Earth Day message from Ken Balcomb, PLUS new Orca gallery photos

— from Center for Whale Research —

First of all, I hope you are all well and hunkering down in caution for whatever this COVID-19 pandemic brings to our species, Homo sapiens. If and when the scary part is over, I then hope that we live up to our self-proclaimed title sapiens and start really taking care of Mother Earth.

Some serious adjustments in human activity are in order when the worst of the virus is over, not just a return to business as usual. We call this Earth Day, after all.

For the rest of the year, I wish to profusely thank our members and supporters for continuing with us to document every living Orca that forages in the inland marine waters of the Salish Sea between British Columbia and Washington State. Orca Survey is a remarkable long term study that Dr. Mike Bigg initiated in the 1970s, and we at CWR inherited it.

We consider this work to be essential, and within the law will not be deterred from continuing this important legacy study of one of the most remarkable marine animal populations on Planet Earth. It is extremely handy that the Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW) can be recognized individually, and that thousands of humans know them, and love them. We must do our best to ensure that their environmental needs are met, as well as our own.

The WOW Photo Galleries are very popular! Thank you for your positive emails. Since we all have to stay home for a while longer, we thought we should keep posting exceptional whale photos. So for April, we are going to change things up a bit and choose images from past Encounters all taken during April between 2015 and 2019. With each passing day in April this gallery will grow. Check back often!

We titled this gallery series On This DAY – Memorable On-The-Water Moments.