{"id":16914,"date":"2016-04-05T00:22:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T07:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/killer-competition"},"modified":"2019-03-20T12:58:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T19:58:19","slug":"killer-competition","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/killer-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Killer Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the indigenous I\u00f1upiaq who live along Alaska\u2019s Kotzebue Sound, beluga whales have been a dietary staple for thousands of years. But from a population in the tens-of-thousands in the mid-1990s, beluga whale numbers have since plummeted for reasons that are still unclear. The I\u00f1upiaq still hunt for some beluga each spring, but the population has yet to recover from its collapse. Now, new research is suggesting a previously overlooked possibility as to why there has been no recovery: killer whales.<\/p>\n

Killer whales eat belugas. Though they aren\u2019t new to Kotzebue Sound, killer whales seem to be sticking around for longer, and hunting more, as Arctic sea ice disappears. Anthropogenic climate change means that I\u00f1upiaq hunters like Willie Goodwin have a lot more competition on northwestern Alaska\u2019s windswept waters, some 50 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.<\/p>\n

In 2013, a group of researchers traveled to Kotzebue, a city of about 3,000 people on the coast of Kotzebue Sound, to study belugas using underwater microphones and audio analysis. But instead of belugas, says marine biologist Manuel Castellote, they found killer whales. When they analyzed the audio from their three microphones, which recorded for nearly 70 days, they found belugas only three times. Killer whales, on the other hand, were recorded nearly every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe detected more killer whales than we expected,\u201d says Castellote, a researcher at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s National Marine Mammal Laboratory. \u201cThat was a surprise, both from the local knowledge, and the [existing] scientific studies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castellote\u2019s findings were presented at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium in late January.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Increasing predation by killer whales may be preventing beluga whale populations from recovering.\u00a0Steven Kazlowski\/Science Faction\/Corbis<\/p><\/div>\n

Historically, killer whales have stayed near the open ocean, says Raymond Lee, a beluga hunter in Buckland, a village near the confluence of the Buckland River and Kotzebue Sound, some 120 kilometers southeast of Kotzebue. But in recent years, the killer whales have been pushing farther inland. \u201cThey go up our river a little ways now,\u201d Lee says. \u201cI don\u2019t know if they\u2019re looking for belugas, or if they\u2019re looking for the seals. I have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even for Lee, a 48-year-old hunter who has spent his life on the water, the cetaceans are a formidable sight. \u201cThey fly out of the water with their whole body, going real fast,\u201d he says of the killer whales. \u201cI never did see them in action like that. I slow down and stop my boat\u2014that\u2019s what they say you\u2019re supposed to do. You can see the whole stripe in front of their face, and you can see their fins, five or six feet [1.5 or 1.8 meters]\u00a0tall<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Traditionally, I\u00f1upiaq hunters took to the ice in the spring to hunt beluga, hauling the animals back to their villages where the meat and fat would be distributed among\u00a0community members. For many modern indigenous communities in Alaska, subsistence hunting and traditional foods remain a vital link to their history and culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always had beluga out there,\u201d Goodwin says. \u201cBut now we hardly see any.\u201d He thinks the killer whales\u2019 increasingly bold incursions are at least partly to blame.<\/p>\n

Castellote agrees: \u201cIf there is a compromised population [of belugas], and killer whales take a couple, that could be enough for the population not to be able to recover,\u201d he says. \u201cThat could be reason enough for this population to stay within low numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castellote says there is evidence that the killer whales\u2019 presence in Kotzebue Sound is affecting more than the belugas\u2019 population size. He thinks the predators are also changing the whales\u2019 behavior. His audio recordings suggest the whales have become less conversational (to avoid unwanted killer whale attention, he thinks). The whales also seem to be moving into shallower waters\u2014away from the killer whales, but toward\u00a0the I\u00f1upiaq hunters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat could indicate that belugas prefer to be hunted and shot to death by hunters, rather than to be eaten alive by killer whales,\u201d Castellote suggests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is,\u201d he adds, \u201cI don\u2019t think we have a clear answer. But I don\u2019t think there is another region where a top predator has changed its presence in such a way like we have seen here in Kotzebue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The killer whale\u2019s presence may change part of the traditional I\u00f1upiaq way of life. But \u201cno matter what happens,\u201d Goodwin says, \u201cwe\u2019re going to adapt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to adjust to the situations on hand. Our people have been adapting to change for thousands of years, and we\u2019ll do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disappearing sea ice means Alaskan killer whales are expanding their range, bringing them into increasing competition with indigenous beluga whale hunters.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12678,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"Disappearing sea ice means Alaskan killer whales are expanding their range, bringing them into increasing competition with indigenous beluga whale hunters.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15687]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"66.917010, -162.5841","lat":66.91701,"lng":-162.5841},"related":[16128,16915],"twitterimage":13626,"facebookimage":13625,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18860,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16914\/revisions\/18860"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16915"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/16128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}