We know that the number of og beluga whales varies directly as the number of killer whales, that means that we can write a relation of the form:
[tex]y=kx[/tex]
where y is the number of beluga whales, x is the number of killer whales and k is the constant of proportionality.
To answer the question we first need to find k, to do that we plug the values x=23 and y=14 in the equation above and solve for k:
[tex]\begin{gathered} 14=k23 \\ k=\frac{14}{23} \end{gathered}[/tex]
Now that we know k the relation is:
[tex]y=\frac{14}{23}x[/tex]
Finally to find the number of killer whales if there are 5 millions of beluga whales we plug y=5 in the equation above and solve for x:
[tex]\begin{gathered} 5=\frac{14}{23}x \\ x=\frac{5\cdot23}{14} \\ x=8.21 \end{gathered}[/tex]
Therefore when there are 5 millions beluga whales we have 8.21 millions of killer whales.
