...how do you celebrate the whales with pictures and stories, when you are watching their absence from these waters because there is no food for them?...that's the dilemma I am having in these recent days...
...and today a News Release from the Fraser River Panel arrived via email...the situation appears to be reaching a crisis...
I understand that fish are a complicated issue, but, with a possible crisis looming for wild Chinook salmon (which has actually been looming for a long, long time), to me it seems that every single wild Chinook salmon needs to get to the Fraser River so they can spawn.
Why are people still allowed to catch them? I just don't get it.
They can only catch one Chinook a day. Times that by the number of anglers out there doing just that. And every wild female Chinook salmon that is caught and dies destroys future potential for the already depleted Chinook salmon. If something isn't done and done soon Chinook salmon may become a rare find in these waters.
With the sockeye salmon returning to the Fraser River also being an issue, why are people still allowed to catch them?
Sport fishing is big business and it's fun. But is it worth the cost of the future for the salmon population?
Do the humans with the power care so little about the Southern Resident orcas, who have come here to these inland these waters for more years than we even know, to just ignore what is happening?
I don't know the answers, I only know what I have observed and it is 'speaking volumes'...I just wish someone would do something.
~~~
now to update you with what has gone on with the whales over the last few days...
...J, K and L pods were here on the 11th (see the video clip in prior post)...they went to the Fraser River...the L12 subgroup split off the came back down...but they came down President Channel and into San Juan Channel - not common for them to do...
...on the 12th J pod, most of K pod and the rest of L pod came back down, passing Lime Kiln Lighthouse in the late morning...they were spread all the way across Haro Strait and many of them moved in closer to the San Juan Island side when going down island while others were miles off shore...
...all the whales met up off the lower west side of San Juan island...we saw the L12s, the K13s, some J pod whales and many other L pod whales near Eagle Pt. area while on Maya's Westside Charters, in the late afternoon...during the morning of the 11th (yesterday) I had the privilege of being on Orca, one of the boats of the Center for Whale Research, with Dave Ellifrit to document the whales present as they went up Haro Strait...try as I did, I didn't do too well in getting an image of Scoter's K-25 tag...the rain didn't help my picture taking abilities either...but today 8-12 the sun was shining and I did better...
...by late afternoon they headed off shore...maybe Ocean Sun liked that...
...and, yes, they left the inland waters again...they were not seen on the 13th or by mid-day today, the 14th...
No comments:
Post a Comment