00:01:26.430 --> 00:01:30.120
The whales are eight to 10,000
pounds. They're big animals.

00:01:30.125 --> 00:01:31.290
They're as big as elephants.

00:01:33.150 --> 00:01:37.740
You really get the impact that they're
the king of beasts in that water

00:01:37.740 --> 00:01:38.490
world.

00:01:38.490 --> 00:01:43.470
When you see things like them
swimming 25 knots faster than

00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:44.820
your boat can go,

00:01:46.050 --> 00:01:50.370
or throwing themselves 18 feet in the air,

00:01:52.080 --> 00:01:53.250
they're remarkable.

00:01:54.660 --> 00:01:58.860
It was apparent to other people not
so apparent to me that I was kind of

00:01:58.860 --> 00:02:03.030
obsessed with whale stuff. Oh,

00:02:03.030 --> 00:02:07.680
my first photographs are 1963
because that's when I got a 35

00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:10.160
millimeter camera and
started shooting pictures.

00:02:12.220 --> 00:02:16.830
My introduction to Orca survey
or the Killer Whale photo ID

00:02:16.830 --> 00:02:20.700
program came through
Dr. Mike Big in Canada.

00:02:21.720 --> 00:02:26.250
I had heard of him since the
early 1970s as being somebody that

00:02:26.700 --> 00:02:31.620
allegedly knew every individual
whale in the Pacific Northwest

00:02:31.620 --> 00:02:33.690
and most people didn't believe him,

00:02:34.410 --> 00:02:38.370
and I can't say that I was necessarily
a believer, but I wasn't a disbeliever

00:02:40.140 --> 00:02:43.680
By the dorsal fin size shape,

00:02:44.070 --> 00:02:47.100
whether or not it has any
nicks and the saddle pattern,

00:02:47.100 --> 00:02:49.710
the gray area on the side behind the fin,

00:02:50.550 --> 00:02:55.470
we can go back 40 years and
show you unequivocally the same

00:02:55.475 --> 00:02:59.160
whale. In 1976,

00:03:00.010 --> 00:03:04.930
my task was to confirm the
identification of all the whales

00:03:04.930 --> 00:03:09.370
that were in the Salish Sea area
and that we did with Mike's help.

00:03:09.880 --> 00:03:14.680
We had 70 whales in and the
government who was interested in

00:03:14.770 --> 00:03:17.800
finding that number said, well,
that's all they need to know.

00:03:17.800 --> 00:03:22.510
But Mike and I were both fascinated
with the detail that we had

00:03:23.350 --> 00:03:28.150
that we could see how long it took
to grow up, how many babies they had,

00:03:28.570 --> 00:03:31.750
how long they lived, and
who they hung around with,

00:03:32.710 --> 00:03:35.800
and that was more fascinating
than just how many

00:03:41.170 --> 00:03:45.910
way up in the top left corner is
the first roll of film I ever shot,

00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:51.730
and then all of this top row is
basically whale tagging and this

00:03:51.730 --> 00:03:54.581
is the beginning of
the Orca survey survey.

00:03:56.020 --> 00:03:59.560
There's old hi eight and
super eight film rolls.

00:04:00.100 --> 00:04:02.710
Open up another drawer
and it's videotapes.

00:04:03.220 --> 00:04:07.870
Computers with terabyte
storage of digitized images

00:04:07.870 --> 00:04:09.580
and movies and so on.

00:04:10.300 --> 00:04:14.770
This is Silver Bank where we're
doing the study and then every

00:04:14.770 --> 00:04:18.820
day's Notes and sketches.

00:04:19.570 --> 00:04:24.220
It's fun to watch an individual whale
grow up. I just go back in time,

00:04:24.220 --> 00:04:25.390
back and forth through time

00:04:27.130 --> 00:04:30.700
probably as fun for me doing whale
stuff as it is for people doing,

00:04:31.300 --> 00:04:33.190
watching their grandkids grow up.

00:04:45.070 --> 00:04:45.460
Well,

00:04:45.460 --> 00:04:50.170
the first summer that I was here
was in 2004 and by serendipitous

00:04:50.650 --> 00:04:55.180
happenings I wound up being a docent
at Lyman Kiln Point State Park

00:04:56.290 --> 00:04:57.610
living in a tent.

00:04:58.090 --> 00:05:02.530
I basically slept with my clothes on
and my shoes by the sleeping bag and the

00:05:02.530 --> 00:05:05.380
whales would come by at night
in the middle of the night

00:05:07.210 --> 00:05:08.140
and you can hear it.

00:05:08.170 --> 00:05:12.280
One night's thing about a tent is there's
no walls to block out that sound and

00:05:12.280 --> 00:05:17.020
I'd be down on the water midnight
videotaping them for me to

00:05:17.020 --> 00:05:20.920
learn this has taken a
tremendous amount of time.

00:05:21.580 --> 00:05:26.350
I do not do anything else. I do not
go off island. I do not go out to eat.

00:05:26.380 --> 00:05:30.190
I don't go to the movies.
All I do are whales 24 7

00:05:33.970 --> 00:05:35.800
in the southern resident community.

00:05:35.805 --> 00:05:38.140
They never leave their
mothers their entire lives.

00:05:39.430 --> 00:05:42.880
It's a matriarchal society,
so the females are in charge.

00:05:45.490 --> 00:05:50.410
Historically, there was a matriarch
of each pod, j pod, K pod, rail pod,

00:05:50.740 --> 00:05:54.910
and then Granny J two is the matriarch
of the entire southern resident

00:05:54.910 --> 00:05:59.450
community. Granny was estimated
to be 105 when she died.

00:06:01.130 --> 00:06:04.010
These wells that are living in this
community now have never known another

00:06:04.010 --> 00:06:04.843
leader.

00:06:06.950 --> 00:06:11.240
Southern residents don't just live here,
they live on the outer coast as well.

00:06:11.900 --> 00:06:14.420
They gave them that
name Southern residents,

00:06:14.660 --> 00:06:19.040
Southern means that they were basically
off the southern end of Vancouver

00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:19.873
Island.

00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:24.320
This is where they come in the spring and
the summer and into the fall and feast

00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:25.153
on salmon.

00:06:29.980 --> 00:06:30.813
You.

00:06:38.270 --> 00:06:40.370
My friends do like orca,

00:06:40.375 --> 00:06:44.540
but I'm definitely the
most whale crazy one.

00:06:49.400 --> 00:06:54.350
I'm more interested in acoustics and so
I want to figure out what the orca have

00:06:54.350 --> 00:06:55.183
to say.

00:06:58.160 --> 00:07:02.900
Just sights everything to people.
The sound is everything to the orcas.

00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:09.500
It's how they communicate. It's
dirt like a location, how they hunt.

00:07:11.240 --> 00:07:15.740
The southern residents share about 27
different calls with each other and their

00:07:15.740 --> 00:07:18.710
basic signature call eyes sort of go is

00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:23.330
so you can hear that downward and
it could be a two or three syllable,

00:07:23.330 --> 00:07:26.120
but it's always has this little
tail going down. L pod goes.

00:07:27.500 --> 00:07:30.320
You can hear that upward tick and pod

00:07:33.290 --> 00:07:33.715
just like a.

00:07:33.715 --> 00:07:36.740
Kitten. Each of the pods have
their own different calls,

00:07:36.740 --> 00:07:40.880
but when they form the super pods, if
they want to communicate with each other,

00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:41.713
they have,

00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:46.790
if they have the shared sounds and
shared dialects that they all have.

00:07:51.110 --> 00:07:54.320
They're like us where you
see kids playing together,

00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:59.240
you see who's friends with
whom and when you watch them

00:07:59.240 --> 00:08:00.950
enough and you know who you're looking at,

00:08:00.955 --> 00:08:03.470
you can see all of these
different types of interactions.

00:08:14.750 --> 00:08:18.440
Ken has a great story that I think
is a little bit of a window onto the

00:08:18.440 --> 00:08:23.210
incredible minds and
the mystery of who these

00:08:23.210 --> 00:08:24.110
wills are.

00:08:25.700 --> 00:08:28.970
One day he was following some whales that
he had been following for a couple of

00:08:28.970 --> 00:08:31.340
days on a prolonged trip,

00:08:31.430 --> 00:08:34.580
and he suddenly followed them into this
really thick bank of fog and the fog

00:08:34.580 --> 00:08:35.413
enveloped him.

00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:40.430
He was pretty lost except that he
knew what compass direction to head

00:08:40.790 --> 00:08:42.470
generally toward home.

00:08:43.370 --> 00:08:48.200
We were with J pod up in
Georgia Strait and they were out

00:08:48.200 --> 00:08:50.510
spread out foraging and
then they all lined up.

00:08:51.770 --> 00:08:56.490
I think there were 16 whales at the time
and there were eight on each side of

00:08:56.490 --> 00:09:00.930
us and we just crossed the street
like we were part of the pod.

00:09:04.890 --> 00:09:09.360
He followed them for about 15
miles and when they came out of the

00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:12.270
fog, his house was right
there on the shore.

00:09:13.140 --> 00:09:16.800
That was one of the most
glorious moments of feeling that.

00:09:17.580 --> 00:09:18.413
Wow.

00:09:20.520 --> 00:09:24.270
Now what in the world does
that say about their minds?

00:09:24.510 --> 00:09:27.870
It says a lot more than we ever
think to give them credit for, right?

00:09:28.980 --> 00:09:32.970
I can't explain what it is about them
that touches people's hearts so much.

00:09:34.110 --> 00:09:35.910
I'm going to cry now when I talk about it.

00:09:36.990 --> 00:09:40.170
I can't think of a better way
to spend a lifetime really.

00:09:40.650 --> 00:09:42.780
Are you going to study the southern
residents when you grow up?

00:09:43.230 --> 00:09:43.590
Well,

00:09:43.590 --> 00:09:47.640
that really just depends if the southern
residents are still around when I grow

00:09:47.645 --> 00:09:51.540
up, if they haven't gone extinct
by the time that I'm grown up.

00:10:01.140 --> 00:10:01.860
Unfortunately,

00:10:01.860 --> 00:10:06.750
the current status of our southern
resident killer whale population is a

00:10:07.260 --> 00:10:10.530
downward trend since
being declared endangered.

00:10:12.270 --> 00:10:17.250
They're almost a hundred whales in
the mid nineties and we're down to

00:10:17.550 --> 00:10:18.383
74.

00:10:19.890 --> 00:10:23.790
Oh, there's been a horrific decline,
but not only in the numbers,

00:10:23.850 --> 00:10:25.290
but it's also in their behavior.

00:10:25.830 --> 00:10:29.160
They used to really play a
lot in really big groups.

00:10:29.400 --> 00:10:33.660
They'd have an extended family
gathering. We call it a super pod,

00:10:33.990 --> 00:10:37.950
and they'd frolic and play
and the chattering, my God,

00:10:37.950 --> 00:10:39.630
you put a hydrophone in the water.

00:10:39.630 --> 00:10:43.920
It was like 15 cocktail parties at
once and everybody's loud. I mean,

00:10:43.920 --> 00:10:45.870
it was just an incredible experience.

00:10:46.200 --> 00:10:51.180
You could feel the enthusiasm and
the joy of them being together.

00:10:52.650 --> 00:10:56.550
What we didn't know in the early years
is what species of salmon they were

00:10:56.640 --> 00:11:00.450
eating and rather than eating minnows,

00:11:00.810 --> 00:11:04.290
they went for the big fish. 80%
of their diet was Chinook nook.

00:11:05.700 --> 00:11:07.410
When we began the study in 76,

00:11:07.410 --> 00:11:11.250
there were 50 60 pound fish right
in front of this house all the time.

00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:15.090
It only takes three of these
fish a day to make a meal.

00:11:16.230 --> 00:11:20.880
Now you can see the
statistics of weight per

00:11:21.090 --> 00:11:24.270
fish over the years has diminished.

00:11:25.230 --> 00:11:29.100
We've seen that when they don't
have sufficient chinook salmon,

00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:33.390
that they have issues with their survival.

00:11:46.230 --> 00:11:47.520
When I was 18,

00:11:47.520 --> 00:11:51.840
four girlfriends planned a trip for me
up to the San Juans from California to

00:11:51.845 --> 00:11:54.580
see the whales. We did
the thing that now I hate,

00:11:54.580 --> 00:11:58.900
which is we saw whales and we stopped
in the middle of the road and jumped out

00:11:58.900 --> 00:11:59.560
of the car,

00:11:59.560 --> 00:12:04.420
and so I got to see them on my
18th birthday from the San Juan

00:12:04.420 --> 00:12:08.500
County Park all day long
and I was just transfixed.

00:12:08.500 --> 00:12:13.240
I was sold and it took me
11 years to get up here and

00:12:13.240 --> 00:12:18.100
start researching, and I've been really
studying them intensively since 2005.

00:12:20.890 --> 00:12:24.880
The biggest threat to the southern
residents is the lack of praise,

00:12:24.880 --> 00:12:29.050
specifically salmon and most
specifically chinook salmon.

00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:35.710
You can see that the whales are thin
compared to their mammal eating cousins.

00:12:35.830 --> 00:12:37.870
These whales are fairly puny.

00:12:37.990 --> 00:12:41.110
You can sometimes see
their ribs in dire cases,

00:12:41.110 --> 00:12:44.620
you can see the outline of their
skull and what's known as peanut head.

00:12:44.920 --> 00:12:49.000
You should never see bones outlines
of bones on a healthy killer. Well,

00:12:50.410 --> 00:12:53.260
overall the population has been shrinking.

00:12:56.650 --> 00:12:58.930
We can tell that by
looking at photogrammetry,

00:12:58.935 --> 00:13:03.100
so by measuring the length
and girth of the animals,

00:13:04.930 --> 00:13:09.850
so the babies are born smaller and
the females and males are not getting

00:13:09.850 --> 00:13:12.070
as big as past animals.

00:13:12.700 --> 00:13:17.680
The overall shrinking of the population
is directly attributable to the fact

00:13:17.685 --> 00:13:22.540
that females are not getting enough to
eat when they're gestating their fetuses.

00:13:23.650 --> 00:13:26.920
My first favorite was J 28 Polaris.

00:13:28.330 --> 00:13:32.860
She died. My second favorite
was J 34 double step.

00:13:33.610 --> 00:13:34.443
He died,

00:13:34.600 --> 00:13:38.770
so right now my favorite
whale is J 16 slick.

00:13:39.280 --> 00:13:42.490
He seems like a healthy whale, so
I'm hoping that she doesn't die.

00:13:44.170 --> 00:13:48.580
That'd be just depressing,
but yeah, I don't know.

00:13:48.580 --> 00:13:52.120
They're starving, so it's
in the realm of possibility.

00:13:53.380 --> 00:13:56.740
We're losing the males that would
be the next generation of breeders.

00:13:56.740 --> 00:14:00.790
They're not getting to that
older age, which is horrifying.

00:14:01.810 --> 00:14:06.640
What alarms me the most is we have a
serious lack of productive matri lines

00:14:06.670 --> 00:14:08.800
mother offspring families.

00:14:09.580 --> 00:14:14.110
We're down to one breeding male alive and

00:14:14.115 --> 00:14:16.000
five breeding females.

00:14:17.170 --> 00:14:19.330
Even though you have
others in the population,

00:14:19.330 --> 00:14:23.380
you have total of 27 females
that are of reproductive age,

00:14:24.340 --> 00:14:28.390
but only 14 of them have had
a baby in the last 10 years

00:14:29.710 --> 00:14:32.830
and only five of 'em
in the last five years.

00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:38.770
We utilize conservation canines on
the front of our boat and the dog

00:14:38.770 --> 00:14:42.700
is trained to locate killer
well feces in the water.

00:14:43.870 --> 00:14:48.370
Based on the fecal matter that's been
collected in the last couple of years, Dr.

00:14:48.370 --> 00:14:52.610
Sam Wasser's lab has been able to figure
out how tell whether or not the females

00:14:52.610 --> 00:14:57.050
are pregnant and what the preliminary
analysis is showing is that

00:14:57.170 --> 00:15:02.060
50% of the whales that
leave in the winter that are

00:15:02.060 --> 00:15:06.080
pregnant are not coming back with
calves and are not pregnant any longer.

00:15:06.350 --> 00:15:09.230
For those females that do carry
their calves to full term,

00:15:09.560 --> 00:15:11.270
especially for first mothers,

00:15:11.630 --> 00:15:16.130
up to 50% of those calves die within
the first couple of weeks or months of

00:15:16.130 --> 00:15:16.963
life.

00:15:17.660 --> 00:15:22.280
They're almost into functional
reproductive extinction right now,

00:15:22.820 --> 00:15:27.200
but if we can give them enough
food so they can bring up another

00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:30.140
generation and that generation
can bring up another,

00:15:30.470 --> 00:15:32.270
we can bring them back to good numbers.

00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:37.760
I think it's important that we try to
save them because they're an important

00:15:37.765 --> 00:15:41.180
living creature. You can't
just let them die off.

00:15:43.280 --> 00:15:44.270
That's just cruel.

00:15:44.990 --> 00:15:47.840
The number of whales that we
have in the population right now,

00:15:47.870 --> 00:15:52.850
they require just to sustain
themselves somewhere between 600,000

00:15:52.855 --> 00:15:56.060
and 730,000 fish per year.

00:15:56.900 --> 00:16:01.130
In order to grow that population,
clearly there needs to be more fish.

00:16:01.640 --> 00:16:05.180
That really should be the goal of
everybody that's involved and invested in

00:16:05.180 --> 00:16:09.920
these whales is to try and figure
out how to get more salmon into the

00:16:09.920 --> 00:16:14.540
water for the whales to find throughout
their entire range throughout the entire

00:16:14.545 --> 00:16:15.378
year.

00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:24.980
We've been looking at this very
carefully for a couple of years,

00:16:25.580 --> 00:16:29.840
taken every river system in the eastern
North Pacific and looked at what its

00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:34.220
historic production of
Chinook salmon has been,

00:16:34.225 --> 00:16:38.420
what the harvest has been, what
the chances of recovery are,

00:16:39.140 --> 00:16:43.940
and selected a few that have the biggest
bang for the buck and the biggest

00:16:43.940 --> 00:16:45.950
overall is the Snake River system.

00:16:51.580 --> 00:16:53.070
Good morning, sir. How you doing?

00:17:10.490 --> 00:17:15.350
Salmon will even if they've
been virtually decimated,

00:17:15.350 --> 00:17:17.540
almost extirpated, completely,

00:17:18.950 --> 00:17:21.470
give 'em some water and spawning habitat.

00:17:22.190 --> 00:17:25.520
They'll get there and they will spawn
and some of 'em will make it back to the

00:17:25.730 --> 00:17:29.400
ocean. They have a will to
live. That's just amazing.

00:17:45.710 --> 00:17:50.370
Here we are in Moose Creek
at the convergence of the
cell and Moose Creek River

00:17:50.970 --> 00:17:51.803
in Idaho.

00:17:52.770 --> 00:17:56.760
Flew in with Dick Walker and here I am in

00:17:57.060 --> 00:17:57.893
paradise.

00:18:03.780 --> 00:18:07.290
Well, we came here because
this is where the salmon.

00:18:08.660 --> 00:18:09.493
Salmon.

00:18:09.810 --> 00:18:09.960
Well,

00:18:09.960 --> 00:18:14.520
the salmon lifecycle starts in the upper
reaches of rivers where the eggs have

00:18:14.520 --> 00:18:19.380
been deposited and they hatch into
fry and they live in the stream

00:18:19.380 --> 00:18:22.350
for a year and then they
head out to the ocean.

00:18:23.400 --> 00:18:27.150
They go downstream and spend time in
the estuary getting used to salt water,

00:18:27.150 --> 00:18:30.240
and then they go on out into saltwater
and they run for their lives.

00:18:30.900 --> 00:18:35.040
Generally, salmon come out of
their natal river and go, right,

00:18:35.070 --> 00:18:39.930
they hang a right and go to Alaska
after they've spent anywhere from

00:18:39.935 --> 00:18:42.270
three to five years in Alaska getting big,

00:18:42.600 --> 00:18:46.350
they make their southern migration
down with the intention of spawning,

00:18:46.350 --> 00:18:50.490
and it's at that point that killer
wells can intercept them on their return

00:18:50.490 --> 00:18:51.660
migration south.

00:18:53.190 --> 00:18:57.630
In the history of the
Columbia before settlement of

00:18:57.990 --> 00:18:58.823
Europeans,

00:18:59.100 --> 00:19:03.840
there was probably 30 million fish coming
into the Columbia salmon of different

00:19:03.990 --> 00:19:08.400
species and destination.
That's a far cry from today.

00:19:09.120 --> 00:19:10.170
At one time,

00:19:10.260 --> 00:19:15.210
the estimate was that the Snake
River produced approximately

00:19:15.210 --> 00:19:19.980
50% of the salmon in the Columbia

00:19:19.980 --> 00:19:22.830
basin. It was highly productive.

00:19:23.580 --> 00:19:28.050
It still could be highly
productive because most of the area

00:19:28.050 --> 00:19:30.810
upstream on the Salmon River
and the Clearwater and all,

00:19:31.020 --> 00:19:32.820
most of this is pristine area.

00:19:35.250 --> 00:19:39.390
I wanted to put my eyes on the habitat.

00:19:39.690 --> 00:19:43.350
I've heard that it's
pristine and available to the
salmon if they were allowed

00:19:43.350 --> 00:19:45.930
to come here, and I totally believe it.

00:19:47.640 --> 00:19:52.050
If it's not the most
intact analogous fisheries

00:19:52.050 --> 00:19:54.810
habitat left in the lower 48,

00:19:55.960 --> 00:20:00.480
it's one of because there's
no human interruption

00:20:01.020 --> 00:20:04.500
in this whole system
from cell wave falls up.

00:20:06.870 --> 00:20:08.850
This is where life begins.

00:20:08.855 --> 00:20:13.680
The forest is fed by these fish and in

00:20:13.770 --> 00:20:15.960
the ocean the whales
are fed by these fish.

00:20:16.620 --> 00:20:18.990
The habitat is not the question,

00:20:19.620 --> 00:20:23.250
it's the access that is the question,

00:20:23.280 --> 00:20:27.030
and the lower Snake River
dams are the primary

00:20:30.180 --> 00:20:31.020
interruption.

00:20:36.390 --> 00:20:40.080
A man or a woman off the street in
the central part of this country,

00:20:40.260 --> 00:20:44.130
they're pretty familiar with a dam and
they say, well, what's the problem?

00:20:44.130 --> 00:20:48.190
They have fish ladders.
Well, that's not the problem.

00:20:48.490 --> 00:20:51.430
The problem is on the other
half of their lifecycle.

00:20:51.550 --> 00:20:56.290
When the juveniles are migrating
from their freshwater spawning and

00:20:56.290 --> 00:21:01.060
rearing habitat in the Idaho mountains
and trying to get to the Pacific Ocean,

00:21:01.900 --> 00:21:06.730
it's that part of their life history
where all the mortality takes place.

00:21:08.410 --> 00:21:09.940
Before the dams were there,

00:21:10.030 --> 00:21:14.440
a fish could leave Stanley Idaho and be to

00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:16.810
Astoria in a week.

00:21:17.950 --> 00:21:21.910
Now with eight hydroelectric
dams in position,

00:21:22.450 --> 00:21:25.240
four in the snake, four
in the lower Columbia,

00:21:25.930 --> 00:21:28.990
it can take a month to six weeks.

00:21:30.430 --> 00:21:34.990
These juvenile salmon get to
the ocean past the biological

00:21:34.990 --> 00:21:39.310
window where they can transform
from a freshwater fish

00:21:39.940 --> 00:21:41.260
to a saltwater fish.

00:21:41.590 --> 00:21:46.420
Up in Moose Creek where we just were
those little smolts when they start

00:21:46.420 --> 00:21:51.400
down, river travels are facing
upstream and flowing with a current

00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:56.050
downstream and they hit the slack water
of the reservoirs and basically they

00:21:56.050 --> 00:22:00.130
have to swim and not
only is there no current,

00:22:00.370 --> 00:22:05.080
but there are all these predator fish
in there, the bass and the pike minnow,

00:22:05.830 --> 00:22:07.300
they're just gobbling them up.

00:22:08.620 --> 00:22:13.600
You also have the sun baking down on
these reservoirs creating temperatures

00:22:13.605 --> 00:22:16.150
that are above the threshold
for salmon survival.

00:22:17.170 --> 00:22:18.580
When they get to the dam,

00:22:18.940 --> 00:22:22.870
all of a sudden there's this giant piece
of concrete in the way they mill around

00:22:22.870 --> 00:22:24.700
for three or four or five days.

00:22:24.910 --> 00:22:29.530
That takes 'em a long time to try to
figure out how to get through the dam and

00:22:29.530 --> 00:22:31.900
then if they go through the powerhouse,

00:22:31.930 --> 00:22:36.670
the turbine mortality associated with
going through the turbine blades is

00:22:36.670 --> 00:22:38.110
devastating to a fish.

00:22:39.490 --> 00:22:44.350
The mortality that these juveniles
face is so high that they're

00:22:44.355 --> 00:22:47.200
no longer replacing themselves,

00:22:47.320 --> 00:22:49.720
and that's been happening
for over 40 years.

00:22:50.530 --> 00:22:51.580
They're not recovering at all.

00:22:52.030 --> 00:22:55.150
I'm very uncertain about
the future of Ollie's fish.

00:22:56.500 --> 00:22:57.970
The Fish Passage Center,

00:22:58.450 --> 00:23:01.630
which is kind of the gold
standard in terms of fish data,

00:23:02.140 --> 00:23:07.060
produced a study that showed
that if the Snake River dams were

00:23:07.065 --> 00:23:07.930
removed,

00:23:08.200 --> 00:23:12.940
that we would have two and a
half times the present level of

00:23:13.210 --> 00:23:16.150
salmon production in the Snake River.

00:23:17.740 --> 00:23:19.750
Well, if the dams are gone,

00:23:20.140 --> 00:23:24.880
the snake portion of their migration
corridor is going to return to a

00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:26.170
free flowing river.

00:23:26.530 --> 00:23:30.610
The mortality associated
with the powerhouse,

00:23:30.610 --> 00:23:31.780
the spillways,

00:23:32.110 --> 00:23:36.370
the increased predator population
living in the slack water reservoirs,

00:23:36.490 --> 00:23:37.690
it's all going to disappear.

00:23:38.380 --> 00:23:40.270
From all indications.

00:23:40.270 --> 00:23:45.040
The best opportunity that we have
to get more fish into the water for

00:23:45.230 --> 00:23:49.820
whales to be able to find is to
breach the lower for Snake River dams.

00:23:50.570 --> 00:23:55.100
If we ought to control the restless
Columbia, we must first develop it,

00:23:56.060 --> 00:24:00.950
develop it for all its values from
the glacial headwaters to the Pacific

00:24:02.270 --> 00:24:02.720
Government.

00:24:02.720 --> 00:24:07.310
Engineers say it can be done
and water power is the magic

00:24:07.310 --> 00:24:09.890
partner in making this
development possible.

00:24:11.180 --> 00:24:16.010
The Lower Snick River dams were authorized
in the forties and were built by

00:24:16.015 --> 00:24:20.090
the Army Corps of Engineers in
the sixties and early seventies.

00:24:20.750 --> 00:24:21.650
Ice Harbor,

00:24:22.070 --> 00:24:26.840
lower monumental little goose
and lower granite dams blocked

00:24:27.020 --> 00:24:31.880
the migrations of the salmon
and they were built despite a

00:24:31.880 --> 00:24:36.260
lot of opposition from tribes
that were displaced from their

00:24:36.260 --> 00:24:39.770
traditional lands and from
fisheries, biologists.

00:24:39.770 --> 00:24:44.480
But we went ahead confident the
power would be needed in the

00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:45.410
years to come.

00:24:49.250 --> 00:24:53.960
I had the most glorious life
any child could ever live.

00:24:54.200 --> 00:24:59.000
I lived waking up and
going to bed and taking

00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:03.890
all of my sustenance and my very

00:25:03.890 --> 00:25:06.800
being to the roarer of the Snake River.

00:25:07.670 --> 00:25:12.260
We had the best water to
drink, wasn't contaminated.

00:25:12.710 --> 00:25:15.050
We pulled out some of the biggest salmon,

00:25:15.590 --> 00:25:18.650
salmon that weighed over a hundred pounds.

00:25:19.760 --> 00:25:24.410
We had no need of anything else.

00:25:24.440 --> 00:25:26.060
The earth sustained us.

00:25:27.990 --> 00:25:29.450
It's very different today.

00:25:30.740 --> 00:25:35.720
We knew something important was going
on because of how serious everybody

00:25:35.720 --> 00:25:36.553
became.

00:25:40.190 --> 00:25:44.990
There were weeks on end
when my mother and my

00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:48.140
till would be gone,

00:25:48.290 --> 00:25:53.030
and what they were doing
was trying to ask the

00:25:53.030 --> 00:25:57.260
Corps of Engineers to reconsider the

00:25:57.260 --> 00:25:58.250
plans.

00:25:59.390 --> 00:26:04.250
I remember the day when we
had to move and that's when I

00:26:04.250 --> 00:26:08.660
finally realized that my
life was going to change and

00:26:09.350 --> 00:26:13.760
I would never again wake up

00:26:15.080 --> 00:26:18.410
by the falls because.

00:26:31.070 --> 00:26:31.903
Excuse me.

00:26:35.240 --> 00:26:40.190
A group of anthropology students
from the University of Washington

00:26:40.190 --> 00:26:44.280
and Washington State University showed up.

00:26:44.850 --> 00:26:48.900
My mother's eyesight was
already failing and so was my

00:26:49.260 --> 00:26:50.190
grandpa's,

00:26:50.220 --> 00:26:54.690
and they couldn't quite
make out what they were

00:26:54.690 --> 00:26:57.250
lifting out of the earth,
and I said, they're taking

00:26:59.550 --> 00:27:00.750
a canoe.

00:27:01.950 --> 00:27:04.980
What they were doing was
they were actually removing

00:27:06.600 --> 00:27:08.370
her grandfather's

00:27:10.020 --> 00:27:12.540
burial and he had been buried in a canoe.

00:27:13.950 --> 00:27:18.870
That's one of the agreements
that the Corps of Engineers

00:27:18.870 --> 00:27:23.610
entered into with the University of
Washington and Wazoo was to be able

00:27:23.610 --> 00:27:28.500
to do their anthropological

00:27:28.920 --> 00:27:33.360
studies before the water

00:27:33.420 --> 00:27:34.260
buried them,

00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:42.180
and then finally there
were sheriff's cars.

00:27:43.770 --> 00:27:48.660
That's when they escorted us off and
we were never allowed to come back

00:27:48.990 --> 00:27:51.570
to our village and even right after that,

00:27:51.570 --> 00:27:56.460
we seen the water coming up
right to where our road and it

00:27:56.465 --> 00:27:57.900
started covering our road.

00:27:57.900 --> 00:28:02.880
That's how fast the
buildup was of that water.

00:28:02.880 --> 00:28:04.710
Once they closed that dam off,

00:28:05.370 --> 00:28:08.040
that's how right to the very end,

00:28:08.100 --> 00:28:12.750
my mother and my grandfather
hung onto our site that

00:28:12.750 --> 00:28:17.340
as we got over that ridge, I could
see our logs that we played with.

00:28:17.340 --> 00:28:18.570
They were floating now

00:28:22.320 --> 00:28:24.480
and it's all underwater now.

00:28:33.480 --> 00:28:36.990
I was with the Army Corps of
Engineers for over 35 years,

00:28:37.080 --> 00:28:41.730
started off in Charleston District in
1975 as a GSS five and moved up the ranks

00:28:41.730 --> 00:28:46.560
very quickly and ended up retiring
around 2013 out of Atlanta,

00:28:46.565 --> 00:28:47.398
Georgia.

00:28:48.180 --> 00:28:52.800
The Lower Snake feasibility report was
a report that was basically started in

00:28:52.800 --> 00:28:56.220
Walla Walla District at the direction
of a federal judge who said we needed to

00:28:56.220 --> 00:29:00.930
look at the alternative of breaching
dams versus keeping dams and come up with

00:29:00.935 --> 00:29:03.870
the cost benefit economics
and biological benefits.

00:29:04.260 --> 00:29:06.360
The report was started in 1995.

00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:09.330
I actually arrived on the scene in 1999,

00:29:09.330 --> 00:29:13.080
so I was at sort of the tail end of that
report and catching the final drafts

00:29:13.080 --> 00:29:13.913
and so forth.

00:29:14.580 --> 00:29:19.470
What I began to notice was that there
was this sort of built-in inherent

00:29:19.475 --> 00:29:21.870
bias in any kind of discussion.

00:29:21.870 --> 00:29:26.670
It seemed to always be the dams are
providing great benefit to the country and

00:29:26.675 --> 00:29:29.820
they're not really that bad a deal
for salmon and all this kind of stuff,

00:29:30.930 --> 00:29:33.390
but I didn't really know anything
about the lower snake. I mean,

00:29:33.395 --> 00:29:34.620
I didn't know anything about salmon.

00:29:34.950 --> 00:29:37.920
All I knew about it was it comes in a
can and you ate it every now and then,

00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:43.390
and so I didn't have any preconceived
notions about the study or anything like

00:29:43.390 --> 00:29:46.840
that. It was my judgment,

00:29:46.840 --> 00:29:50.800
professional judgment based on the
input I had from the report that the dam

00:29:50.800 --> 00:29:54.010
should be breached.
The lieutenant colonel,

00:29:54.015 --> 00:29:58.270
who was the commander of the district
at the time was I think when I told him

00:29:58.270 --> 00:29:59.680
that he was pretty much in panic.

00:30:00.070 --> 00:30:04.330
He assumed that keeping the dams
was the answer he was going to get,

00:30:05.860 --> 00:30:09.250
And then that report basically
was completed in 2002.

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:13.060
The decision at that point
was it had already been made.

00:30:13.450 --> 00:30:17.500
It was a decision made by the
division anyway, the politicians,

00:30:17.950 --> 00:30:22.420
Bonneville Power Administration
and even national Marine Fisheries,

00:30:22.510 --> 00:30:23.590
and so I was just

00:30:25.240 --> 00:30:29.080
a ripple in the process
and they figured out,

00:30:29.500 --> 00:30:31.420
well just ignore this guy and move on.

00:30:32.980 --> 00:30:37.930
Anybody that had read that report would
seriously wonder how we could make

00:30:37.930 --> 00:30:41.620
a decision to keep the dams, and while
I was there, I felt like, okay, well,

00:30:41.620 --> 00:30:45.940
at least it's here. If I couldn't get
the decision made inside the Corps,

00:30:46.180 --> 00:30:50.230
somebody outside the Corps environmental
organizations and the public at large

00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:55.090
could read this and they would have the
ammunition they needed to come after

00:30:55.090 --> 00:30:57.100
that decision and win.

00:31:00.940 --> 00:31:05.680
One of the major reasons for
constructing the Lower Snake River dams

00:31:05.830 --> 00:31:09.910
was to bring barge
transportation to Lewiston,

00:31:12.070 --> 00:31:16.990
and people believed that this was
going to be a great boon to the

00:31:16.990 --> 00:31:20.440
economy. Lewiston was going to prosper.

00:31:20.860 --> 00:31:24.520
Some people even predicted that
it would grow larger than Spokane.

00:31:26.470 --> 00:31:28.240
On the Snake River itself,

00:31:28.240 --> 00:31:32.980
there's no longer any
shipment of logs of lumber of

00:31:32.980 --> 00:31:33.910
petroleum.

00:31:34.330 --> 00:31:38.860
The only commodity being shipped
is wheat or grain. Basically,

00:31:39.730 --> 00:31:44.170
the reason that grain continues
to be shipped is because that

00:31:44.170 --> 00:31:49.030
transportation is highly subsidized
by the federal government.

00:31:49.840 --> 00:31:52.240
If there were not the big subsidy,

00:31:52.600 --> 00:31:55.720
farmers would switch to rail rapidly.

00:31:58.480 --> 00:32:03.190
The Port of Lewiston has been
in deficit spending for the last

00:32:03.190 --> 00:32:07.480
five years, or in the
red about 1.5 million.

00:32:08.890 --> 00:32:13.810
The cost of operation for the locks
just on the lower snake runs about 10 to

00:32:13.810 --> 00:32:15.040
12 million a year.

00:32:15.310 --> 00:32:19.480
They have to dredge the channel
to keep the Port of Lewiston open.

00:32:20.050 --> 00:32:22.180
The course says every three to five years,

00:32:22.780 --> 00:32:26.800
the last dredging job costs
just shy of $10 million.

00:32:27.370 --> 00:32:31.690
Then you have major repairs and
rehab to those locks and dams.

00:32:31.900 --> 00:32:33.670
When you put this all together,

00:32:33.790 --> 00:32:37.960
every barge that leaves
the Port of Lewiston has a

00:32:37.960 --> 00:32:41.930
taxpayer subsidy of about $21,000.

00:32:42.560 --> 00:32:45.710
That's for every barge. It would be much,

00:32:45.710 --> 00:32:50.570
much cheaper to just pay the
farmers the difference between

00:32:50.570 --> 00:32:53.150
rail and barge and ship by rail.

00:32:54.920 --> 00:32:57.470
The question sometimes arises about, gee,

00:32:57.500 --> 00:33:02.060
what would happen if we lost the
power of the Snake River dams?

00:33:02.810 --> 00:33:06.830
And the bottom line answer is nothing.

00:33:09.770 --> 00:33:14.750
All of the power produced by the
lower Snake River dams is surplus

00:33:15.050 --> 00:33:17.360
to the system. In other words,

00:33:17.360 --> 00:33:20.510
if the Snake River dams
were shut down tomorrow,

00:33:20.870 --> 00:33:25.580
Bonneville power would
not need to replace that

00:33:25.580 --> 00:33:27.080
energy at all.

00:33:28.670 --> 00:33:33.650
Bonneville Power is an agency charged
with marketing power generated

00:33:33.650 --> 00:33:35.300
by Corps of Engineer projects,

00:33:36.350 --> 00:33:41.030
the surplus they historically
market to off system

00:33:41.120 --> 00:33:43.460
customers, things like British Columbia,

00:33:43.520 --> 00:33:48.350
other utilities in the Northwest and
California via the northwest inter time

00:33:49.250 --> 00:33:51.950
for 30, 40, 50 years.

00:33:51.950 --> 00:33:54.740
That was a very lucrative business
because in the middle of the day,

00:33:54.740 --> 00:33:56.750
California would run short of power.

00:33:56.810 --> 00:34:01.400
The price per megawatt hour would go
50, 60, 70 as high as a hundred dollars

00:34:01.400 --> 00:34:05.330
megawatt hour. But starting in 2009,

00:34:05.720 --> 00:34:08.900
that changed. Wind turbines
started becoming economical.

00:34:08.900 --> 00:34:11.240
Solar panels started becoming economical,

00:34:11.370 --> 00:34:14.870
and instead of the prices coming
up in the middle of the daytime,

00:34:14.930 --> 00:34:18.290
they started coming down.
So what used to be 50, 60,

00:34:18.295 --> 00:34:21.560
$70 megawatt hour power
in the afternoons is now

00:34:22.730 --> 00:34:24.410
30, 20 10,

00:34:24.620 --> 00:34:28.550
and occasionally you will see the
prices even go negative because,

00:34:29.630 --> 00:34:34.430
and this is kind of critical because
sometimes there is now so much power

00:34:34.490 --> 00:34:38.240
being produced that the companies are
actually paying people to take it.

00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:43.670
When Bonneville Power says its
power costs $36 a megawatt hour,

00:34:44.150 --> 00:34:47.930
what they used to sell for 50
is now being sold at 20 or less.

00:34:48.110 --> 00:34:53.000
So what used to be profitable power
for Bonneville power is now a money

00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:54.110
losing situation.

00:34:54.440 --> 00:34:58.250
When you look at what's been going on in
the last few years with the pressure on

00:34:58.250 --> 00:35:01.100
our revenue streams, with the
pressure on our cost structure,

00:35:01.100 --> 00:35:04.220
with the changes in the industry, the
collapse in wholesale electricity prices,

00:35:04.550 --> 00:35:07.760
I think that the commercial pressures
on Bonneville have become much more

00:35:07.760 --> 00:35:08.593
significant.

00:35:08.930 --> 00:35:11.840
Everybody knows we've taken huge
hits in the secondary revenue market,

00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:13.820
just like every other
hydro provider up here,

00:35:14.390 --> 00:35:16.730
it's been a blood bath for
folks in the wholesale market.

00:35:17.030 --> 00:35:19.130
That situation is not
going to turn around.

00:35:19.190 --> 00:35:23.660
The amount of solar and wind energy
coming into the market is increasing

00:35:23.750 --> 00:35:25.760
steadily, and in fact, today,

00:35:26.060 --> 00:35:30.560
wind and solar in the Pacific
Northwest has replaced the energy

00:35:30.830 --> 00:35:34.670
produced by the lower Snake
River dams six times over.

00:35:35.570 --> 00:35:38.130
Honorables rates have
gone up 30 since 2008,

00:35:38.220 --> 00:35:42.930
and I have heard it since the day I took
the job that we've got to get ourselves

00:35:42.930 --> 00:35:45.390
off of this unsustainable rate trajectory.

00:35:45.780 --> 00:35:50.550
I will tell you that today with
the PF rate at around $36 per

00:35:50.555 --> 00:35:54.390
megawatt hour and market
in the 21, 22 20 $3 range,

00:35:56.260 --> 00:36:01.080
we are not strictly
competitive on a pure price

00:36:01.080 --> 00:36:01.913
point basis.

00:36:02.730 --> 00:36:07.500
Bonneville Power Administration
is approaching a fiscal cliff.

00:36:08.070 --> 00:36:12.000
They have exhausted their reserves,

00:36:12.570 --> 00:36:14.640
they've raised their rates,

00:36:14.640 --> 00:36:18.120
they charged their
preference customers by 30%,

00:36:18.360 --> 00:36:22.320
and they have this big surplus
of energy that they can't market.

00:36:24.330 --> 00:36:28.650
It's tough for me to have to point
this out, but over the last decade,

00:36:28.710 --> 00:36:31.800
Bonneville has burned through
about $800 million of cash.

00:36:32.430 --> 00:36:36.180
We are down close to zero in terms of
cash reserves on the power business line.

00:36:36.540 --> 00:36:39.060
That is, it's an unacceptable
position to be in.

00:36:39.390 --> 00:36:43.620
So Bonneville power has
a serious problem and

00:36:43.620 --> 00:36:46.320
consequently, so does
the Pacific Northwest.

00:36:46.560 --> 00:36:51.240
Whether you're a family paying your
power bill or a business that uses

00:36:51.240 --> 00:36:54.060
Power Reckoning Day is
coming, so to speak.

00:36:54.570 --> 00:36:56.400
Can Bonneville power survive

00:37:00.600 --> 00:37:02.670
without making changes? Probably not.

00:37:03.090 --> 00:37:05.460
I think it's important that we
don't get into a panic mode.

00:37:05.460 --> 00:37:08.610
I'm not in a panic
mode, but I'm in a very,

00:37:08.610 --> 00:37:11.910
very significant sense of urgency mode,

00:37:11.910 --> 00:37:14.730
and I do think that the risks
facing Bonneville are real,

00:37:15.180 --> 00:37:18.480
and I feel that even though we've got
10 years left in our long-term contracts

00:37:18.480 --> 00:37:19.440
until 2028,

00:37:20.220 --> 00:37:23.490
that the time for action and
I think real action is now.

00:37:24.600 --> 00:37:27.720
We're not getting what we
paid for out of these dams.

00:37:28.890 --> 00:37:33.450
I'm paying for fish killing
machines rather than anything useful

00:37:33.450 --> 00:37:36.120
to me or to my society. Really.

00:37:36.840 --> 00:37:39.330
I know the four lower snake
dams should be removed.

00:37:39.990 --> 00:37:44.730
If a private entity rather than the
Corps of Engineers owned those dams

00:37:45.330 --> 00:37:47.430
and was paying the bills on the dams,

00:37:47.670 --> 00:37:51.000
you'd have a backhoe up there
taking them down tomorrow afternoon.

00:37:51.450 --> 00:37:53.460
They are that bad.

00:37:58.320 --> 00:38:03.030
These four dams are crucial to meet
BPAs peak loads during those hottest

00:38:03.030 --> 00:38:07.980
days in the summer when the wind doesn't
blow or the coldest days in the winter

00:38:08.250 --> 00:38:09.840
when we do not have sunlight.

00:38:10.080 --> 00:38:14.970
I can't express how important this
hydro system is for the entire

00:38:14.970 --> 00:38:15.810
Northwest.

00:38:16.260 --> 00:38:20.880
I've heard you couldn't match the energy
produced by these dams with six or

00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:25.590
more coal fired power plants. None
of us want to return to that if they.

00:38:25.590 --> 00:38:28.950
Go away, what happens? It means
more natural gas, more fossil fuels.

00:38:28.950 --> 00:38:30.450
It makes no sense.

00:38:30.720 --> 00:38:35.560
It's not uncommon for the
pro dam contingent to make

00:38:35.560 --> 00:38:39.040
statements that are literally
unsupportable. That would be one.

00:38:39.040 --> 00:38:40.270
Of them. They're just lying.

00:38:40.540 --> 00:38:45.490
More total salmon have returned this year
than before the dams were actually put

00:38:45.490 --> 00:38:46.270
in place.

00:38:46.270 --> 00:38:50.950
We've seen it several years of
record or near record returns of

00:38:50.950 --> 00:38:51.783
adult salmon.

00:38:51.790 --> 00:38:54.610
Both politicians and some fisheries.

00:38:54.610 --> 00:38:59.470
Biologists have said that there are
record runs of salmon returning to the

00:38:59.470 --> 00:39:00.550
Columbia basin.

00:39:01.870 --> 00:39:06.460
I actually don't know how to
rectify that with what I know to be

00:39:06.460 --> 00:39:07.150
true.

00:39:07.150 --> 00:39:11.640
Just go ask any Idaho
steelhead fishermen or

00:39:11.740 --> 00:39:16.660
salmon fishermen, how much he's
enjoying these record runs,

00:39:16.720 --> 00:39:18.100
and you'll have your answer.

00:39:18.280 --> 00:39:22.030
We should let the experts in US
Fish and Wildlife Bonneville Power,

00:39:22.150 --> 00:39:23.740
Noah Nims lead the way.

00:39:24.340 --> 00:39:29.140
This is a 50 year PR program
of misinformation to tell

00:39:29.140 --> 00:39:32.950
people the dams would bring
prosperity to the whole region,

00:39:33.610 --> 00:39:34.443
and it hasn't.

00:39:48.520 --> 00:39:49.960
1753

00:39:52.780 --> 00:39:55.450
at 47, 2.

00:39:55.450 --> 00:39:56.890
O'clock position still in sight.

00:39:57.700 --> 00:40:01.270
Two o'clock position still in sight
surfacing beginning of rise now.

00:40:01.720 --> 00:40:06.100
Yep. I think it was July 24th, 2018,

00:40:06.730 --> 00:40:09.250
one of my colleagues called from Victoria.

00:40:09.700 --> 00:40:14.530
He was out on the boat and
saw a brand new baby in J

00:40:14.530 --> 00:40:19.360
Pod and he called excitedly a new
baby, and we had a boat on the water.

00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:23.980
So I sent Dave over and said, check
it out, document this baby right now.

00:40:24.610 --> 00:40:26.710
And by the time he got
there, the baby was dead,

00:40:28.450 --> 00:40:33.040
and the mother started pushing this
baby all the way over to San Juan Island

00:40:33.040 --> 00:40:37.720
from Victoria up Harrow
Strait. That evening.

00:40:38.050 --> 00:40:42.580
I expected she'd lose it sometime
the next day she was pushing it

00:40:42.580 --> 00:40:46.060
again and the day after
and the fourth day,

00:40:47.110 --> 00:40:52.000
I began taking video of this tragic
event and we started spreading

00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:53.290
it in the news media.

00:40:56.050 --> 00:41:00.730
A mother orca whose calf died after
birth is still carrying her baby.

00:41:00.730 --> 00:41:02.230
17 days later,

00:41:02.440 --> 00:41:05.590
researchers say that they're now
concerned for the mother's health.

00:41:05.770 --> 00:41:09.670
This is a mother that has lost her baby
and she is going through the intense

00:41:09.670 --> 00:41:10.870
morning process.

00:41:10.990 --> 00:41:12.370
To carry her calf around.

00:41:12.370 --> 00:41:16.810
She would have to dump the calf off of her

00:41:16.810 --> 00:41:21.640
head and then take a breath
and then go down underwater

00:41:21.640 --> 00:41:26.050
and pick the sinking calf up
and come back up to the surface

00:41:26.350 --> 00:41:30.940
and swim with that dead calf draped
across the front of her head and

00:41:30.940 --> 00:41:35.090
sometimes over her blow hole. So whenever
she would need to take another breath,

00:41:35.090 --> 00:41:37.190
she would have to drop the calf off again,

00:41:39.950 --> 00:41:44.390
and so that was absolutely heartbreaking
to see and to know that that was a

00:41:44.395 --> 00:41:48.470
conscious choice. Every time
she had to take a breath,

00:41:48.470 --> 00:41:50.660
she knew she was going
to have to drop her calf,

00:41:51.110 --> 00:41:55.220
and it was a conscious choice every time
for her to go down and retrieve it and

00:41:55.220 --> 00:41:59.540
just to think about that from the
perspective of a grieving individual.

00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:04.220
It's a really horrifying thing to
have to consider, but she did it.

00:42:04.225 --> 00:42:07.850
She considered it for
every breath for 17 days.

00:42:08.270 --> 00:42:12.230
I know you've seen this pictures,
governor, what's your reaction to it?

00:42:12.830 --> 00:42:16.880
Well, it's the same as 7 million
Washingtonians, which is heartbreak.

00:42:17.060 --> 00:42:18.770
It touches us all very deeply,

00:42:18.775 --> 00:42:23.420
and I hopeful is going to inspire all of
us to put our shoulders to the wheel to

00:42:23.420 --> 00:42:26.000
do what is necessary
to save the orcas. But.

00:42:26.000 --> 00:42:27.260
A lot of people are saying,

00:42:27.265 --> 00:42:30.980
in order to make a real move in the
right direction for chinook salmon,

00:42:31.130 --> 00:42:34.550
we need to breach the lower force snake
dams. Do you take a position on that?

00:42:35.420 --> 00:42:38.120
Yeah. My position is we
should consider the science,

00:42:38.120 --> 00:42:40.820
and that is a decision
that is being considered.

00:42:41.900 --> 00:42:46.040
What we have to do is get our political
leaders to go the same direction and

00:42:46.310 --> 00:42:48.530
start taking down these dams.

00:42:50.810 --> 00:42:55.490
The public has to provide
the political backing for

00:42:55.490 --> 00:43:00.080
these leaders who are
unwilling to make a decision

00:43:00.980 --> 00:43:02.870
to do what has to be done.

00:43:04.100 --> 00:43:08.360
I wonder if you could be kind
enough to circle back to one of the

00:43:08.360 --> 00:43:10.820
themes, which was take action.

00:43:10.940 --> 00:43:14.150
Can you talk about actions
that everyone could take?

00:43:14.930 --> 00:43:19.820
Parl and I went to the offices of the
Senators, Murray and Cantwell today,

00:43:20.270 --> 00:43:23.150
and if we had all been there,
they would've been real impressed.

00:43:27.830 --> 00:43:30.260
You got to just let 'em know.
Let 'em know. Let 'em know.

00:43:31.580 --> 00:43:31.970
Yeah,

00:43:31.970 --> 00:43:36.620
and never confuse process
with progress or progress

00:43:36.920 --> 00:43:38.210
with success.

00:43:38.270 --> 00:43:42.920
The biggest single bang for the buck
for getting habitat and salmon back is

00:43:43.250 --> 00:43:47.570
remove these four deadbeat moneys sucking

00:43:47.930 --> 00:43:52.700
taxpayer leaching dams that never
should have been put there in the

00:43:52.700 --> 00:43:57.500
first place and do all the
other nice things you can

00:43:57.500 --> 00:44:02.060
do, but don't let your focus be diluted.

00:44:08.810 --> 00:44:13.320
Look at this. My God, this is
so beautiful. Raise a whale.

00:44:13.450 --> 00:44:17.630
Raise a whale. Yes. Oh my God.

00:44:18.110 --> 00:44:21.350
This is beautiful. And it
is. So what we need to do.

00:44:24.350 --> 00:44:28.940
The missing link in saving these
whales is the masses of people that

00:44:29.900 --> 00:44:34.890
are interested in them and love
them to have a voice speak up,

00:44:34.950 --> 00:44:38.460
start doing things, got to get
everybody wearing a button,

00:44:38.460 --> 00:44:41.910
and knowing these whales
and they're voting,

00:44:41.910 --> 00:44:45.270
they're pressing for solve this problem.

00:44:45.810 --> 00:44:48.420
We're not only here for ourselves,

00:44:48.750 --> 00:44:53.460
but for those who don't have a voice
the way that you and I do and who

00:44:53.460 --> 00:44:57.270
can't speak up for themselves
like you and I can.

00:44:58.590 --> 00:45:02.910
I'm very sad about the damage that
my generation has done to this

00:45:02.915 --> 00:45:03.748
ecosystem,

00:45:06.450 --> 00:45:09.720
and I'm angry with the people
who have allowed that to happen.

00:45:10.230 --> 00:45:11.070
Mr. Governor,

00:45:11.130 --> 00:45:15.840
you have heard from over 700,000 of
your constituents who are unwilling to

00:45:15.840 --> 00:45:19.200
postpone the removal of the
lower forest Snake River dance.

00:45:20.040 --> 00:45:24.300
I'm trying to spread awareness to
people my age and kids and teens.

00:45:24.690 --> 00:45:29.640
I do public speaking and
also writing to our senators.

00:45:30.540 --> 00:45:33.450
If enough people do that, I think
that it can make a big difference.

00:45:34.020 --> 00:45:37.920
They can't really do it
without the will of the people,

00:45:38.280 --> 00:45:42.800
without this, without
us, without the pressure,

00:45:42.830 --> 00:45:47.340
without the, this is what
is going to make it happen.

00:45:54.270 --> 00:45:57.810
We're not talking about removing all
the dams on the Columbia River system.

00:45:57.810 --> 00:46:02.670
We've got four lower Snake river dams
that are the most egregious of all.

00:46:04.110 --> 00:46:08.670
And those dams, they had a
good run. They had a great run,

00:46:09.870 --> 00:46:11.010
but the run's over.

00:46:14.670 --> 00:46:18.480
We messed it up, and we need to do
everything we can to clean it up.

00:46:20.370 --> 00:46:24.840
It's all one body of water from the
top of the mountain in the continental

00:46:24.840 --> 00:46:28.110
divide to the bottom of the
ocean. It's all one water.

00:46:29.220 --> 00:46:31.050
I want our grandchildren, our great,

00:46:31.055 --> 00:46:33.930
great grandchildren to
know and see an orca,

00:46:35.190 --> 00:46:39.600
see the lampre, to see the salmon see us.

00:46:42.060 --> 00:46:44.490
The more that people become aware,

00:46:44.760 --> 00:46:49.290
the more a chance there is
for these whales to survive.

00:47:10.800 --> 00:47:15.570
This is probably the most important
project I've undertaken in my life

00:47:16.200 --> 00:47:18.240
to try and do something for these animals.

00:47:22.980 --> 00:47:24.270
There's a lot of opposition.

00:47:31.000 --> 00:47:33.400
This is a world treasure.

00:47:36.790 --> 00:47:39.070
We can't let it go. The
salmon or the whales,

00:47:44.860 --> 00:47:46.060
it's time to act.

00:48:16.770 --> 00:48:21.710
We feel your power, great river.

00:48:29.540 --> 00:48:34.180
Feel your power. Great river.

00:48:41.860 --> 00:48:45.460
Let your salmon guide us upstream.

00:48:45.465 --> 00:48:48.280
Got to keep gum waters clean.

00:48:48.580 --> 00:48:52.990
Let our the next generation,

00:48:54.530 --> 00:48:57.590
let your salmon guide us upstream.

00:48:57.720 --> 00:48:59.670
Got to keep gum waters.

00:49:00.970 --> 00:49:05.430
Let our life speed the next generation.

00:49:07.010 --> 00:49:11.670
Let the next generation

00:49:25.620 --> 00:49:30.270
feel your power. Great river.

00:49:37.700 --> 00:49:39.630
Feel your power, our

00:49:41.480 --> 00:49:42.750
great river.

00:49:50.610 --> 00:49:53.670
Let your salmon got us upstream.

00:49:53.880 --> 00:49:56.150
Got to keep your waters clean.

00:49:57.130 --> 00:50:01.900
Let our lives feed the next generation.

00:50:02.770 --> 00:50:06.430
Let your salmon guide us upstream.

00:50:06.430 --> 00:50:09.220
Got to keep your water free.

00:50:09.520 --> 00:50:13.750
Let our lives feed the next generation.

00:50:15.130 --> 00:50:18.430
Let our lives the next

00:50:19.520 --> 00:50:20.353
generation.

00:50:21.730 --> 00:50:25.150
Let our lives the next

00:50:25.150 --> 00:50:28.670
generation. Let our

00:50:30.340 --> 00:50:30.630
next.