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Conservation Tips

Killer Whale Conservation

Orcas (killer whales) are on top. They’re an apex predator and sit at the top of the food chain. This means that everything in their environment, from the bottom to the top, affects their survival. Habitat conservation is really important.

The whales are smart; they know what they need to do to survive. But they need our help in keeping their house clean and safe – so they have plenty of nutritious food, clean pollution-free water, and plenty of space to do their thing.

What is an orca’s house made of? ​Water. Many of the things that you can do to protect the Southern Resident Orcas’ environment have to do with clean water.

Only 1% of the water on earth is fresh and available. If you only had 1% of your cash available at any given time how would you spend it? Bet you wouldn’t flush it down the toilet! Paying attention to what goes down your drain makes a huge difference in how much pollution you are putting back into your local environment. Everything from your lawn fertilizer to what you flush down your toilet ends up somewhere.

Here are some tips on keeping the ocean water clean

Practice the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

1. Recycling products into new products uses fewer virgin materials, which reduces consumption of natural resources like water. It takes about 1.85 gallons (7 liters) of water to create the plastic for one 16 oz (500 ml) bottle of water. So if you reuse an existing water bottle, or opt for a reusable metal bottle instead, and you drink one bottle of water a day you will prevent the wasting of almost 13 gallons (49 liters) of water a week just from the plastic manufacturing process, not to mention the environmental cost savings of the new plastic bottles being transported to your neighborhood store.

2. Recycling, reducing, and reusing results in less trash. 14 billion pounds (6.35 billion kg) of garbage is dumped into the ocean every year! Not only is it awful to trash the home of billions of creatures, it is also harmful to our whale friends and the food chain that supports them. According to the Ocean Conservancy, trash in the ocean kills more than 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles every year, from ingestion or entanglement. Recycling more results in less trash, resulting in less harm to whales and other marine animals. Simple.

3. It feels good and costs less. Arguably, the most important of the three Rs is Reduce! There are tons of things that many of us buy every day that we don’t really need. The next time you reach for a plastic bottle, or something with excessive packaging, imagine it floating down Haro Strait as the whales swim by or spinning around in the massive Pacific garbage patch. You don’t want to contribute to either, do you?