Elida passed away at just three years old. She was a young killer whale with her life ahead of her, but was found dead in the Sognefjord with her body full of environmental toxins. Can Elida become a symbol of the fight against the third global crisis, which is about environmental toxins? Elida had very high levels of old environmental toxins such as PCBs and PBDEs, but also mercury and many other substances, according to a recently published report from the Norwegian Environment Agency. When a three-year-old killer whale calf dies with sky-high levels of environmental toxins in its body, it means that it is scary to be a killer whale, even in Norwegian waters. PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and mercury are the environmental toxins for which we know the health effects best, also on humans. Mercury can affect the nervous system and brain development in the fetus, leading to behavioral disorders such as ADHD and low IQ, among other things. PCBs can affect the immune system, reproduction and be carcinogenic. The findings are alarming, but not surprising for us who work with environmental toxins in marine mammals. Orcas are among the world’s most polluted animals. Especially the family groups that live in urban areas and those that eat other marine mammals at the top of the food chain will have extra high levels. The families of killer whales, which operate in the fjord areas of Western Norway for large parts of the year, are known to hunt porpoises in the fjords, especially in late winter and throughout spring. Little has been known about where these groups stay for the rest of the year, but now we know a little more. The killer whale Elida was found dead in the Sognefjord in 2021. Now a new report shows that she had record high levels of environmental toxins in her body. Photo: Vegard B. Aasen Researchers from the Norwegian Orca Survey have based on image material found some of the individuals along the coast of northern Norway. Recently, researchers from UiT Norway’s Arctic University and the Institute of Marine Research were able to satellite tag two individuals in the same group as Elida belonged to, including Elida’s mother. The results were surprising and showed that this family group swims close to land and sails every single fjord arm in Western Norway over a long period, probably in search of porpoises and seals. But in early summer they suddenly changed their migration pattern and headed out to sea and stayed southeast of Jan Mayen for almost two months before the latter lost its mark. We don’t know what they eat here. It can be seals and whales, but also fish. If we are to be able to better understand where and how these killer whales get all the environmental toxins in them, such data is very important. Perhaps it is not only along the coast, but also out in the open sea that they are burdened with these substances. Elida was three years old when she died, and she had probably previously been with her mother to the same areas out in the sea. We humans tend to focus on what we can see, but often the invisible threats are just as serious, precisely because they are “invisible” to us. When the plastic whale was found outside Bergen in 2017 with a stomach full of plastic, it became a symbol of plastic pollution globally and contributed to a marked increase in attention. This was a goose beaked whale that lives in the open sea and feeds at great depths. Therefore, it has probably ingested the plastic far from land and probably many other whales suffer the same fate out in the sea without us being able to observe it. Perhaps Elida’s sad end can contribute to attention to the invisible pollution of the oceans, where the substances that we thought we had regulated and got rid of, slowly but surely pile up in the food chain, are transferred between generations, and end up on our dinner plate when we harvest from the sea. The health of the ocean, which is also important for human health, should receive the focus it deserves as we now approach the halfway point of the UN’s Decade of the Ocean. Perhaps Elida’s death can also help put pressure on the work to establish a third scientific panel in the UN system, one that can focus on the third global crisis, namely the hundreds of thousands of chemicals we surround ourselves with and the pollution this leads to. After a few decades where there was a lot of attention on this problem, from Rachel Carson’s book bomb “Silent Spring” in 1962 and the measures and regulations that followed in the 1970s and 80s until the establishment of the Stockholm Convention in 2004, it is the climate crisis and later the biological diversity that has taken over the limelight, each with its own well-deserved commission (the climate commission IPCC and the nature commission IPBES). Work to establish such a commission has been going on for a few years under the UN Environment Assembly, but progress is slow. A greater pressure is needed here. Now Norway can put Elida on the table as an ominous example of the urgency to take action against this global problem. The levels of pollutants found in Elida are the result of substances she has ingested through her mother’s milk and through the food she has eaten in her short life. These are substances that do not break down in nature and many of these have been banned from production for 20–40 years. To replace these substances, new substances are invented whose effects on animals and humans are unknown, and which in some cases are just as bad. Therefore, both our past and present sins will be able to affect nature and ourselves for hundreds of years to come. And if we do nothing, it will only get worse. (Both authors participate in the research projects Marma-detox and SLICE, supported by the Research Council. Goksøyr is project leader in Marma-detox.) Send us your opinion Want to write? Feel free to contact us at news Ytring with your post. The guidelines can be found here. Published 26.11.2024, at 10.16
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With the body full of poison – Utterance
