Strawberry Isle Scuttlebutt
October ‘97 report by Rod Palm

Well here we are, finally back in Scuttle Butt mode. My apologies for this interlude.

The annual mass migration of Gray Whales and tourists has dropped off to a trickle for both species. We still have several Grays foraging about in their open ocean feeding grounds and likely will have up to about mid December. At this time of the year, it's marginal wether or not there is enough time for these animals to get to the Mexican breeding/birthing grounds before the orgy is over. As the whale swims - about 4.5 knots - from Clayoquot, it is a five to six-week voyage. That would put them there about mid December, when the whales are already starting to head out for the 5000 nautical mile swim to the rich feeding grounds of the Bering Sea. I suppose some of the stragglers will meet up with north bound whales, turn and join up with them. Interestingly some whales don't even try, we occasionally see Grays even in December and January. These are probably non breeding animals, likely too old, too young or barren.

'97 has been a slow year for Killer Whales, but over the last month we were pleased to see Wakana and her son Rainny with T069 and her two kids. Normally frequent visitors, we had not seen any of these Kawkawin for about a year. They spent three days in and about the sound. It's likely that they split up on the twelfth and met up again on the fourteenth to head back down the coast. The only kill observed was a duck of unknown species that they typically harassed to no end before eating it. Orcas often kill sea birds, particularly Surf Scoters. The action seems to be more of a game than anything else. They will grab the bird very gently, drag him down, let it go and watch it bob up to the surface, cruise along on the surface with the thing in its mouth then, as often as not just let it go unharmed. We have also seen the bird consumed and on one occasion, they ripped a Surf Scoter's head off and abandoned the floating body.

This year we had a very interesting dead Killer Whale. On August 29 a commercial fisherman reported a dead Orca drifting 10 miles off Hot Springs Cove. Richard on the "Sun Raven" was kind enough to extend his tour to locate the whale and mark it with an orange float. Going on a satellite navigation bearing and the known North Pacific Drift (one+ knot west magnetic). Three hours later Steve, Doug and I have the whale in tow. Well, it wasn't all that easy, we thought that the best way to tow would be head first so we cut a slot through the lower jaw to thread a line (I broke a rib in the process) and started to tow. Never thought of it, these animals are designed to dive. The harder we towed the deeper the whale tried to dive. Ok, choke the tow line around the tail. We are determined to get this body to Strawberry Isle. Our next obstacle is fuel. Tour boats to the rescue, one open call on the VHF radio and two hours later we have 180 litres of fuel in jerry cans and a big box of food from Shawn's Hot Springs B&B. Two hours of towing found us running into Sidney Inlet just in time to catch the flooding tide. Once around into Miller Channel we had to buck the tide by sneaking in and out of the back eddies. It was a bit of a kick listening to the whale watching tour boats planning their trips on the radio, "We're going up the outside, stop at Plover to see the Sea Lions, over to Rafael for the Grays then go around the back side of Flores to do a little dead Killer Whale watching." Ten hours later, Doug and I finally have the whale tied up on Strawberry Isle.

Next day, the interesting stuff starts. Dead Killer Whales are the only opportunity for looking at the physiology of wild whales, so they must be examined very closely. It takes a half a day just to take all the required measurements. Blubber thickness alone is taken in nine different locations on the body. Next are the photographs, a dozen of these. From the dorsal fin photos, Graeme was able to identify this whale as O120, a member of the elusive offshore culture of Killer Whales. This is the first ever identified offshore mortality. What we have here is a small (5.5 metre) female with no obvious external injuries or obvious signs of malnutrition though the blubber thickness is a little less than would be expected. A possible reason for this could be that the animal may have spent most of it's life in slightly warmer climes. Skin samples were taken for Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard's D.N.A. work and blubber for fisheries toxicology. A very interesting observation immediately evident was that the teeth of this whale are worn down level with the gums.

The following day, the big guns arrive, Graeme Ellis (the focal contact for all the killer whale movements in the Pacific N.W.), Dr. Jane Watson (whale chopper-upper extraordinare) and Dr. Craig Stevens (high profile cetacia necropser). First off the body blubber is flenced off in slabs in the same fashion as was done by the whalers. Next, "Off with her head." Open up the body cavity. "Oops" a slip of the knife and the stomach erupts like a giant whoopy cushion. The sound alone is quite disgusting, but you had to be there to appreciate the smell. We have come to realize that Strawberry Isle Research Society has been assigned this task of messing about with dead whales, not so much for its experience as for its willingness to suffer the aromatic work environment. A few parasites are found, but nothing out of the ordinary, all the organs appear normal and no internal injuries are evident. Craig took several tissue and blood samples, but to date has been unable to come up with a cause of death.

An interesting observation made by Jane and Graeme was that the oil content of the blubber seemed less than normal. This observation was very scientifically deduced by the fact that we hardly ever slipped and fell on our butts while working around the carcase.

" What to do with the skeleton." Well, all we're concerned with at this writing is to get the thing cleaned up. As an experiment, we cut the spine into four racks of vertebrae. One rack was suspended in the ocean, one in the intertidal zone, one in the air and one in the ground. Being hot weather, the maggots won hands down as far as getting rid of the meat. Within two days, all the meat is gone except for a bit of stringy beef jerky.

We boiled the jaws to remove the meat and get the teeth out for special preservation. Killer Whale teeth are not like most other mammals in that they have a pulpy core so if they are left to air dry they will crack into several pieces. During this process we discovered a massive abscess in the lower left mandible that actually decayed right through the side of the jaw. This infection appeared to have been healed over but it must have been one horrendous tooth ache.

It was interesting for us to compare these jaws with the jaws of the Cape Scott Killer Whale (See Scuttle Butt May '95.) Even though the Cape Scott jaws are within a centimetre of the same length, the whale itself was almost a metre longer. There are less teeth, the bone has less bulk and the condylar process (round bit where the jaw hinges) is much larger. These observations leads us to a new undertaking for the Society. We plan to go on the road to measure Killer Whale jaw bones in various institutions and private collections to see how much variation there is in jaw morphology of individual Orcas. We'll keep you up to date on this but our biggest drawback is that there are not that many jaws out there much less jaws of animals who were properly recorded and identified.

" Bones, bones everywhere, Grays, Baird's Beaked and Killer Whales, what to do with them." Well our first choice would be to see them, or at least the skulls put on display in our area. The most viewer effective location would be the Pacific Rim Park but they, at present, have no room. Perhaps some municipal facility. "Maybe a display here on Strawberry Isle, no, logistics for public viewing are too complicated." We could ship the lot off to the Provincial Museum but it would be a shame to see this stuff leave the area. We are looking for ideas here.

Question of the month. Peter Schulze asks, "Who were the Kawkawin who killed and eat the White Shark off the San Francisco coast a couple of weeks ago." Dr John Ford communicates "Apparently the female of the pair that took the white shark was identified by Alica Shulman-Janiger as" 'CA2', and is part of the "LA Pod"....a loose bunch of 20 or so whales of indeterminant type. ie, don't mix with Calif. transients, aren't offshores, are ?" I'll add that we do, on occasion, have visits from California Killer Whales but we have not seen this female and calf this far north.

See you next month, we look forward to sharing the interesting activities of Strawberry Isle Research.