A mother killer whale that famously pushed the body of her dead newborn for 17 days in 2018 has lost another calf, and researchers say she is again carrying the body in an apparent act of mourning.
The Center for Whale Research said in a New Year's Day post on social media that the mother, known as Tahlequah or J35, has now lost two of her four documented calves.
The center announced Dec. 21 that a new female calf was traveling with a jay pod in Puget Sound near Seattle on Washington state's northwest coast. Pods also frequent the waters of British Columbia.
But the organization expressed concern about the calf's health and confirmed the calf's death on Wednesday, although a second healthy newborn was also seen with the pod.
Brad Hansen, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center, said at a news conference Thursday that researchers are not yet sure why the calf died, but a necropsy is not possible.
“With J35 so linked to it, the chances that we can cure the calf are very low,” he said.
Hansen said investigators are concerned about Tahlequah's welfare because she continues to carry the calf's body with its head attached.
“It inevitably results in more drag, and so their energy expenditure is going to be quite significant,” he said, adding that it can also make foraging more difficult during times of the year when fish availability is more limited.
“It's worrying that she's putting so much energy into taking care of this calf she's lost.”
However, he said that he was not behind his pod.
“She's still integrated as part of the group.”
The Washington state-based Center for Whale Research said the death of any calf in the endangered southern resident killer whale population is “a great loss,” but the latest is “particularly devastating” because she was a female and because of J35's history. .
Michael Weiss, the center's research director, said at a news conference that other southern resident orcas have carried dead calves before, but not for weeks like J35 did in 2018.
“It's usually been as a one-off observation within a particular encounter, as opposed to several weeks,” he said.
“It's fair to say she's grieving or grieving,” said Joe Gaydos, science director for the SeaDoc Society, a marine conservation program.
“In the last few years, we realized that we have the same neurotransmitters that they have,” he said of whales. “I think it's fair to say from a scientific standpoint that they have the same hard wiring, (so) they'll have the same emotions.”
The research center said the gender and mother of the other newborn calf, which had just been born, was “physically and behaviorally normal”.
The southern resident orcas on the west coast are classified into three families known as the J, K and L pods, each of which has its own speech and calls that differ from the others. The area is also home to transient orcas known as Big's Killer Whales, which feed primarily on marine mammals.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Parks Canada, in consultation with Transport Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, completed an assessment of the southern resident population last year, finding the population decreased to 73 with 23 breeding females.
The Center for Whale Research also reported that the population had dropped to 73 in the July 1, 2024 census following the deaths of two adult male orcas.
