major archical pod and it's really cool to learn about them. So if you want more information, I'll try and list as much as I can in the show notes. And if I'd love to hear if you've ever had sighting of those orcas in person, what your thoughts are on this event of them coming back. What do you think they're coming back for? Love to hear what you think, or you can DM me at how to protect the ocean. Love to hear from you. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
