SEATTLE — Seven Puget Sound killer whales are missing and presumed dead in what could be the biggest decline among the sound’s orcas in nearly a decade, say scientists who carefully track the endangered mammals.
“This is a disaster,” Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist at the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island, said Friday. “The population drop is worse than the stock market.”
Although the official census won’t be completed until December, the total number of live “southern resident” orcas now stands at 83.
Among those missing since last year’s count are the nearly century-old leader of one of the three southern resident pods and two young females who recently bore calves. The loss of the seven whales, Balcomb said, would be the biggest decline among the Puget Sound orcas since seven went missing in 1999.
Low numbers of chinook salmon, a prime food for orcas, may be a factor in the unusual number of deaths this year, Balcomb said. The Associated Press
