The 85 or so southern resident Orcas are doubtless the Sound’s most famous inhabitants. The movie stars of the maritime Northwest, our local paparazzi photograph and report their every move. We know a lot about them, as we should, given their iconic status.
Yet of the Sound’s most populous whale or dolphin, we know only a little.
As it turns out, local scientists are beginning to think that the Orca’s plebeian cousin, the harbor porpoise, may reveal much about the state of the Sound—and yet we scarcely bother to count or track them.
Numbering more than 10,000 when last we checked a decade ago, harbor porpoises are genuine residents of the Sound. Unlike the jet-setting “resident” Orcas who in truth spend much of their time far from the Sound, a distinct population of harbor porpoises lives out their lives in the Salish Sea—eating, breeding, and raising their young solely in its waters. (Harbor porpoises can be found in temperate marine waters around the world, including along the outer coasts of Oregon and Washington, but Puget Sound is home to an identifiable and distinct population that is entirely resident to the inland waters.) That means their diet reflects the food in the Sound, the contamination in their bodies reflects the pollution in the Sound, and their habits reflect our disturbances to the Sound.
Too often, we focus on endangered species to the exclusion of more commonplace creatures that may actually tell us more about broader environmental health. Puget Sound’s harbor porpoises, for example, are not endangered—and it is precisely because they are relatively abundant that they may help us see what a rarer species cannot."
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