Orcas of the Salish Sea
Part I
1998 - The black dorsal fin slices up slowly with barely a ripple. First it rises about a foot above the surface. Like a submarine's periscope, it travels straight ahead for twenty feet until the mighty stroke of the adult male's flukes lift six feet of dripping, wavy fin into the air. A huge torpedo-shaped head pushes out just far enough for a loud burst of air out the blowhole and a quick suck to refill the orca's lungs before it arcs silently back into the depths.
It's J3, a male over 40 years old, rising to breathe beside his family. His mother's sister plows up next to him to heave an explosive blow, followed by three more generations of J pod orcas, all closely related and inseparable their entire lives. J3's age is documented from photos taken in the first years of demographic field research in the mid-1970's. Several females are much older, however, including two, J2 and K7, both estimated to be over 90 years old in 1995.
Wispy clouds of vapor linger high over their heads as they pass a hundred yards from Lime Kiln Lighthouse at Whale Watch Park. One suddenly twists in tight circles pursuing a large salmon. The others dive into the kelp, rubbing the long soft strands along their backs and into the notches of their flukes as they check for salmon hiding in the shadows. Above them the snow-whitened Olympics stand watch over this vast inland sea, glowing with red-orange hues in the early morning sun.
The orca, or killer whale, is a wondrous and impressive creature by any measure. For millions of years there has not been a predator in the sea that can touch Orcinus orca, the largest member of the dolphin family. And yet, there is no recorded case of a free-ranging orca ever harming a human. Even when orca mothers are violently pushed away with sharp poles so their young can be wrestled into nets and loaded onto trucks, they have never attacked a human being. When seen in movies like Free Willy, or doing tricks at marine parks, it is easy to see that they often show extreme responsiveness, even affection toward humans. Having little else to do in captive situations, they often initiate playful interactions and engage in mind games with their keepers. Revelations in the film Blackfish showed that in certain circumstances orcas are capable of violent aggression as well, however.
When encountered in their natural marine environment, however, their behavior is much different, much less interested in human affairs. Though always mindful of boats large and small, they tend to simply continue traveling, foraging or socializing with one another, as though thoroughly engaged in their family’s complex social life. Occasionally, however, some may pass surprisingly close to a boat as if to inspect the passengers as they glide with masterful ease through these vast inland waters.
The Southern Resident Orca Community
Dr. Michael Bigg, who pioneered field research on orcas in the early 1970's, designated the 70 or so orcas he found in southern BC and Washington the "Southern resident community" to distinguish them from the 120+ members (now over 350) of a different orca community found in northern BC and Alaskan waters. The three Southern resident pods, known as J, K and L pods, usually travel, forage and socialize throughout the inland waters of the Salish Sea (Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, and Georgia Strait) from late spring through late summer seeking salmon, primarily chinook salmon, which provide about 80% of their diet.
The Southern Resident community is a unique extended family, or clan, that is distinct and has no interactions with other orca populations. Both male and female offspring remain near their mothers throughout their lives. No other mammal known to science maintains lifetime contact between mothers and offspring of both genders. Unlike all other mammals except humans, orca females may survive up to five decades beyond their reproductive years, which begin at around 12 years of age and continue until their late 30s or early 40s.
From October through June, K and L pods tend to disappear to coastal waters over the continental shelf between northern California and SE Alaska, while J pod often reappears in the inland waters. All three pods visit lower Puget Sound during fall months in search of chum salmon. They are capable of swimming at speeds of 30 mph and usually swim from 75 to 100 miles every 24 hours. In early 2021 the Southern Residents were comprised of just 75 members.
Traveling in multi-generational pod groupings centered around females, they are believed to be led by elder matriarchs. The Southern Resident clan is made up of post-reproductive females (over 40 years old), adult females (12-40 years old), mature or adolescent males (over 12 years old), juvenile females (under 12 years old), juvenile males (under 12 years old), and juveniles of unknown gender.
Newborn orcas, after 17-18 months in the womb, are well-developed at birth and can soon swim strongly enough to keep up with the pod while tucked in tight to their mother's side, pulled along in her slipstream. Their brains are already three times the size of the average adult human brain, so within the first few months they are scanning their undersea world with echolocation clicks and whistling their pod's unique calls, which they’ve been hearing and learning already for months from inside their mother’s womb. They stay mostly in their mom's slipstream for the first few months of life while building stamina as the pod travels day and night.
Each individual can be identified by its unique fin shape, markings and color patterns and can be identified by sight or photograph. Using photo-identification methods, each has been identified and designated with a specific alphanumeric name, such as J2 or L12, and the movements and behavior of each member and group can be studied over many decades. After each newborn has survived its first year they are also given more familiar-sounding nicknames, such as "Luna" or "Samish." When Southern resident pods join together after a separation of a few days or a few months, they often engage in "greeting" behavior. Ritualized formations of each pod face one another for several minutes, then gradually merge into active groups, each consisting of members of different pods, accompanied by intense underwater vocalizations and spectacular "play" behavior.
Until field studies began in the early 1970s, very little was known about the lifestyles or abilities of these powerful and elusive animals. As a species, orcas have the widest global range of any mammal except humans and may be seen in all types of marine ecosystems, but their highly varied communities, unpredictable movements and behaviors, and the fact that they spend about 95% of their time under water have made them difficult to study. Each orca community worldwide maintains its own repertoire of behaviors, including diet and family patterns, as well as its own vocabulary of vocalizations.
Today, thanks to the dedication of whale researchers and a growing community a well-informed observers, a fascinating picture is beginning to form of the highly refined adaptations and social sophistication of this remarkable species.
Transient Orcas
When the Southern Resident orcas were first identified, one perplexing mystery remained—sometimes observers found small groups of unidentified orcas separate from the large pods of known orcas. Even solitary males were sometimes seen. Early on, it was assumed that these were outcasts, or the losers of battles for dominance. Once it was understood that there were no outcasts from the resident pods, and there are no battles for dominance, it was determined that these small groups were actually members of a totally separate type of orca, dubbed "transients," with radically different lifestyles. Whereas residents specialize exclusively on eating fish, primarily Chinook salmon, transients hunt only marine mammals for their sustenance. Thus competition for food between the two types of orcas is virtually eliminated. Residents and transients don't mix, nor do they interbreed. Indeed, they are well on the way to becoming separate species even though they inhabit the same waters. This discovery (called sympatric speciation), like lifetime bonding of both male and female offspring with their mothers, is unheard of elsewhere in wildlife biology.
Seal populations have grown rapidly over the past forty years since passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, and Biggs/transient orca numbers have also increased in that time. Today over 350 “West Coast” transients have been photo-identified, any of which may pass through the Salish Sea at any time. Transient pods are typically comprised of two to five whales, often found skulking silently around rocky shores near the haulouts of acoustically aware seals or sea lions. Since around 2010 larger groups of 20 to 30 have sometimes been encountered. All West Coast transient orcas along the Pacific coast from Southeast Alaska to Mexico are believed to use similar vocalizations, indicating they are all members of a single, widespread community, but are subdivided into at least five regional populations ranging from the Bering Sea to California.
Hunting seals and sea lions requires stealth and silence to stalk the wary marine mammals, so group size must not exceed four or five whales. First-born transient males and females usually stay with their mothers for life, whereas younger brothers and sisters tend tomay break off from their mothers and either travel with other transients or remain solitary. In at least one case, a female returned to her mother after giving birth to a calf of her own, indicating the family's emotional bonds had not been broken even though mother and daughter were separated by more than a thousand miles for several years.
Orca Dialects
In the early 1980's, Dr. John Ford formulated the results of ten years of listening in on orca conversations. Ford discovered that each orca community has its own distinct set of characteristic calls. The Bigg’s/transients and residents, for instance, speak different "languages." It is believed that every orca community around the oceanic globe uses its own, completely unique, set of calls, even when they occupy the same habitat. Orcas are highly communicative, and the ability to distinguish themselves using the calls of their particular family group is essential to their social cohesion and survival. When maintained in marine parks they retain their native calls for life, even while they learn new calls from fellow captives caught from other communities. To hear Southern Resident orcas as they forage, echolocate, and vocalize, go to the Salish Sea hydrophone network website.
Part II
By 1990 researchers had established that female orcas average over fifty years longevity and can live for eighty or more years in the wild, while males average around thirty years and may live to around fifty or sixty (see Orca Lifespans for a more detailed discussion of how long orcas live). A great deal of experience and knowledge may reside in orcas of advanced years, and is passed down through generations. Female orcas and humans along with few, if any, other mammals, live 3 or 4 decades after their reproductive years. This "post-menopausal" lifespan is believed to be crucial to maintaining cultural values and traditions. As with humans, the wisdom of the elders is essential for the stability and well-being of the entire community.
The Social Life of the Orca
Some of the most interesting questions about orcas concern their social and cultural behaviors. Each community so far studied shows tremendous originality in their habits and social systems. Their diets, feeding strategies, patterns of movement, and of course their communication systems, vary widely between communities. Cetologists are just beginning to look at the differences in cultural adaptations between orca populations, and are coming to the realization that we are dealing with mammals that are capable of culture in the form of traditions and rules of behavior, much like us, and that meaningful communication may guide their behavior. According to a recent paper called Culture in whales and dolphins, published in the Journal of Behavioral and Brain Sciences: "The complex and stable vocal and behavioral cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties."
There are probably less than 50 distinct orca communities worldwide, with the total number of individuals only about 30,000, some of which are tentatively classified as either residents (fish-eaters) or transients (mammal-eaters). All orcas travel over fairly large areas, but residents tend to frequent a specific territory and return with some regularity to the same areas. Resident pods usually include ten to twenty individuals and are known to eat only fish. As results emerge from studies of orca communities around the globe new surprises are sure to follow.
Like resident communities, transients sometimes come together to form large groups of up to twenty or more. Aggression toward other orcas is extremely rare among orcas of either type. They seem to truly enjoy their time together. Lifelong fidelity of offspring allows long-term stability and continuity of behavior.
Yet another community of orcas, believed to number around 300, was discovered in 1991. Known as Offshores, these whales are usually found in groups of from 15 to 75, along the coastal Pacific waters of North America from California to the Aleutian Islands. Little is known about their behavior or association patterns, but like every other community so far studied, offshores share a distinct repertoire of discrete calls, completely unlike those recorded from other communities. Their diet appears to consist mainly of sharks, especially sleeper sharks.
Orca Consciousness
Like all marine mammals, orcas have brought their breathing under conscious command. Orcas and other whales and dolphins rest by relaxing one hemisphere of their brain while guiding their swimming and breathing with the other half, often while swimming slowly in tight family groups. Orca brains are enormous, about 5 times the size of human brains, with a highly developed and convoluted neocortex, responsible for sophisticated cognitive processes. Consciousness correlates with the degree of complexity in the nervous system, and the structural complexity of the orca brain appears capable of supporting a degree of consciousness that could allow culturally acquired, meaningful communication.
Language?
A unique vocal repertoire is used by each orca community. Within communities, pods and matrilines make a few of their own distinct calls, known as dialects. Unlike some dolphin species, no "signature whistle" has been found in orcas. Every member of any given pod or matriline uses the same set of calls, and the majority of calls are shared with the whole community. Given that there are significant differences in behavior and in vocal repertoires from community to community, linguistics is highly correlated with group behavior. That indicates the behavior is guided by the vocalizations, so cultural rules for behavior are probably communicated by vocal expressions. Those rules appear to determine cultural traditions such as diets and mating patterns, and lifetime group cohesion.
Of course orcas need to successfully find food and reproduce, so ecological or energy considerations are crucial. Those requirements are accomplished as a group, through cultural traditions. Sometimes essential problems may not seem successfully solved (at least from a human vantage point), as in mass strandings or reliance on a specific food source, but a decision-making process is followed by the entire group, with vocalizations playing a key role. Overall, it appears orcas use a communication system we might as well call language.
According to reports from marine parks, ovulation is quite unpredictable among female orcas. Once the 72-day cycle begins it follows a normal mammalian course of events, but the onset of the cycle is independent of any external factors, including presence of a male, other females, temperature, food intake or annual seasons. This indicates the possibility that conception may be a matter of conscious choice. In the wild, such a choice may be subject to social controls, but in captivity trainers impose new demands, which may help explain why captive females often give birth at much younger ages than tradition-bound, free-ranging orcas.
A New View of the Orca
Over the past 50-plus million years the order Cetacea has filled the seas with over 80 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises, each radiating into its own ecological niche, together forming a complex and harmonious diversity. Some, like the blue whale, have grown extremely large while other species shrank to just a few feet long. Some adapted to foraging in shallow seas and even fresh water, and some learned to dive and find sustenance in the deep abyss. Whether in warm seas or cold polar regions, having teeth or gigantic filter-sieves to strain plankton from the currents, each species has survived by specializing to use an unexploited niche, rather than challenging and conflicting with one another.
Each orca community has followed that pattern by specializing on specific prey, apportioning available resources between communities, thereby avoiding competition and conflict.
Long ago the ancestors of the Southern resident community specialized their diet to devour only fish, primarily Chinook salmon, rather than seals or sea lions. With up to forty members in each pod, and a tendency for all three pods to gather together in "superpod" events, Southern community orcas depend on runs of Chinook streaming into the Salish Sea and milling at the mouths of rivers, each exquisitely adapted to its own seasonal niche in its natal stream and river. Historically there were always plenty of salmon in huge runs, providing year-around sustenance for the orcas, but now only a few chinook stocks of significant size return to spawn, and the orcas appear to be going hungry for much of each year.
Resident orcas now share their range with over 5 million industrial age humans, a dramatic increase in two centuries from about 200,000 native people who inhabited the region for thousands of years.
The fate of our local orcas, and all other killer whales around the globe, is inextricably linked to the health of marine ecosystems. These intelligent and resourceful creatures will do well as long as the basic food supply on which they depend is available. Orcas are at the top of the food chain so all the other sea creatures from krill to sea lions must prosper if the orcas are to survive. Here in Washington State and British Columbia, marine water quality and healthy salmon runs are crucial to the presence and survival of the Southern residents as well as the transients.
According to Dr. Bernard Shanks, former director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, if we restore our watersheds, we will create the conditions needed not only for salmonids, but the entire wild community, including orcas. Watershed habitat, including mountainsides of deep forests and clear streams, must be viable for a wide range of plants and animals including large populations of spawning salmon. Without year around abundance of salmon, the Southern resident orca community will likely vanish. If we care responsibly for our natural environment in the years to come, our lives will continue to be enriched by knowing that we share this watershed habitat with the magnificent and mysterious orca.
