Knowing that I fished a salmon boat in Alaska for many years, friends have been asking, “What do you think, should we try to help out the orcas by not eating salmon?”

My answer is, if you’d like to make a purely symbolic statement about your concern for the local orcas and the salmon they feed on, sure, you could do that. However, if you are truly serious about working for their recovery, you should first do the following:

• Stop using electricity that comes from hydropower (currently two thirds of the power used in Washington State). The region’s strongest runs of kings come from the Columbia River, on which there are 8 major dams on the main stream, and 4 more on its largest tributary, the Snake. Each dam kills around 10 percent of the fish that migrate past it.
• Stop driving, or using public transportation that travels on roads or highways. Tailpipe emissions, engine oil and fuel residue, and tire particles all collect on our streets and wash down into the Salish Sea where they contaminate the water and the entire food chain, concentrating in the bodies of apex predators—-orcas, whose bodies after death are found to be packed with contaminants. Also, insist on a stop to the use of any toxic treatment on lawns, gardens, parks, and roadsides, and do not buy food or other products from any farm, ranch, orchard or manufacturer using toxics that infiltrate waterways.
• Stop patronizing whale-watching boats, and insist that all other marine traffic give a much wider berth to orcas than the current rarely-enforced mandate, to avoid the disorientation and disruption of their feeding activity that close encounters and loud noise produce.

Of course, halting and reversing climate change as well as our continuing degradation of salmon habitat by human intrusion along rivers and estuaries would be even more effective—and even less palatable.

Much of the current buzz about the orcas’ decline comes from a lawsuit, initiated by a group calling itself the “Wild Salmon Conservancy,” which aims to close down the Alaska salmon troll fishery. Court filings in the case show that putting the troll fleet out of business would provide but a minuscule increase in king salmon available to the southern resident orcas—somewhere between two percent and under five percent, depending on whether you credit the National Marine Fisheries Service’s scientists, or the WSC’s.

The judge in the case declined the WSC’s demand to immediately close the fishery for 2023, and this year’s season proceeded until its close in September. Our West Coast salmon runs are surely in trouble due to human activities, but the lawsuit serves as a distraction from measures listed above that could actually do something to reverse the situation.

Contemplating the unlikelihood that any significant numbers of us will make these necessary sacrifices could be depressing. However, there’s some comfort available: our state and federal fisheries agencies continue to set harvest quotas that allow enough of the king salmon runs to make it into their home spawning rivers with at least a chance to replenish their numbers, so we may still enjoy, without guilt, one of the healthiest, tastiest foods on the planet.

Richard Bard is an author and professional mariner who wonders why, if humans are so damn intelligent, they don’t do a better job of taking care of the place.