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About Oregon Coast today. (Lincoln City, OR) 2005-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 6, 2019)
Hooked on orcas Matriarchs Rule Michigan native fi ghts to protect ballena asesina F acts about Orcas abound in Colleen Weiler’s brain, because her role is to lead policy research and engagement around what we call the Southern Resident Orcas (SROs). Her job is with the Plymouth, Massachusetts-based US headquarters of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation non-profi t, established 32 years ago in England. “Our name is what we do.” Protecting cetaceans involves direct action, lobbying lawmakers, public engagement and education/ outreach to the public. Her offi cial title is Jessica Rekos Fellow for Orca Conservation and, for the past fi ve years, her focus has been on orca recovery. Now headquartered in Newport, she has also been tracking the eff orts of Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s Orca Recovery Task Force. Fact: orca comes from the Greek and Latin, meaning jar. GO BENEATH THE Fact: Th e killer SURFACE WITH whale (ballena PAUL HAEDER asesina) moniker came from some of the fi rst commercial whalers — Basques — who hunted bigger whales but saw the orca in action taking on sharks, seals and other whales as prey. I meet the former Flint resident — who garnered a zoology degree in 2006 from Michigan State University before fi nding OSU as home to her graduate work — at Panini Bakery just before she spoke to a group of 25 at the American Cetacean Society’s fall speaker series at the Newport Library. She is at ease among fellow whale and marine ecosystem enthusiasts, and her talk is detailed, as she exudes the confi dence of a woman who has been doing this work probably since she was nine years old. DEEP DIVE “Free Willy” and Fast Forward When Colleen was nine, she went to the local movie theater and saw the 1993 fl ick, “Free Willy” and got hooked on this emblematic species, Orcinus orca. At the end of the fi lm, she recounts there was a “for more information on protecting whales please contact” blurb. It was called the Whale Adoption Project out of Massachusetts. For $20 a year, the young Colleen adopted a humpback whale named Colt, who spent some of his time in the Gulf of Maine. Th at whale is still alive and still adoptable at her Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Th e underside and trailing edge of the humpback whale’s fl uke have helped scientists and amateurs alike to identify whales. Many humpbacks can live up to 50 years with some known individuals reaching 70. Colleen says both of her parents were both pretty environmentally aware (“recyclers”), and her father helped organize the county hazard waste recycling project. Her older brother is a K12 teacher in Michigan. As an undergrad at MSU, Colleen was part of the Lyman Briggs College (an honors program) where she completed a marine biology/zoology undergraduate degree. The Details are in the Policy Work Th e search for graduate programs landed Colleen at OSU, where she entered the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences with a focus on marine mammal conservation. She tells me that no one in her program at that point had pursued a graduate degree in policy emphasizing marine mammals. Serendipitously, she got to partner with the Alaska Whale Foundation as a research assistant. Th at work she was initiating with AWF was looking at humpback whale distribution in Alaskan waters and ship traffi c overlaying ship strike risk on the species while also looking at management measures. Six degrees of separation defi nes a lot of what I do. I spent a few hours with Alaska Whale Foundation researcher/board member Fred Sharpe, PhD, at our own Sitka Center for Art and Ecology at the beginning of the year. Sharpe was the Howard L. Mckee Ecologist visiting scholar at Sitka. We talked about humpbacks — he has 26 years under his belt studying the behavior of humpback whales. His specialty is on the bubble-netting proclivity of Alaskan humpbacks. He looks at the connections of this ecotype’s behavior as signals of enduring bonds, complicated task specializations, team hunting and communal tool use. For Colleen, her purview is now focused on the Southern Resident orcas. Unfortunately, one community within the “resident” ecotype (there are 10 identifi ed ecotypes) is in trouble. Colleen discussed with naturalists the diff erences in these orca ecotypes with their varying size, pigment patterns, behaviors, acoustics, social grouping and diets. Colleen was quick to point out that Michael Bigg, a Canadian whale researcher, “changed the game for orca long-term research” with his identifi cation techniques — photographing dorsal fi ns and saddle patch patterns. “When you can identify entire generations of orcas and the births, deaths and family relationships, we can get an exact population count.” Th e compelling story of the orca goes beyond the cinematic drama of “Free Willy,” and their imprisonment and virtual torture at places like Sea World (see the documentary “Blackfi sh”). Mothers and grandmothers of the Southern Resident orcas are at the top of the pod, and the sons and daughters stay with the mother for life. Colleen shows her audience an aerial shot of a grandmother and great-grandson from the Southern Resident ecotype. One big Chinook salmon is a nose length’s away before being snatched up by grandmother, who then shared it with her great-grandkid. In her more than hour talking to people at the library, Colleen clearly is dedicated to policy work, which she likens more to a series of marathons rather than sprints. “Th ere is often no immediate benefi t seen, no immediate gratifi cation. Policy takes time, years.” She and the nonprofi t she works for are not thrilled with the poor policy measures and enforcement of certain life-sustaining laws to help the endangered Southern Residents once they hit Oregon waters. “I would add we’re not thrilled with these issues throughout their range (not just Oregon),” she said. Th e federal government has been slow to implement recovery measures; and the current administration is doing its best to roll back every environmental protection law we have. Washington and Oregon are stepping up to fi ll those gaps, but environmental issues often fall at the bottom of the list for resources and enforcement eff ort. She is an observer of the Washington Governor’s Southern Resident Orca Task Force, and the sometimes-Byzantine task force recommendations as well as the sometimes counter-productive work of so many agencies and stakeholder groups at the table are frustrating. Th e bottom line is the 35-year-old Colleen Weiler is here to stay the course, and push through the entire process of getting the 73 orcas left from the Southern Resident community help in their recovery and sustainability as a population. One challenge is their range — they spend a lot of time in Puget Sound but their entire West Coast range reaches south to Monterey. Th ey are very urban orcas and overlap with many heavily developed areas on the west coasts of Canada and the US. ••• Read on, as Deep Dive continues at www. oregoncoasttoday.com. Paul Haeder is a writer living and working in Lincoln County. He has two books coming out, one a short story collection, “Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam,” and a non-fi ction book, “No More Messing Around: Th e Good, Bad and Ugly of America’s Education System.” oregoncoastTODAY.com • facebook.com/oregoncoasttoday • December 6, 2019 • 5
