One year ago, Tahlequah (J035) was on her eleventh straight day of carrying her dead baby hundreds of miles across the Salish Sea. Less than a month later, we watched as four year old Scarlet (J050) starved to death in front of cameras, marine biologists, and her entire family. For awhile, people across the world were outraged.
And still, nothing was done.
Today, it’s been announced that three more Southern Residents - one from each pod - has been declared missing. Only 73 Southern Residents remain.
It has been within our capabilities as a human species to help them - for decades. We’ve known what to do - for decades. And we’ve led them right to the door of extinction regardless.
When one of their own is ill, the Southern Residents have been observed hunting salmon and offering the prey directly to the weakest member of the pod. They will not leave the weakest member behind to fend for themselves; they hunt for their own, and bring them salmon - time and time again.
While it may very well be anthropomorphic to call this an act of empathy, perhaps we as humans have something to learn from a species that seems to have so much more humanity than our own.
We’re letting the Southern Resident Killer Whales die. Please don’t ever be okay with that. Tell your children to tell their grandchildren, that some of us really, really did try to save them.
We had so much to learn from them. In their absence, let the Southern Residents at the very least teach us a much needed lesson in what it means to have compassion - and how it could have saved an entire population of sentient beings.
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