Day of the Dead

Today is Dia de los Muertos, a Latin American holiday that celebrates and honors those that have died. I wanted to take a moment today to remember the whales that we lost this year from the Southern Resident Community of killer whales.

K11 ~ Georgia (estimated birth year 1933)

K11 Georgia was the oldest living whale in K-Pod. She was the probable daughter of K7 Lummi, who passed away in 2008 at the estimated age of 98, and the probable mother of K13 Skagit, who has four offspring of her own. I always loved talking about this matriline as a naturalist, because for a while there were five living generations of orcas all traveling together.

Lummi and Georgia were two iconic whales of K-Pod. Both were easy to identify - Lummi with her two notches, and Georgia with her distinct open saddle patches - and they were always together, often in front leading the way. Georgia took on another special role in recent years when she seemingly became the adopted mother to L87 Onyx, who had lost his own mother. Onyx basically switched pods to be with Georgia and her family, and many were and are concerned about how he will adapt after losing another mama figure. (It seems like he may have latched on to J8 Spieden, another older female.)

It seemed like K-Pod kind of "reshuffled" with the loss of their oldest whale Lummi, and it will be interesting to see what changes now that Georgia has passed on as well. The oldest living whale in the pod is now K40 Raggedy, estimated to be 47 years old, and she has always been a bit of a rogue. She and her brother K21 Cappuccino don't always travel with the rest of the pod, and she has never been seen with a calf. Of course we will never know for sure, but it will be interesting to see if any changes happen in terms of socialization or travel patterns with the loss of Georgia.

L73 ~ Flash (born 1986)

Flash was the one whale that more often than not got mistaken for J1 Ruffles. He had a very similar wavy dorsal fin which led to much speculation about who is father likely was. He could be distinguished from Ruffles in part by a notch at the base of his dorsal fin. Flash is also unique in that he is the only Southern Resident to receive a name that had previously been given to another whale. Flash the First was L48, a whale that died at the age of six in 1983.

I took this photo of Flash on May 14th of this year, and he went missing shortly thereafter. It's always sad to lose a whale, but is especially of concern when it is a younger whale in their prime, as Flash should have been at the age of 24. When it is a male whale that is lost, the role of toxins always becomes a question, because unlike females they have no way to offload the bio-accumulated chemicals like DDT, PCBs, and PBDEs, which can all tax the immune system.

Whenever I saw Flash I would look for another big male, L74 Saanich, who also went missing this year. These two males were cousins and seemed to be good buddies. I wonder if the loss of his friend played any role in the deteriorating of Flash's health. Adult males especially seem to be susceptible to not living long after other important whales in their life pass on. He is, however, survived by his mother, L5 Tanya.

L74 ~ Saanich (born 1986)

Saanich, named after a district and peninsula on Vancouver Island, was another adult male that should have been in his prime. He had been living without any immediate family members since his mother  L3 Oriana died in 2002, but had really latched on to L73 Flash and the two were nearly always seen together.

Saanich didn't have any real distinguishing marks, but I always looked for his by his especially broad, butter knife-shape dorsal fin. He had a small indentation near the top of his fin that you could use to pick him out in photographs. 

My favorite encounter with Saanich happened on July 21, 2007, when the above photo was taken. It was a cold, rainy day at Lime Kiln Lighthouse and most of the whales had already gone by. Many of the people watching had decided to leave by then, but a few of us die-hard whale watchers kept standing in the chilly drizzle because there were a couple of whales, including Saanich, milling around a ways offshore. Slowly, slowly, they started zig-zagging their way closer to shore. Eventually they went into the cove just north of the lighthouse, and came back and a forth a few times through the kelp just in front of us. All feelings of discomfort were forgotten during that special encounter, one each witness still remembers clearly to this day. It wasn't until the whales finally moved on that I realized I was drenched and could no longer feel my fingers! My camera had a plastic bag over it to try and protect it from the elements.

I don't know what caused you to lose your life at such a young age, Saanich, but you will certainly be missed.

L114 ~ Unnamed (born 2010)

This last whale is one I never got to meet. It was first reported February 21st of this year by the Center for Whale Research, who saw this new calf with first-time mother L77 Matia. This was exciting news, because Matia's sister L94 Calypso had also had her first calf in October 2009, and all of a sudden the L12 subpod, which had been made up of only adult whales for a long time, had two new members. Unfortunately first born calves especially have a high mortality rate, and it's not believed that this little whale survived more than a couple of days. I can only imagine what it must be like for Matia to watch her sister raising her first calf when she has lost her own.

I can't mention the whales we have lost without also mentioning the whales we have gained. We've had four other calves born in 2010: J47 to J35 Talequah in January, K43 to K12 Sequim in February, L115 to L47 Marina in August, and L116 to L82 Kasatka in October. This makes the current population of the Southern Residents 88, by my count.

The Story of L87 Onyx

In early November Jeanne and I gave a talk at a naturalists' workshop about Southern Resident killer whale associations. The general story of Southern Resident pods is that male and female offspring stay with their mother for their entire life, and that pods, made up several related family groups, travel together all the time. In reality, the picture gets a little more complex, and when we're watching whales throughout the summer Jeanne and I love to try and figure out who is with whom. The unexpected associations give us a little more insight into their complex society, which we, I think, barely understand.

One of the most intriguing stories that has developed over the last couple of years is that of L87 Onyx. Onyx is a male that was born in 1992 to L32 Olympia. Olympia passed away in 2005, and often when a whale loses its mother, it will often associate with its closest remaining family members. In Onyx's case, we would have expected this to be his sister (L22 Spirit), nephews (L79 Skana and L89 Solstice), or cousin (L85 Mystery). Instead, since the death of his mother, Onyx has been traveling with K-Pod.

L87 Onyx (right) with "surrogate mom" K11 Georgia in 2009

We occasionally see whales travel temporarily with other pods, but as far as we know, Onyx has been with K-Pod since 2005. Specifically, he latched onto older females K7 Lummi and K11 Georgia. For the first couple years he was seen almost exclusively with them, and after Lummi died in 2007/2008, he stayed with Georgia. Over time, he has started associating with other K-Pod whales as well.

Never in the last 40 years of observations has their been a documented case of a whale "switching pods". Even L7 Canuck and L53 Lulu, who for the last couple of seasons have spent the entire summer with J-Pod, switch back to L-Pod for the winter months. Onyx doesn't do this: he is with K-Pod all year round.

K25 Scoter (left) with L87 Onyx in 2008

Female orcas seem to be the glue that holds the pods together. First of all, pods are matrilineal. Second of all, females live long beyond reproductive age, a rarity in the natural world. This indicates that they may play an important cultural role for the pod. Indeed, if an elder female dies, there is often a lot of reshuffling in social associations and even traveling routes.

Killer whale scientist Alexandra Morton, who focuses mostly on the Northern Resident killer whales, says that males who lose their mother have to latch on to another female family member, otherwise they often become "satellites" and associate with all different groups of whales. She notes that satellite males don't usually survive very long, and also states that in her observations males will only associate with whales their mom has introduced them to.

All of this makes Onyx somewhat of an enigma. He has surviving female family members, but instead has chosen to associate with an older female in an entirely different pod. It begs the question: what was the relationship between Onyx's mom Olympia and his surrogate mom Georgia? Based on Alexandra Morton's theory, Onyx must have met Georgia through Olympia, and the connection must have been strong enough to "overrule" his relationships with his more immediate family.

This raises some interesting practical questions as well. How long do we consider Onyx a member of L-Pod rather than a member of K-Pod? (He will always remain L87.) There's a lot of long-term sighting data that relies specifically on reports of which pods were present. When reporting whale sightings to one another and to researchers, then, is it accurate to say K- and L-Pods were present when in reality it was K-Pod plus just L87? Is it anymore accurate to say just K-Pod was present when L87 was also there?

L87 Onyx (left) with his new family in K-Pod in October 2008

One interesting point I like to make when talking about Onyx is that if we started studying the killer whales today, and wanted to put together the familial associations like the researchers did in the early 1970s, we would designate L87 Onyx and K11 Georgia's son. Family relationships were largely determined by associations, and Onyx swims right next to Georgia like he's her son. It makes me wonder if this really is the first time a whale has switched family groups. Some of the whales we assume are the direct offspring of the females with which they closely associate may actually be satellite whales like Onyx that have latched onto a new mother figure after losing their own. It just goes to show, as with any biological observations, its dangerous to make assumptions.

Onyx's story has been enough to make us question some of our fundamental beliefs about how resident killer whale societies work. It's amazing to me how many questions get raised by the movements of a single whale.

The K11 Family in Front of Mt. Baker

This afternoon on the Western Explorer we headed to the southern end of the Strait of Georgia where J-Pod, K-Pod, and a large portion of L-Pod were spread out and very slowly heading south. We met up with the southwestern-most group, which turned out to be the K11 family group in K-Pod.

I love seeing the K11s because there are four living generations of whales in it:
K11 Georgia - 76 year-old great-grandmother
K13 Skagit - 37 year-old daughter of K11
K20 Spock, K25 Scoter, K27 Deadhead, K34 Cali - Four offspring of K13
K38 Comet - Son of K20 Spock, and great-grandson to K11 Georgia

When we arrived they were in resting formation, barely moving anywhere from one dive to the next, but coming to the surface all together. I love it when you see so many dorsal fins together in a tight group. From left to right are K20 (barely visible), K11, K34, K25, K27:

One of our passengers commented on how the whales always surface in synchrony. It's something we see a lot of when an immediate family group is all together; they all dive and surface in unison, a sign of their life-long bonds. When I first looked at the photo below, I thought there were two whales in it, but there are in fact three. On the left there are two dorsal fins almost perfectly lined up with one another. Click on the photo to see a larger version:

Captain Hobbes did a fantastic job of setting up the perfect photo-op with Mt. Baker in the background. On several surfacings we had all the whales surface right "in front" of the mountain. Beautiful! The two big fins in the picture below are K25 Scoter, a young male with a fairly short fin, and K20 Spock, a young female with an esepcially tall fin. They're almost the same size! Spock was mistaken for a young male with a growing dorsal fin until "he" came back five years ago with a calf!

You definitely have to click on this photo for a larger view to do it justice. It's a shot of the whales, Mt. Baker, AND our other boat, the Western Prince, all nicely lined up:

K-Pod From the Western Prince

This afternoon we had another great encounter with the Southern Resident orcas on our trip out on the Western Prince. We met up with a southbound K-Pod at Turn Point. They were heading towards the northbound J and L Pods, and seemed to be in quite a playful mood. We saw a lot of these inverted tail slaps:

We spent a lot of time paralleling the K11 family group, a group of seven whales spanning four generations. K11 Georgia, estimated to be 76, is the oldest member of K-Pod and the matriarch of this family group. Georgia is the mother of K13 Skagit, who has four living offspring of her own. One of Skagit's offspring is K20 Spock, shown here with her calf K38 Comet - who is the great grandson of K11 Georgia:

The whole K11 family group was traveling in a tight group together. While you can't see all the saddle patches for IDs in the photo below, I had a whole sequence of photos of them surfacing and was able to piece together who was who. What I really like about this shot is you can actually see Skagit and all four of her offspring together. From left to right, the whales in the photo below are K34 Cali (8 year old male), K25 Scoter (18 year old male), K27 Deadhead, (15 year old female), K20 Spock (23 year old female), and K13 Skagit (37 year old mother of the group).

Here's the next shot in the sequence of brother Scoter and sister Deadhead with their mother Skagit:

Remember how I saw the whales in front of a freighter the other day? Today, a Washington State Ferry stopped to watch the whales. You can see a few of them surfacing in front of the ferry in the photo below - click to see a larger version. It's crazy how they were swimming towards such a large vessel that was at that time still moving!

Right before we left, Ks started to meet up with at least some J-Pod members as we saw J1 Ruffles, but there wasn't an explosion of activity at the surface that we thought we might witness as the pods met up after being split apart overnight (sometimes there's lots of active socializing when the pods reunite).

After getting back to Friday Harbor and grabbing the now traditional Sunday afternoon ice cream cone, Sarah (who also works at Western Prince) and I decided to head out to the west side to see if the whales were heading in that direction. Sure enough, we pulled up to Land Bank just in time to see the last of them head south. It sounded like all three pods were still together, and they were aiming offshore, which makes me think they might heading out to the ocean. Before we lost sight of them all offshore, K12 Sequim and her daughter K22 Sekiu came by pretty close to shore. Here is a shot of Sekiu with kelp draped off of her dorsal fin:

Also, today on the Prince we had a few visitors from The World, a 12 story, 644 foot cruise ship that is owned by the residents that live aboard it. Some people stay onboard year round, while others come and go from their floating private condos, joining the ship in different ports and sailing for weeks or months at a time. As its name suggests, the ship sails around the world, spending only a few days in each port before moving on. In the rest of 2009, it will travel up to Alaska, through the Bering Sea, down the Russian coast and through Japan and past some Pacific Islands before ending up in Australia in December. Remarkably, this huge ship carries only 250 crew and no more than 330 live-aboard residents, usually less. The vessel is so large that it has to anchor in Griffin Bay, a 30 minute tender ride to Friday Harbor for its residents.

It's hard to appreciate just how large this ship is without anything to directly compare it to, but right alongside the ship is one of its tender boats that can carry up to 50 people. When we stopped to take a few photos of the ship (it moves on tomorrow), there were many other island residents doing the same.