UpDate (5/23/19): Princess Angeline (also known as J17), a 42-year old southern resident orca matriarch, has developed a severe condition known as ‘peanut head.' This happens when an orca has depleted nearly 100% of its fat reserves. Few orcas are able to come back from this level of starvation. The drone that captured images of Princess Angeline's grave condition also showed that her youngest daughter, Kiki (J53), is in declining health. Defenders of Wildlife is working overtime with local officials to help these whales – but this crisis is stretching our resources to the limit. It's been a tragic year for J17's family. Not only is her youngest daughter Kiki now in poor health, but she is also the mother of Tahlequah (J35), the southern resident orca who gave birth to a baby last summer that died minutes later. She then carried her dead calf on her head for 17 days on a "tour of grief."
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What makes this news truly heartbreaking is that J17 was seen as recently as early April, and scientists said her condition appeared to have improved since her last sighting in December/January.
Here's the problem: an adult orca needs almost 400 pounds of unpolluted salmon, ideally chinook salmon, every single day to stay healthy.But due to habitat loss and dams on the lower Snake River that block their spawning grounds, chinook salmon populations in the region are crashing, creating a disaster for orcas. To make matters worse, pollution from Seattle and other urban centers is carried by rainwater directly into orca habitat.