Pierce County Councilmember explains tweet on grieving mother orca

On Monday, Dori had a few critical words for Pierce County Councilmember Derek Young due to a tweet that Young made about the grieving mother orca that lost her baby and carried the dead calf for over two weeks.

“This isn’t grieving,” the tweet read. “It’s a protest. Orcas are sick of our nonsense and want action to save our Sound.”

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“This is a Pierce County Councilman — who voted for him?” Dori asked through laughter. He went on to criticize politicians for using the emotions triggered by the mother orca to push their own political agendas.

The next day, however, Young came on the show to explain what he really meant.

“I certainly don’t mean that literally — I don’t believe that orcas, while intelligent creatures, are capable of understanding or navigating our particular politics,” Young said.

While his tweet may have been metaphoric, Young believes that the serious issues that the orcas are facing are very real.

“What we do know is that the mother and the baby were underweight, it’s a problem that’s afflicting our entire resident whale population, they’re clearly not getting enough to eat,” he said. “And as a result of that, we also know that the toxins they face coming from Puget Sound are becoming more of a health issue for them.”

In response, Dori asked Young if he believed that the 250 million gallons of raw sewage that leaked into Puget Sound in early 2017 were harming the orcas. Young said that he is not an authority on the incident, but has trouble understanding King County’s statements that there will be no lasting damage from the disaster.

“I’m puzzled how that could be — untreated sewage we know is a problem … the idea that you could put hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the Sound without impact is, on its face, absurd,” said Young, who added that he has quite a bit of experience in water quality issues in his district.

In the short term, Young suggests “ramping up hatchery production” of salmon and removing fish barriers such as culverts in Puget Sound.

“We need to look at what damage we’ve done in upland development and how we can reverse those effects on their ecosystems,” he said.

Dori asked how Young feels about the tribes catching entire nets of salmon.

“It’s been my observation that the tribes have been great partners in this — I’ve seen them voluntarily reduce their take,” Young said. He added that the tribes are not necessarily fishing for Chinook salmon in particular, the specific type of salmon that the orcas eat.

He was not against the idea that Dori discussed on the show earlier this month that the seal and sea lion populations be culled so that they stop depriving orcas of the salmon on which they rely.

“The truth is, we need to take some drastic action pretty immediately,” Young said.

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