mother Orca Pushes her dead calf with her snout, wraps it over her head, and grasps its tiny feather with her teeth, to avoid the inevitable. Just as she did in 2018 – when she spent 17 days carrying another dead calf – the mother orca clings to the carcass as long as possible, before Puget Sound The waves wash it away. “It’s hard to see now that it’s lost another one,” said Brad Hanson, a research scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
Hansen said Thursday that he did not know why the female calf, which lived for a few days during the last weeks of December, died. The mother, one of only a few dozen orcas of her kind, was seen on Wednesday picking up the dead female calf, though may have been doing so for a long time. In 2018, the deep mourning of this orca, identified by researchers as J35 and also known as Tahlequahbecame a symbol of the plight of the southern resident whale.
While orcas sometimes express their grief in a similar way, scientists looked at the length of Tahlequah’s journey, which covered about 1,000 miles (1,609 km). Tahleqa, who is about 25 years old, gave birth to another calf in 2020, her second son, whom she is still caring for. She gave birth to another calf in 2010.
Tehaliqa is using most of its energy to cling to the dead calf, which weighs about 136 kilograms, and cannot forage for food, scientists said Thursday. He said his close-knit pod was supporting him. Other female orcas, especially his sister, are constantly seen accompanying him. Many orca pregnancies fail, however, and about 50% of calves die in their first year.
The researchers also spotted a new calf on Wednesday, which was born in the same pod. They said the new calf appears to be healthy, which is a ray of hope for the endangered southern resident population in the Pacific Northwest. The mother and gender of the new calf have not yet been confirmed.
Endangered Southern resident killer whales The population is 73. Whales are struggling amid a lack of high-quality prey to eat, particularly Chinook salmon. Noise pollution from ships and boats into their habitats and toxins that move up their food chain are also extremely harmful.