By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com
In what scientists and researchers say is a first in Oregon’s coastal waters, a killer whale appears to have died after becoming entangled in fishing or crabbing gear.
The orca, believed to be a juvenile, was spotted Sunday by halibut fishermen about 25 miles west of Newport.
The grim discovery comes after families of transient killer whales have been seen and photographed for weeks swimming close to shore and up into coastal rivers, looking to take advantage of harbor seal pupping season.
“As far as I know, entanglements of killer whales in fishery gear are quite rare,” Jim Rice, stranding program manager of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute in Newport, said in a statement to YachatsNews. “I know of no prior lethal entanglements with this species in Oregon waters.”
Two other researchers, whose work focuses orca behavior and entanglements, agreed.
“This is the first record of a killer whale being entangled in fishing gear for the Oregon coast,” said Josh McInnes, a marine mammal researcher at the University of British Columbia. McInnes added, however, that the specific cause of death cannot be confirmed without a necropsy – the animal equivalent of a human autopsy – and complete pathological analysis.
Kristin Wilkinson, the large whale entanglement coordinator for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said the orca’s death and its entangling predicament, is the first she has heard of.
“We are working to see where the carcass may be now in hopes of being able to do more follow-up,” she said.
Although the carcass’s location is now unknown, Wilkinson said her office’s emergency response program ran an ocean drift model showing that the orca is floating north and is unlikely to come ashore.
She added that her office is working with the United States Coast Guard encouraging any more sightings of the carcass to be reported to NOAA’s entanglement hotline at 1-877-SOS-WHAL or 1-877-767-9425.
Although scientists are not certain of the type of orca that died, it is most likely a transient killer whale, which is by far the most frequent sub-species of killer whales to frequent Oregon’s inner-coastal waters. Transient killer whales feed on other mammals such as harbor seals, harbor porpoises and Steller sea lions, are believed to number more than 400 and are increasing every year.
On Sunday, the fishermen who first spotted the dead orca weren’t initially certain what they were seeing.
“It looked like a ski-do but there is a sea gull sitting on it (so probably not a sea-do, right?),” a Salem man using the handle “Grim” posted to the popular angling website iFish.net. “We motored over slowly to find a 16 to 18 foot orca dead with crab pot line wrapped around its tail.”
The post added, “It’s a sight I wish I could un-see. The rest of the ride in was mostly in the fog; appropriate given the mood. Strange day.”
Using that information, NOAA’s Wilkinson told YachatsNews, “it is believed to be a juvenile based on the length estimate with an approximate age of 5-12 years.”
The only previous report of a killer whale dying as a result of gear entanglement was in 2015, according to McInnes, when an orca washed up on a beach near Fort Bragg, Calif.
“This whale also had fishing gear wrapped around his flukes and peduncle,” McInnes said. “It was confirmed that he died from drowning caused by the fishing gear.”
If the carcass can be found, it should be relatively easy to determine whether the entanglement involved commercial or recreational crabbing equipment, said Tim Novotny, spokesman for the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.
Commercial crab pots are far larger than those used by recreationalists, he said, and the lines are far thicker. And although the orca’s sighting 25 miles off shore – much farther than recreational crabbers generally venture – it’s also possible that the orca became tangled close in before swimming back out to sea.
“It could have gotten worn out dragging the extra gear,” Novotny said. “But I’ll leave that to the whale experts.”
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
I was so upset after reading this, that it brought me to tears. What can be done to prevent this from happening in the future? I hope OFWS is looking into this.