Pacific Marine Mammal Center Will Observe Killer Whale Health

LAGUNA BEACH, CA— Almost $1 million in grants were awarded through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for its Killer Whale Research and Conservation Program last month. The Laguna Beach centered Pacific Marine Mammal Center will split a portion in a collaborative effort to support the population recovery of the 73 remaining Southern resident killer whales.

The Pacific Marine Mammal Center received a grant of nearly $55,000 to develop a methodology to remotely assess these giant whales' health while keeping hands-off the leviathans.

The health assessments will consist of "remote sampling techniques." The center will calibrate the tests by working with the killer whales at SeaWorld San Diego that have been taught through positive reinforcement behavioral training to breathe underneath a drone-based sampling platform, they say.

Next, they will take what they have learned and begin boat-based and non-invasive field research that will take place in the Pacific Northwest with wild Southern resident killer whales.

Finally, they will perform routine “health checks” on each whale in its natural habitat, much like a person experiences in their annual wellness check with their doctor.

This project concept is modeled after similar work by the Gorilla Doctors. A project in which routine, hands-off health assessment of wild gorillas has been essential in supporting their population expansion.

Since the mid-1990s, the population of Southern resident killer whales has declined for reasons that are not fully understood, according to the center.

This grant hopes to find reasons for their decline and hope to see positive impacts through conservation measures.

“The main proposed reasons for the decline of southern resident killer whales are declines in salmon runs, accumulation of pollutants, and human habitat disturbance,” said Dr. Hendrik Nollens, PMMC VP of Conservation Medicine & Science and the lead on the PMMC project. “There is increasing concern that health and disease may also be a factor. Our work will help clarify whether there is a health and disease component to the web of factors causing their decline. It will also be useful for detecting early effects of existing and new conservation measures because we can expect that the health and robustness of individual whales will improve long before the population count increases.”

PMMC plans to work with veterinarians and biologists from the SeaDoc Society, SeaWorld, and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center to put their combined veterinary, field biology, and molecular biology expertise to work in support of the project.

“This award is a major milestone in PMMC’s expanding reach and impact on ocean health and conservation,” said Peter Chang, PMMC CEO. “We are excited about this collaborative effort in terms of what it can do for this critically endangered population of whales. This health assessment methodology may also be modeled for other whale species, including gray and humpback whales that traverse through Southern California waters. Whales are so vital to the overall health of the marine eco-system, but yet, are extremely vulnerable to the increasing threats in the ocean environment, most of which are a result of some form of human interaction.”

The grant was awarded through the Killer Whale Research and Conservation Program (KWRCP), a partnership between NFWF, Shell Oil Company, SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc., the U.S. Fish, and Wildlife Service, and NOAA Fisheries.