— from The Weather Channel —
More than two weeks after the death of her newborn calf, an endangered orca continues to cling to its corpse.
Michael Milstein, a spokesman with NOAA Fisheries, says researchers on Wednesday spotted the 20-year-old whale known as J35 carrying her dead young off the tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
The calf died July 24 and the image of the mother whale clinging to the dead calf has struck an emotional chord worldwide.
Milstein says researchers with Fisheries and Ocean Canada also spotted another member of the same endangered pod that has dwindled to just 75 whales — the 3½-year old whale J50 that is emaciated. The ailing orca was swimming with her mom Wednesday.
A team of experts led by NOAA Fisheries has been searching for the young whale to assess her health and potentially give her medication.
Veterinarians in the field will decide whether to give the ailing orca antibiotics, which would last between 10 and 14 days, using either a dart injector or a long pole syringe.
“If it’s determined that antibiotics would be useful, then antibiotics through injection is going to be our best course rather than antibiotics through food because we recognize that we won’t able to treat her every day,” said Teri Rowles, marine mammal health and stranding coordinator for NOAA Fisheries.
If things go well, she said, the team could move ahead with feeding the orca live salmon from a boat. The whale would initially get just a few fish to see whether she takes it and how she and members of her pod respond before deciding whether to give her salmon dosed with medication.
Rowles said injections of antibiotics or sedatives have been given to other free-swimming whales or dolphins that were injured or entangled but it hasn’t been done for free-swimming whales in this area. What would be unique is giving the orca medication through live fish, Rowles said.
Whale experts have been increasingly worried about J50 after a researcher last month noticed an odor on the orca’s breath, a smell detected on other orcas that later died.
READ FULL STORY: weather.com/science/nature/news/2018-08-09-orca-clings-corpse-dead-newborn-calf
This is devastating and heartbreaking; the mother of that calf may soon die herself; I can’t imagine that she is eating much, if anything.
How can we get the starving orcas some live salmon? Do escaped net pen salmon make the orcas sick with the diseases they are known to carry? What’s being done to provide live salmon?