Seal eating orcas are pride of Shetland

SHETLAND's resident killer whales live off common seals, have an intensive social life and are the pride of islanders.

These are the preliminary findings of a three month field study carried out by a group of marine scientists from the universities of Aberdeen and St Andrews.

Their visit to the isles was part of a long term study into the population structure and identification of killer whales around Scotland's coast.

They have had numerous close sightings of groups of the cetaceans in Shetland waters, but mainly of a group of five animals and an individual male.

Speaking before leaving Shetland, Dr Andy Foote, of Aberdeen University, said the project had so far identified around 25 of the estimated 30 to 40 orcas that live in Shetland's coastal waters.
Colleague Dr Volker Deecke, of St Andrews University, added: "We have learned, first of all, that some of the animals are quite resident. We have followed a group of five animals for a six week period.

"A big part of their diet during that time was marine mammals. We didn't know when we came here whether they were fish or mammal eaters, or whether they eat both. We were able to document that they were always feeding on marine mammals.

"That ties in with the acoustic as well. The animals are extremely quiet, they don't call very often, and that is consistent with them hunting marine mammals, because marine mammals have good underwater hearing. All the predation we witnessed were harbour seals," he said.

Researcher Harriet Bolt said the killer whales’ eating habits had contributed to the decline of the local seal population.

The team found that the group structure of animals was rather "fluid", giving rise to speculation that animals were gathering purely to hunt together.
Dr Deecke, who had previously carried out orca research in the Pacific, said the local behaviour was different to what he had experienced elsewhere.

"We found that the killer whales we followed this summer were very different from killer whales in the Pacific that live in very stable groups, or at least some populations do. Some animals never leave the group, they are born into the group and they die in the group.

"Here it may be an adaptation for different hunting strategies, in that they form bigger groups when hunting certain prey. But that is speculation," he said.

The team said that local people had been “brilliant” in supporting their research by alerting them to killer whale sightings and providing a wealth of background information.

"You really get the sense that these animals are part of people's lives. Local people are proud of them, thrilled to see them, and keen to show them to other people.

"Islanders have been very supportive of our research work. It was a real pleasure working up here,” Dr Deecke said.

The team is now back on the Scottish mainland where they will spend the next few months working their way through photos, genetic material and acoustic recording before returning to Shetland next summer.

Dr Foote, however, will be back in the isles in October when he joins skipper George Anderson on board the pelagic trawler Adenia heading for the mackerel grounds.

During the last few years, Dr Foote said, he had observed groups of up to 50 killer whales feeding of mackerel off Shetland.

http://www.shetlandmarine.com/2008/07%20Environment/seal_eating_orcas_are_pride_of_shetland.htm

New calf for orca pod sometimes seen on West Coast

new calf has been born to an orca pod that frequents the West Coast of Vancouver Island and has even been known to come into the Tofino harbour.

The new calf named L111 is part of the L-pod a family of killer whales known as the southern residents.

The birth was noted August 12 by the Friday Harbour Washington-based Center for Whale Research off the coast of the U.S. San Juan Islands.

Once news of the birth was posted on the center's website, it created quite a buzz among marine researchers and orca enthusiasts.

Researchers said L111's mother was seen the evening before without a calf, and then the following day with the calf still exhibiting fetal folds leading them to believe she was less than 24 hours old when spotted.

According to the Center, this is the sixth calf born to L111's mother L47. She is a 34 year old grandmother whose last calf did not survive.

The L pod was the same pod Luna the whale was born into. Luna, or L98, was separated from the pod and made his home near Gold River in Nootka Sound, just north of Clayoquot Sound in 2001.

Luna began to be interested in boats and then floatplanes and was often seen around Gold River's dock area.

After five years on his own and failed attempts to capture him and reunite him with L-pod, Luna was killed after coming into contact with the propeller of a tugboat.

The Center estimates there are currently 43 killer whales in the L-pod although two are listed as missing.

Because of the high mortality rate of calves, if L111 returns to the San Juan Islands next summer the Center says it will officially count her in L-pod's population.

New baby killer whale joins pod off Vancouver Island

VICTORIA -- Whale watchers are celebrating the sight of a new baby whale swimming with one of three endangered pods of killer whales off the coast of Vancouver Island.

The calf was spotted Wednesday by researchers with the Center for Whale Research of Friday Harbour, Wash., and appeared to be only hours old as fetal folds were still visible, said senior staff member Erin Heydenreich.

"They are folded up on their side when they are in the womb and the folds are still visible 24 hours after birth," she said.

The mother, L47, had been seen the previous day without a calf, so the birth apparently took place overnight.

"It is really exciting to see the calf so soon. Everything looks good so far," said Heydenreich.

"This is the sixth calf for L47 and the last three didn't survive. There's no real reason that we know about, but she's 34, so she's approaching the age when she will be post-reproductive," Heydenreich said.

But, for now, the calf appears healthy and is swimming with sisters L83 and L91, she said.

This summer, L Pod has spent much of its time swimming up the west coast of Vancouver Island, instead of the more usual summer stomping grounds off Victoria, possibly because they have found better fishing in that area.

That is making it more difficult to count the number of whales in the pod, but researchers believe two members of L Pod are missing, including the brother of Luna, the whale who was killed by a tugboat propeller two years ago.

The two missing whales are L101, Luna's brother, who was born in 2002, and L21, a grandmother who was born in 1950.

"They're only officially missing," said Heydenreich, which means the count for L Pod will remain at 43 mammals for now.

The 25-whale J Pod had a new baby last year, but none this year "and no one is suspiciously missing from J Pod," Heydenreich said.

K Pod is probably holding steady at 19 whales as a new baby was born earlier this year, but the matriarch, 98-year-old Lummi, is believed to have died.

The Ks have only one breeding-age male, but the whales usually choose mates from outside their pods.

Southern resident populations never recovered from decades of shootings and then captures for aquariums. The main threats they now face are pollution, shrinking salmon runs and marine noise.

A rare glimpse of killer whales here

An Eastern Passage fishing charter captain got a real thrill when he spotted two killer whales about 20 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Art Gaetan of Blue Shark Fishing Charters snapped photos of the pair on Thursday.

He and about nine customers were amazed at what they saw, Mr. Gaetan said, adding that he hasn’t seen killer whales out there in 28 years.

"We tracked them for about 45 minutes to an hour," he said. "It was pretty cool."

The orcas were swimming near two fin whales, Mr. Gaetan said.

Mr. Gaetan said he and his clients, from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario, were all excited to see four whales so close up.

"The reaction was pretty wild," Mr. Gaetan said. "But it was kind of hard, because I was trying to drive the boat and take pictures at the same time."

Lindy Weilgart, a whale researcher associated with Dalhousie University, said it’s unusual to see killer whales that close to shore.

"I would put it at uncommon but not unheard of," said Ms. Weilgart, noting orcas are more commonly found on the Scotian Shelf.

It’s also unusual to see just two killer whales, she said. "They would generally be in groups."

There are resident, transient and offshore killer whales, said the marine biologist.

"They certainly wouldn’t be resident like the inshore ones off the northwest coast of the U.S., but they could either be offshore or they could be transients," Ms. Weilgart said. "Neither of those is particularly well studied. They would probably range quite widely."

The whales might be attracted to large concentrations of seals on Sable Island, she said.

"These guys are just very unpredictable and unknown."

The killer whales would typically be hunting other marine mammals, she said.

"They would probably be in search of food, be it seal or herring," said Andrew Newbould, a marine mammal adviser with the Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

After examining a photo of the whales seen Thursday off Halifax, Mr. Newbould said the one with the straight dorsal fin is male and the female has the smaller, curved dorsal fin.

"While not a common occurrence, sightings of killer whales off Nova Scotia are generally reported every few years," he said. "The species distribution spans the globe, including the majority of the North Atlantic Ocean, so it’s hard to say where they’re coming from or where they’re going."

Killer whale loses its dorsal fin - and possibly its life

"I've never seen anything like it before!"

Perry Young, skipper of the M.V. Daybreak 93, a tour boat operating out of Twillingate North, was still amazed a couple of days afterwards at what had occurred while on a tour on July 17.

With several tourists aboard he had come across a pod of killer whales just off Twillingate Harbour, he recounted, and had stopped for his passengers to take photos. He said it was obvious that the whale were about to feed on a school of salmon. Mr. Young said with no icebergs in the area, tourists are anxious to sight whales and take souvenir photos.

"There were eight whales altogether, made up of two adult males, four adult females and two young ones," he said.

Because of Mr. Young's experience on the water his identification of the killer whales was not contested since that specie is known to inhabit the waters around the coast. He explained that the young ones were some eight to 10 feet in length, while the adult males were 20-25 feet long and the adult females slightly smaller.

The whales, he said, like a pack of wolves were in the act of herding some salmon into a smaller area before attacking. When they finally made the rush to get the salmon one of the adults bit off the dorsal fin of one of the younger whales.

"I can't say that it was intentional," said Mr. Young. "But it might have been in the excitement of the moment that the young one got caught in the cross fire.

"Regardless, the fin was cleanly bitten off and left floating on the water. What happened to the young whale I don't know because we never saw it again."

Mr. Young's sister Kim Young, who serves as first mate on the Daybreak, saw the incident and corroborated what her brother had described. It was Ms. Young as well who spotted the fin floating in the water and recovered it.

On close examination the teeth marks were clearly evident and the whole dorsal fin was removed. According to literature on killer whales, the dorsal fin acts as a kind of keel and stabilizes the whale in its swimming, therefore it is quite possible that the young whale may have gone to the bottom. There is no recorded evidence that killer whales attack their own kind.

Aboard the Daybreak at the time of the sighting were several tourists with a couple from Newfoundland, some from Europe with most from the province of Ontario. Mr. Young said they will have photos and a story they will tell for a long time.

"There's no doubt but that they got their money's worth on that trip," he said.