We honor, on Orca Recovery Day, Tahlequah (J35), daughter of Princess Angeline (J17), sister to Moby (J44) and Kiki (J53), mother to Notch (J47), Ti-Tahlequah (no J number assigned), and Phoenix (J57). We remember the death of Ti-Tahlequah less than half an hour after her birth in 2018. We tell the story of Tahlequah’s grieving, how she carried Ti-Tahlequah’s lifeless body on her rostrum for 17 days while traveling approximately 1,000 miles with her pod around the San Juan Islands and interior waters of British Columbia. We recount how Tahlequah dove deeply to retrieve Ti-Tahlequah’s body when the dead calf slid from her and sank, how members of her pod likely fed her and carried Ti-Tahlequah when she could not, how she finally let go.
We do not look away from Tahlequah’s personal grieving nor the fact that her sadness is the sadness of all orca mothers who have lost their babies–approximately 75 percent of Southern Resident Orca newborns over the past twenty years have not survived–nor that it is our sadness, too. Our beloved orca family members are in distress. They are endangered. We may be watching them go extinct.
One of the Problems
The orcas’ main food source is Chinook salmon, whose survival is threatened or endangered depending on the run. Due to a variety of factors, including but not limited to habitat loss, climate change, and increased pollution, every stage of life for a Chinook has become more difficult for ki to survive. In order to keep our orcas, we must care for our salmon.
What You Can Do: Reduce Pollution
Over 14 million tons of pollution ends up in Puget Sound every year, much of which is stormwater runoff after rain. Rain is not the problem though. The problem is the pollution the rain picks up from impervious surfaces like rooftops, parking lots, and roads and rushes directly into our waterways on its way to Puget Sound. Pollution is a complicated problem, but there are things you can do to reduce it. Depaving your yard, encouraging your community to depave wherever possible, planting trees, installing rain barrels, and building rain gardens are all green stormwater solutions within our reach that help salmon and orcas.
What You Can Do: Get Involved in Local Restoration Work
Organizations across the region, from Conservation Districts to Salmon Recovery Lead Entities to Fisheries Enhancement Groups to other non-profit and governmental agencies are working everyday to restore salmon habitat with local communities. What we do on land affects the health of the water salmon need to be healthy and thrive. You can make a powerful difference by volunteering to heal the land. It takes all of us.
What You Can Do: Small Actions Make a Big Difference
Washing your car on grass, picking up after your pets, and discontinuing the use of fertilizers and pesticides in your yard are small actions with profound effects when multiplied across the 4 million people that live in the Puget Sound region. We are the problem, but we are also the solution. Individual actions alone, however, as powerful as they are at scale, do not replace actions to transform systems. So lobby your elected officials and otherwise agitate for larger systemic change at the same time you engage in change in your daily life.
What You Can Do: Tell Everyone You Know that Orcas and Salmon Need Our Care
We care for those we know and love. Recruit your friends and family in the work of salmon and orca recovery by sharing your love for these amazing creatures.
And stay connected. We need each other.