1) It seems the Orca Recovery Task Force has settled for now on restrictions against whale-watching boats being present while endangered Southern Resident orcas occupy Salish Sea waters. This is ostensibly to help reduce vessel noise. Thread follows.
seattletimes.com/seattle-news/e…
seattletimes.com/seattle-news/e…
Whale watch boats aren't the main problem for orcas in those waters. Large ships are. 
Here's a recording I made in June 2013. It opens rather unpleasantly -- with about five minutes of extreme noise generated by a passing freighter. Then, as you'll see, as the freighter disappears from earshot, orcas begin vocalizing.
soundcloud.com/david-neiwert-…
soundcloud.com/david-neiwert-…
4) Before it's all over, they make a great deal of racket as they play in the kelp bed where I was recording. All that crackling is kelp fronds snapping.
5) Before I began recording this, I had observed the orcas approaching from a distance, then stop to forage, it seemed, just as this noisy ship came around the corner. At that point, the orcas not only stopped vocalizing, they stopped moving toward me.
6) After the boat faded from view some 30 minutes later, they headed towards the large kelp bed I was perched within. They won't enter these beds but sometimes play in the kelp, perhaps to exfoliate themselves. This is my old friend, the late J-28.
7) This is how profound ship noise can be in Haro Strait when it comes to affecting the orcas' ability to find prey and feed themselves. In contrast, whale-watch boat noise is much less dense, much less intense, and much more transient.
8) Scapegoating whale-watch boats for the orcas' inability to find fish is based on human perception -- we only see all those boats out there around them on the surface. It's not based on what the orcas actually experience in their world.
@threadreaderapp unroll please
