The idea of an international emergency rescue operation to save a sick young orca sounds like the perfect premise for a Free Willy sequel. Officially, Canada and the U.S. are working together to save Scarlet (J-50), a three-and-a-half-year-old killer whale  whose condition has been described as “critical.”

In reality…

The unprecedented attempt to save one of the remaining 75 members of the endangered southern resident orca population by providing food and medicine seems less like a team effort that Canada is part of and more like an American plan Canadians are monitoring, if not blocking.

An examination of scat (feces) from Scarlet and two other members of her family revealed the presence of worms that aren’t fatal for healthy orcas, but might be to the undersized, underweight endangered southern resident.

While it’s not clear if any of the scat was Scarlet’s, the vet team “updated treatment priorities to include dewormer, in addition to an antibiotic.” That was the news from America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries West Coast Region (NOAA) (@NOAAFish_WCRO), which released this on their special orca update page and in a five-part tweet.

#J50 Update (8/20) Part 5 of 5: To ensure that J50 receives the medication, veterinarians may switch to a collared needle w/ a ridge to hold it in place long enough to deliver the full dose. This type of dart is commonly used to treat wildlife & will fall out in time. pic.twitter.com/cqg3P0jAia

— NOAAFish_WCRO (@NOAAFish_WCRO) August 20, 2018

At the same time, Canada’s Department of Fisheries And Oceans (DFO) (@DFO_Pacific) was tweeting about parrotfeather plants and sperm whales.

While the DFO is part of the mission (which also includes the Lummi Nation in western Washington, the Vancouver Aquarium, SeaWorld and several other organizations), so far they’ve decided to wait and see what NOAA does when it comes to treatment. After American officials signed off on administering medicine, the DFO waited for approval to do the same because … dunno.

So, at the beginning of a five-alarm emergency rescue attempt, during which NOAA warned that the orca might only have “days to live,” Scarlet could only receive antibiotics in U.S. waters.

J50 and other members of J Pod. Photo: Candace Emmons / NOAA Fisheries

On August 8, I sent a polite query to two communications advisors at the DFO asking for an explanation.

No response.

Two days later, on August 10, I asked about the difference in U.S. and Canadian approaches during the press conference NOAA hosted and found the answer I received was … let’s go with vague.

I e-mailed another query to two DFO communications advisors on August 10 asking to clarify how and why treatment would be handled differently on our side of the 49th parallel. My questions were what are known in the journalism biz as softballs.

Cue crickets chirping.

While I waited for any response at all, one of the partners in the rescue (The Whale Sanctuary Project) reported on its website and Facebook page that Scarlet had entered Canadian waters and the operation to feed her was “aborted.”

I asked about this in a call-in press briefing about the operation hosted by NOAA and was told by the DFO that it didn’t happen.

After reassuring me there was nothing to see here, the DFO later acknowledged it didn’t have approval to feed the orca in Canadian waters.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that plans to feed Scarlet “would have to wait” because the orca had crossed into Canada. And The Seattle Times reported “NOAA has no permit to work in Canadian waters.”

So the feeding wasn’t “aborted” it just “had to wait” if the whale was unlucky enough to swim into Canada because… DFO? Anyone? Bueller?

Dr. Martin Haulena, Dr. Brad Hanson, and Trevor Foster prepare to administer an injection of antibiotics to J50 on Aug. 9, 2018. Photo: Katy Foster / NOAA Fisheries

Andrew Thomson, regional director of the fisheries management branch, told me in the press call that he was waiting for either NOAA or the Lummi to formally request permission to feed the whale. I was unable to follow-up and ask why DFO wouldn’t just go ahead and grant that permission, given the high-stakes operation underway.

On August 13, I re-sent my query with some new and admittedly blunter questions, now looping in three DFO communications advisors.

Cue those freaking crickets.

Meanwhile, NOAA sent me 11 e-mails answering questions about the rescue operation — often within minutes of my queries.

The next day I tried the DFO again and mentioned I was about to go on the radio to talk about Scarlet and was writing a story about her treatment for The Narwhal.       

Six days after my initial query I finally received my “answers.”

This was the full response to my five questions and my request to interview someone:

“We are continuing to work alongside NOAA Fisheries West Coast and other partners to investigate why J50 is in poor health, and are keeping a close eye on her, hoping to see her health improve. If further actions are needed, our decisions will be evidence-based. We are ready to respond quickly should the intervention need to occur in Canadian waters. We’ll take the best course of action for this whale and her pod without delay.”

Phew. Good thing our government agencies are no longer muzzled and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ushered in a new golden age of transparency.

In my examination of the DFO’s scat it appears their definitions of “quickly” and “without delay” include asking an unidentified overseer for approval to treat a critically ill patient known to vanish from our waters for months at a time.

I found the non-response shocking.

My editor at The Narwhal, Emma Gilchrist, was not so surprised. “In my experience, this treatment by Canadian officials is pretty par for the course,” she said.

Today, if I thought anyone would answer me, it’d be time for hardball questions like: “If Scarlet starves to death because no one signed off on feeding her in Canada, which Canadian official or organization would be responsible?”

If you’d like to know why Canada isn’t onboard with feeding this starving young orca as soon as humanly possible — and why the DFO wasn’t prepared to allow the orca to receive medical help the moment the Americans were — you’ll have to ask them. They’re not answering me.

In the meantime, when Scarlet returns to the Salish Sea, let’s hope — like DFO officials seem to be doing — that she stays in the U.S.

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Remember that picture of a baby orca flying through the air like she was auditioning for the Broadway musical adaptation of Free Willy?

In 2015 you couldn’t open a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter feed without seeing the image and smiling. This baby orca, initially nicknamed Wiggles, is J-50 — the 50th member to join J-Pod since humans started counting and cataloguing southern resident orcas.

I talked to the photographer, Clint Rivers, just after he took that astonishing shot and he glowed as he shared the day, like he’d witnessed a miracle. This baby had just learned she could fly and she kept leaping — or, to use the boring scientific term for whales defying gravity and our imaginations, “breaching” over and over and over again.

She was Joy. She was Hope. Her photo became the symbol of West Coast whales — especially since this was the famous orca breach birth baby. Elder orcas helped deliver her, using their teeth to assist her mother, Slick (J-16), with the delivery. Slick was 42 at the time — believed to be beyond her reproductive years — so Scarlet truly was a miracle baby.   

The iconic image of infant Scarlet leaping through the air raised awareness of the animals. Photo: Clint Rivers

This whale was the magic that people travel to the West Coast of B.C. and Washington to experience. She was named Scarlet — because of the scars from her delivery. Also, I suspect, because The Avengers were a thing and I’m sure Black Widow seemed like a terrible name for a cute baby whale. Although, in hindsight, that was probably the way to go.

Scarlet was born in Dec. 2014 and kicked off the great baby boom of 2015 — which was (no coincidence) about two years after a banner year for Chinook salmon — the primary diet of the endangered southern residents. That year their numbers climbed to 83.

Now there are new pictures of Scarlet going viral. If you’re not familiar with orca anatomy, she still looks adorable — a perfect baby orca. The problem is she’s not a baby and the three-year-old is the size of a one-year-old. And there’s a depression at the back of her neck.

Scientists call that indentation “peanut head” — which is more proof scientists should never be allowed to name anything that might be shared with civilians. Peanut head sounds adorable, which is not the effect you want for a term that means she’s lost so much weight we can see her skeleton.

One of Scarlet’s pod mates, 20-year-old Tahlequah (J-35) just delivered the first live baby in the southern resident population in three years. Her daughter survived about half-an-hour before dying. She never flew through the air. She was never named by humans, though I know someone suggested calling her “Extinction” and I’ve suggested “Pandora” — since she’s even got government agencies thinking outside the box.

Early deaths for orcas aren’t uncommon, but three years without adding another live member to this population is catastrophic.

While the rest of the world watched Tahlequah grieve, orca experts on the West Coast have also been haunted by Scarlet. In most stories about Tahlequah carrying her daughter’s body there’s a brief mention that another whale is in trouble.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been following Scarlet around taking breath samples. Her breath and feces contain pathogens — another science word not meant for civilian consumption. It means germs.

Scarlet is starving and she’s sick and she’s sick because she’s starving. She’s lost 20 percent of her mass and as orcas get thinner, they live off their blubber. But the ketogenic diet isn’t a great idea for orcas since their blubber is where they store the generations of toxins we’ve dumped into the water. Orcas burning blubber are feeding off DDT, dioxins and all the other charming poisonous chemicals and plastics that are now primary links in our food chain.

NOAA and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada are looking to “intervene” to save Scarlet by feeding her live salmon and administering antibiotics. The Lummi Nation has live salmon in tanks ready to feed her. Of course, that requires finding J-Pod, who were just spotted again on Tuesday night outside Port Renfrew.      

NOAA has permission from the U.S. government to administer antibiotics and try to feed her. Canada’s department of Fisheries and Oceans announced Thursday morning that they are also cleared to assist Scarlet. But fog and choppy waters may make it difficult to spot Scarlet’s pod — nevermind get close enough to help her. Weather conditions aren’t expected to improve until Sunday.

Scarlet and her mother, J-16, swim together early in her life. Photo: John Durban (NOAA Fisheries), Holly Fearnbach (SR3) and Lance Barrett-Lennard (Vancouver Aquarium) via Flickr

Orca-advocacy organizations that might normally battle anyone looking to interfere with the whales’ lives are offering to help because, even if our governments are turning a blind eye to their environmental commitments, they’re at least finally following the Pottery Barn rule: “You Break It, You Bought It.”

Lynda Mapes, the orca reporter from the Seattle Times, wrote that she’s received private calls from politicians who can’t sleep because Tahlequah’s story is shattering them. Chances are their children and grandchildren are asking what they’re doing to help the whales. So let’s make sure every kid out there knows the flying baby whale they fell in love with is the “other orca” who’s dying.

Let’s make sure Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows this as he decides whether it’s worth trampling the last of these black and white whales with the white elephant known as Trans Mountain — and as his government decides where to focus the funds being put into assisting the recovery of these iconic orcas.

Let’s take the moment to ask the B.C. government to look at licences for fish farms that have put wild salmon at risk.

Washington Governor, Jay Inslee, just asked his task force to consider breaching the Snake River dam. Here’s his number (360-902-4111). Here’s Senator Patty Murray’s number (206-553-5545). You can also share your thoughts with the task force online. It is accepting comments from Canadians and Ken Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research, is urging us to weigh in.

Yes, there are plenty of things that need to happen to help the orcas, the Chinoook and the ocean that keeps us all alive.

But these whales are almost out of time.  If you think this world is better with the world’s most iconic orcas in it, this is the moment to demand action.

It’s up to us.

What’s the symbol you want for the future of the southern resident orcas — Tahlequah grieving or Scarlet defying gravity?

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.