Grieving orca mother highlights plight of endangered, dwindling marine life
SEATTLE — Whale researchers are keeping close watch on an endangered orca that has spent the past week keeping her dead calf afloat in Pacific Northwest waters, a display that has struck an emotional chord around the world and highlighted the plight of the declining population that has not seen a successful birth since 2015.
Researchers have observed the 20-year-old whale known as J35 pushing her dead young along and propping it up while swimming for miles in the waters of Washington state and British Columbia. The calf died July 24 shortly after it was born. Its mother was seen Tuesday night still clinging to the dead calf off British Columbia’s Gulf Islands, said Jenny Atkinson, executive director of the Whale Museum on San Juan Island.
Experts say the orca and other family members traveling with her are grieving or mourning, and they say it’s unusual that it has been going on for so long.
“There’s evidence that cetaceans such as dolphins and whales are often attending to dead bodies. Sometimes, it’s because of curiosity or exploration and not necessarily emotion,” said anthropologist Barbara King, author of “How Animals Grieve.”
“What’s different about J35 is her persistence,” she said, then asked: “How resilient can she be? How long can she keep this up? Is she eating? Is she taking care of herself ?”
The orca and her closely knit pod of whales have been observed taking turns carrying the dead calf, Atkinson said. A crew with the museum’s education program has been spending about 11 hours each day tracking J35 and making sure boaters give the killer whales distance.
Researchers are preparing to try to recover the dead calf to understand more about why it died.
Meanwhile, the images of the killer whale balancing the dead orca have garnered global attention.
“There’s an optic that’s more powerful than any other statistic. It’s a picture of what we can assume is a heartbroken mother who herself is necessary and precious to this population,” said environmental historian Jason Colby, author of “Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator.”
Orcas have struggled since they were listed as an endangered species over a decade ago. They’re not getting enough of the large, fatty salmon that make up their main diet.
Female orcas have been having pregnancy problems because of nutritional stress linked to lack of salmon. A study by University of Washington and others found that two-thirds of the orcas’ pregnancies failed between 2007 and 2014.
King, the author, said the mother’s unusual behavior is also a poigant example of the decline in ocra population.
“She’s a thinking, feeling animal,” King said, “but also, in my mind, becoming a symbol of what we’re doing wrong.”