Other Protected Species Eating Food Of Orcas

SEATTLE — Booming populations of seals, sea lions and other marine mammals are eating so much chinook salmon, they may pose a bigger challenge to the survival of hungry local orca whales than fishermen do, a new study has found. The findings also helped researchers quantify yet another pressure on protected chinook salmon runs: the voracious appetites of recovering populations of predators. Consumption of chinook by protected marine mammals other than southern-resident killer whales jumped 150 percent from 1975 to 2015, researchers found.