Pacific NW Orcas - Most Contaminated Animals On Earth - Get Most Toxins From Near-Shore Salmon

[hatrack]

The most contaminated wildlife on Earth­­--killer whales in the Pacific Northwest—are picking up nearly all their chemicals from Chinook salmon in polluted ocean waters off the West Coast, according to a new scientific study. The whales, which feed in coastal waters from British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands to the San Francisco area, were declared an endangered species in the United States and Canada after their numbers shrank.

These killer whales, called southern residents, live in waters straddling the U.S.-Canada border and spend summers hunting salmon around Washington’s Puget Sound and Vancouver Island. A healthier population, called northern residents, feeds on salmon off more remote parts of British Columbia.

The two populations are only about 200 miles apart, but it makes a world of difference: The southern whales are up to 6.6 times more contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) than the northern ones. “Southern resident killer whales are really urban whales compared to their northern counterparts,” said Peter Ross, a research scientist at the Canadian government’s Institute of Ocean Sciences who led the new study. Ross is one of the world’s leading experts on contaminants in marine mammals.

Their summer habitat around Puget Sound is “a hot spot for PCBs” as well as “lots of other contaminants,” including dioxins and chlorinated pesticides, Ross said. The Chinook salmon they eat inhabit ocean waters and rivers polluted by agriculture, pulp mills, other industries, military bases and urban runoff. Ross and his colleagues discovered that 97% to 99% of contaminants in the Chinook eaten by these whales originated from the salmon's time at sea, in the near-shore waters of the Pacific. Only a small amount came from the time the salmon spent in rivers, although many of the rivers are contaminated, too, Ross said.

EDIT

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/contaminated-killer-whales

[DCKit]

1. Doesn't say much about us when even wild animals know not to shit where they eat. n/t