A team of marine mammal experts raced out to sea Thursday. They went to help an ailing young orca, or killer whale, with antibiotics. It’s a rare effort to save a member of an endangered pod near San Juan Island off Washington state’s coast.
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries representative says the international team reached the three-and-a-half year-old orca known as J50 by boat. A veterinarian examined her there on site. She is thin and in poor body condition.
Experts gave her antibiotics through a dart. They took breath samples to help assess whether she has an infection. NOAA says the team will decide whether to feed the free-swimming animal live salmon from a boat. The creature could then be given live salmon dosed with the medication she needs. The scientists believe it is better to treat her there with her pod than to remove her into isolation for treatment and later release.
Another orca in the same pod gave birth to a calf in July. Sadly, that calf died. The mother, known as J35, has been pushing her deceased calf’s body along the ocean’s surface ever since. At this time, wildlife biologists do not think removing the calf would be helpful to the mother orca. But they are also monitoring how much of her energy she is using and whether she is feeding regularly.
The pod hasn’t had a successful birth since 2015. They face nutritional stress over a lack of their preferred food, Chinook salmon. The group that frequents the inland waters of Washington state is now down to just 75 animals.
(Fisheries and Oceans Canada Photo, via AP: Killer whale J50 and her mother, J16, swim together off the west coast of Vancouver Island on Tuesday, August 7, 2018. Experts authorized intervention with medication for J50, who is showing signs of severe health distress.)
