Via Raincoast Conservation Foundation: Todays opinion piece (from Raincoast) in the Victoria Times Colonist discusses the Enbridge ads and their love for all the killer whales After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the mortality rate in two pods of Prince William Sound’s killer whales skyrocketed. While 33 per cent of the resident whales in pod AB and 41 per cent of the transient ones in pod AT1 disappeared within a year of the spill, most of the carcasses of the 22 missing whales were never found. Even though the whales were absent from their pods, the lack of carcasses made it hard to confirm the whales were dead. But none of the missing whales were ever seen again. Both pods were documented surfacing in the oiled waters, one of which (the AT1 transients) were photographed at the stern of the Exxon Valdez while it was still leaking thousands of litres of oil into Alaskan waters. The timing and magnitude of missing whales directly following the spill, plus the known exposure, suggests that oil was the cause of death. Other killer-whale pods that were not in Prince William Sound during the spill did not experience the mass mortality (10 times the natural rate) of these two pods. Scientists have hypothesized that these whales died from inhaling toxic oil vapours as they swam through and surfaced in the spill, and in the case of the transients, potentially from eating oiled harbour seals as well... So when you see the new Enbridge commercials telling British Columbians “we all want better,” keep in mind the very real threat the company’s oilsands pipeline and oil-tanker project actually poses to B.C.’s killer whales. ~ Benjamin West
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 18:49:32 +0000
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