Hostile Waters: Orcas in Peril

Join the UW Department of Communication and the journalism community to learn more about the changing lives of orcas in the Puget Sound with Seattle Times journalist Lynda V. Mapes. Food and drink will be served. Lynda V. Mapes, an environment reporter for The Seattle Times, will speak on October 16 from 5-7 p.m. at the University of Washington in Kane Hall’s Walker Ames room for the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award lecture series. The event is co-hosted by the UW Department of Communication. Food and drink will be served after the lecture and audience Q&A. Mapes and four Times colleagues won a 2019 AAAS Kavli Gold Award for "Hostile Waters," a series on the plight of southern resident killer whales, or orcas, in the Puget Sound region. She will discuss the process of reporting the story of a mother orca who carried her dead calf around the Salish Sea for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles. Mapes also will discuss the dangers orcas continue to face as a species and the potential ways their population could recover. The stresses include decreasing salmon populations, pollution, and shipping noise. Recent dam removals could benefit the orcas by restoring historic salmon runs. Mapes also will discuss the importance of cross-cultural cooperation to tell the stories of Native cultures of the Salish Sea. She will address how her work as a reporter is driven by questioning how and why things work, the history of the land that we occupy today, and why this all matters.

Host or Publisher UW Department of Communication