Scientists know a surprising amount of information about the Southern Resident Killer Whales, the beloved iconic Pacific Northwest charismatic megafauna. Researchers know the whales' family structures, can identify individual whales by name, and have documented the orcas' movements and behaviors for decades.
Once the whales leave their home waters of Puget Sound, however, their whereabouts become a little more murky, especially off the Oregon coast. A brand new project, called the Search for Killer Whales, aims to address this data gap using the power of citizen science.
The project works like this: people can sign up to be a volunteer at the Search for Killer Whales website. Notably, people who spend time outdoors, or want to have an excuse to spend time outdoors, are encouraged to volunteer.
“If you’re going for a walk, if you’re going kayaking, if you’re going surfing, sailing, you can already help us, all you need to do is do the training, download the app, and then whatever you see you just upload it or add data offline as well, you don’t have to do it in that exact moment,” explained Gianna Haro, project manager for the Search for Killer Whales with Adventure Scientists. All volunteers need to do is be able to scan the water for orcas for at least 30 minutes.
The Search for Killer Whales, which officially started on Oct. 22, is a collaboration between Adventure Scientists and Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition. NOAA contacted Oregon Shores to help them find ways to gather data in a long-term, sustainable way. Oregon Shores already has community science programs, but recognized they needed additional help to run such a comprehensive program like the Search for Killer Whales. One of Oregon Shores’ volunteers suggested Adventure Scientists, a nonprofit that designs and manages large scale, collaborative data collection projects. Adventure Scientists developed the Search for Killer Whales’ online platform, while both organizations have been key in reaching out to volunteers for data collection.
First, after signing up as a volunteer, you complete the online training, which explains things like how to download the app, what to look for, what data to collect, and how to submit it. From start to finish, it takes about 20 minutes to finish the training session. Training materials and the survey form are also available in Spanish.
Researchers say observations are important, even if you didn’t see any whales.
“Absence data in any project is as important, if not more important, than presence data,” says Haro. “Because that takes you to the next question: if there are no whales here…why?”
This is an important part of data collection for any science project: zero is a number, it is an observation, it is data. While orcas are not common along the Oregon coast, scientists want to know where the orcas aren’t as well as where they are.
One question that scientists and managers have is what time of year the Southern Resident Killer Whales, or SRKWs, show up along the Oregon coast. Based on nearly a year of meetings with scientists and stakeholders prior to the launch of the project in order to determine sampling design, the team determined that the whales are most likely to show up in Oregon during the winter months. Project leaders decided to focus the data collection during that time, but this doesn’t mean that information is certain.
“That’s what we would call a hypothesis. That’s what we’re trying to find and that’s why we need people, (and why) we need eyes out there,” Haro told KLCC. “We think the killer whales should be going through Oregon around that time, which is winter. If the whales are actually going through that area during that time, that could inform, for example, maritime rules, and that’s what the management plans do, pretty much. After a few years of doing that we will know for sure.”
This comes down to what the data will actually be used for, and who requested the data in the first place.
“The folks that are getting the data from this project to be able to use the data in their management and decision making are NOAA and ODFW,” explained Sam Derrenbacher, Community Science and Engagement Manager for Oregon Shores. “Those two agencies are responsible for the management of the species. [ODFW] obviously is responsible for the management of the species when it’s off the Oregon coastline, and NOAA is responsible for the management of the species across its entire range.”
There are currently 74 Southern Resident Killer Whales (possibly 75 with the recent addition of new K-pod calf, K47), made up of three different pods (J, K, and L), and they are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (though in other parts of the world, such as the North Atlantic, killer whale populations are doing well). The National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is tasked with managing marine mammals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which includes writing stock assessments and determining actions to help protect various species of marine mammals. There are organizations in Washington and California that monitor and document observations of SRKWs and provide this data to NMFS, but there has been no equivalent endeavor in Oregon, resulting in a large data gap of SRKW movement along the Oregon coast—until now.
Scientists and managers want to know with more certainty when orcas are off the Oregon coast in the winter time so they can tailor management actions to specific areas or times of year, or help inform more effective data collection in the future. The SRKW management plan for Oregon, written by ODFW, will be updated in three years, and the data collected by the Search for Killer Whales will help inform any updates, useful information, or improvements to the management plan.
“The managers, the folks that are making those decisions, really want this data,” says Derrenbacher. “They see the extreme value in it, they know that it’s going to be useful to them, to making their decisions, they want to see us continue the project so that it can continue to inform year after year, and the request came from them, which is kind of the end goal of all science—that we take what we’re seeing on the ground, those observations, inferring what those observations could mean, and then using it to protect or promote the conservation of something we wouldn’t otherwise know anything about.”
So what is the likelihood of spotting a killer whale off the coast of Oregon this winter? Chances are still pretty small, especially for the Southern Resident Killer Whales, which have a low population to begin with. There’s been one successful sighting of orcas so far this year, however, documented by a Search For Killer Whales volunteer about three weeks ago near Manzanita.
“We had a volunteer spot orcas, about five, though it’s kind of hard to tell, they originated off the Manzanita coastline. A member of the general public first spotted them, and then one of our volunteers was able to make an observation,” Derrenbacher explained.
It was difficult to tell whether the orcas were SRKWs or another ecotype (a genetically distinct population within a species), like Bigg’s transient whales or offshore killer whales. This highlights the need for volunteers with telephoto lenses and good photography skills, though having this equipment is not a requirement to participate.
Volunteers are also not expected to identify the difference between the three ecotypes—a documented observation of a whale, any whale, is encouraged. If decent photos are taken, however, scientists can use identifying markers on the whales such as the shape of their unique “saddle patches” (the wisp of gray behind their dorsal fin) to identify individuals. Scientists also use AI to help identify individual whales in photographs.
In a monthly webinar hosted on Dec. 20, Derrenbacher gave some updates on the last confirmed sightings of the SRKWs. K pod was last spotted on Dec. 12 in Admiralty Inlet and are thought to have moved offshore, and L pod was last spotted on Nov. 11 in Admiralty inlet in the most recent superpod event.
These observations were confirmed by the Orca Network, the Washington equivalent of the Search for Killer Whales. Given the time gap of when they were last seen, it’s possible that the whales have left Puget Sound and the Salish sea and are making their way towards the continental shelf, meaning that the possibility of spotting an orca in Oregon is slightly higher than normal, though not guaranteed. Orcas can travel 75-100 miles in a day; they could be in Puget Sound one day and off the north shore of Oregon the next, so volunteers are encouraged to remain vigilant.
If you spend time on the coast, even as a short-term visitor, you can contribute to the Search for Killer Whales. Maybe you’ll spot a Southern Resident Killer Whale off of Oregon this winter, and collect critical data for their conservation and management.
