Killer whale use of the inside waters of Vancouver Island, British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) play an important role in the coastal ecosystems of British Columbia. In recent decades, west coast transient and southern resident killer whales (two of the main ecotypes of killer whales in BC) have changed their use of coastal BC waters. However, seasonal abundance and distribution changes, and reasons for why the changes occurred remain relatively unknown. I used sighting reports of transient and southern resident killer whales from 2016-2023 in the inside waters of Vancouver Island (the Salish Sea and North Island Waters) to evaluate how these ecotypes use the area, and the relative importance of the area to their populations. I determined the proportion of the BC west coast transient killer whale population that use the inside waters and compared these results with southern resident killer whale seasonal variation in occupancy to analyze the difference in use of the Salish Sea between the two ecotypes. I found that approximately 70% of the BC west coast transient population uses the inside waters annually. Transient killer whales were present in the inside waters year-round, with seasonal highs from March-September each year, which corresponded with the presence of prey species that are drawn to the area during times that key fish species spawn. I also discovered an odd vs. even year pattern in transient killer whale presence where transient abundance varies in July of alternating years, which may be related to the return of pink salmon. Southern residents were not observed consistently throughout the year in the Salish Sea and had a fluctuating seasonal presence that peaked in March, July, September and November. These peaks also corresponded with spawning times of key fish species that southern residents rely on for prey. Overall, my results show that the inside waters of Vancouver Island are important for both ecotypes of killer whales, and that their presence in the area relates to spawning seasons of key fish species. These findings contribute to the conservation of west coast transient and southern resident killer whales and highlights the need to maintain the health of the inside waters.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".