Orca calf dies suddenly, and grieving mother carries her body for days
For roughly 17 months, she patiently waited. Like many expectant mothers, she looked forward to the day she would get to welcome her new baby into the world.
On Tuesday morning, it finally happened. J35, a member of a critically endangered population of southern resident killer whales, gave birth near Victoria, British Columbia. It was a baby girl. She was the first calf to be born alive in three years to the pod known to frequent the waters off the coast of Washington. In that moment, surrounded by family and swimming by her mother’s side, everything was perfect.
Then, the calf stopped moving and J35 experienced a mother’s worst horror. She watched her baby die, less than an hour after giving birth to her.
But J35 wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
For hours, she grieved, carrying the dead calf on her head as she swam, Ken Balcomb, founder and principal scientist of the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island, told The Washington Post. The hours turned into days, and on Thursday she was still seen pushing her baby to the water’s surface.
“That’s not unprecedented, but it’s the longest
one that I’ve personally witnessed,” Balcomb said.
Over the past three days, J35 has continued to follow her pod, traveling up to Vancouver before returning to San Juan Island Thursday afternoon, Balcomb said. Each day, she averaged anywhere between 60 to 70 miles, all while working to keep her baby’s 400-pound body afloat.
What J35 is doing is not easy, Deborah Giles, a killer whale biologist with the University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology, told the Post.
“If you’re a whale or a dolphin, it means that you have to go down and pick that animal up as it’s sinking, bring it to the surface, hold your breath for as long as you can and then basically dump your baby off your head in order just to take a breath,” said Giles, who observed J35 from a
research boat Thursday.
J35 managed to do this repeatedly, all while fighting a strong current, Giles said. She added that it was likely the mother orca had also not eaten in days.
Her dedication is a testament to the strong bonds social animals, such as orcas, form with their offspring.
“It’s real and it’s raw,” Giles said. “It’s obvious what’s happening. You cannot interpret it any other way. This is an animal that is grieving for its dead baby and she doesn’t want to let it go. She’s not ready.”
This reaction is not dissimilar to the way people feel when they lose a child, Giles said.
“That’s part of what people are picking up on, like, ‘My God I would feel the same way,’ ” she said. “‘If I had a baby that only took a couple breaths, I wouldn’t want to let it go either.’ ”