The big king salmon comprise over 80 percent of the orcas’ summer diet, and over 90 percent of the Southern Residents’ summer Chinook typically come from the run that is heading up to the Fraser River in British Columbia, the mouth of which is just south of Vancouver. Sure enough, it soon emerged, as the fish counts arrived from the Canadian biologists who monitor these things, that the Fraser Chinook run was down in 2013 (along with the far more endangered sockeye runs in the river, victims of rising river temperatures).
