Health and Welfare Concerns
Springer had developed a dangerous pattern of approaching boats and rubbing against them. There was a high risk she would be hit by a vessel in the busy area, and also concern that she would eventually become big enough to capsize a small boat. One local group, Project SeaWolf Coastal Protection, started regular observation of the calf and documented a number of whale-boat interactions while Springer foraged in Seattle-area waters. Her attraction to boats and floating logs was attributed to a need for social interaction and touch. Dr. John Ford observed later that "she didn't have whales to associate with down there, so boats sort of became a replacement for that for social reasons."
Springer was no longer dependent on her mother for milk. However, killer whales are highly social and form extremely strong family bonds. Resident orcas stay with their mothers and their maternal relatives for their entire lives.
Springer was also thin and in poor health. She had ketoacidosis, worms, and an itchy skin condition.
Read more about this topic: Springer (killer Whale)
Famous quotes containing the words health and, health, welfare and/or concerns:
“Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upwards towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)