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Chief Maquinna's Letter of Appeal
Mowachaht/Muchalaht Update and Letter of
Appeal
April 2005
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Firstly, Luna has been peacefully foraging in the relative silence of Nootka Sound since October. We last saw him on Tuesday at Concepcion Bay grown and fishing the first of the spring sockeye run to the Gold River headwaters. Eating sockeye is a sure way to beef up his immune response with a replenished supply of vitamin D from sockeye after the dreary winter months without sunshine. Tonight Luna was in the company of a mature female killer whale. This was reported by Terry Williams via the Nootka Light to Dallas, Texas, and back to us about 5:45 tonight. Hopefully they made a recording. We will find out if they are still here in the morning. Maybe it’s Luna’s Aunt. Maybe it’s just another transient looking for seal and sea lions. It’s too soon to tell.
We are writing to appeal to you to help the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation properly resource and implement a full-time pro-active stewardship patrol and education outreach program. We would like to invite you to collaborate with us to make sure Luna gets the best protection possible, without judgement of the long term plans and hopes anyone has for Luna, and for Luna’s best interests in the short term.
We are going to propose an enforced ban on depth sounders and Low Frequency search sonar in Nootka Sound. Then we will soon know if ultrasound from these sources, or the ongoing vessel noise, or both are more important in Luna’s affective behaviour. These were coincident with the potential peak sonar intensity days and commercial vessel days in August and October 2004, or proximity to a potential source. Commercial boats were involved in interactions with Luna at a probability rate of 0.18 of the peak boat count of 27 vessels in August, in contrast to 0.001 per average daily sport boat trips over the 62 days (over 10,688 trips in July and August) in 2004. We don’t have a count of sailboats but 8 incidents involving sailboat’s, three involving a single vessel that initiated in the company of a ship and other potential low to mid sonar sources.
Toni Frohoff and Cathy Kinsmen have accepted our invitation for the May long weekend and help with the Mowachaht/Muchalaht Stewardship plans in Gold River. We have asked them to come and impart their knowledge to our crew about the best human behaviour and actions around Luna, and in defusing any interactions, that haven’t been headed off by pro-active over-sight and provide feedback to the crew people. We have invited DFO staff to come and participate as well.
We are going to need some special equipment to measure underwater sound in both the human audible range and killer whale audible range to find out what noises are driving Luna. (From my own experience with three children and attendant friends, noise can be a factor in my behaviour, and I have been known to respond untowardly after experiencing too much intense, incessant and confused noise!). We believe the 18-38 kHz noise from sounders is just way too coincident with killer whale echo-location sensitivity not to be extremely important. Given the potential intensities resulting from constructive interference from even slightly focused multiple sources of sonar generated around Luna it is precisely akin to being in the center of a four projector system of a fish farm 192 dB Acoustic Harassment Device but in the soft sensitive part of his hearing, the 18-42 kHz range, instead of the 10kHz fishfarm system. A single 3 kW sounder delivers more power than an ADD .That’s one unit, and intensity doubles if you add one more. It may not be absolutely irrefutable yet but it sure looks causal.
Although we don’t have any data yet, we are also beginning to think that intense sonar fields from multiple sockeye fisheries occur like clockwork on the peak abundance of Fraser River sockeye could possibly be displacing the Southern Residents from their main summer prey opportunity. Is this why they eat so much Chinook because they can’t get near the sockeye from test fishing and opening noises during the peak abundance very year? Southern Residents may have been replaced as the major marine predator by the commercial fishery, and the advent of powerful sonar. Someone needs to take a real hard look at this question. A simple look at the annual movements of J,K and L pods and the temporal and spatial distribution of seine fisheries modelled with sonar noise fields would be a good place to start for someone who has all the sighting data in a GIS. All you need are the dates and the locations of test fishing and fisheries, and the estimated range of the sonar intensity field from I = Power/Area at range will give you an approximation. Field measurements of sound intensity would soon verify whether this problem exists.
We are going to set up a non-intrusive observation site at Tuta Marina. Some people are already organizing to arrange a satellite link to broadcast the noise signals from Nootka. Thanks to those folks! We are encouraging the public who must see Luna to take the MV Uchuck II trips to Friendly Cove rather than a boat so there is less noise and sounder leakage. We are going to ask the people launching every boat to disconnect their sounders at the Marina.
Mowachaht/Muchalaht elders all say Tsu’xiit is here for a purpose and has lots more to teach us, not only about killer whales. Nuu-chah-nulth people respect killer whales with the very highest of esteem and reverence and they are part of the very binding core of their cultural foundation. We hope you will reply positively and we can all help Luna get through this noisy season.
Please make sure you visit the www.westcoastaquatic.ca/helpLuna site, and prominently feature a link to it on your site if you have one. The site is meant as a neutral forum for information and updates about Luna and stewardship activities.
We will be trying to post as frequent updates as we can manage on this site. Hopefully we will be posting the 2004 Review Report soon. We’ll post more news on Luna and the female orca tomorrow (April 21), after going out this afternoon.
Roger Dunlop R.P.
Bio.
Nuu-chah-nulth
Tribal Council
PO Box 428,
100 Ouwatin Rd
Gold River BC
V0P 1GO
ph: (250) 283-2012
Fx: (250) 283-2122
e-mail:RDunlop@Nuuchahnulth.org
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Chief Maquinna's Letter of Appeal
For further information on recent events and how you can help with Luna
Stewardship, please contact Roger Dunlop or Don Hall at the Nuu-chah-nulth
Tribal Council (phone: 250–724–5757; email: dhall@island.net)
or Jamie James at Mowachaht/ Muchalaht Fisheries (phone: 250–283–2015;
email: fisheries@yuquot.ca).
