This post was originally published on Monika’s blog, Orca Watcher, on November 2, 2016

The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is about honoring those who have passed on – every year, I take a moment on this day to remember the Southern Residents we have lost in the previous year. It’s hard to believe this is the seventh time I’m sitting down to do this!

Last year’s post recounted  a roller coaster ride, from the death of J32 Rhapsody to the baby boom that followed, resulting in a modest rise in the population. Both those events garnered a lot of media attention, and the Southern Residents have remained in the spotlight since then. Every death I’m writing about today has made headlines, and in some cases been politicized and turned into calls for action – for less invasive research, for more food, for fewer dams. It’s right that we try to find meaning in their deaths, and try to get something positive to come out of them by making sure, especially if humans played a role in their demise, that other whales don’t meet the same fate. But in light of all the abundant media on what should happen to do right by these whales going forward, I wanted to take a different tone in this post – remembering these whales as the individuals they were, with personalities and stories all their own, with family members left behind without them. They were unique members of this endangered population of whales. And each one without fail has their own meaning to me as well. I’ve now reached the point where I’ve known these whales half my life, longer than I’ve known most of my friends. While I’m just on the periphery of their world, they’re at the center of mine, and I follow their lives as best I can, taking what moments they share with me as gifts and trying to learn what I can from them and about them with each passing year. So this is, simply, my tribute to the members I’ve lost of my whale family this year, individuals I have come to know and love and will miss going forward.

L95 ~ Nigel

In the spring of 2016, Nigel washed up dead deep in an inlet on Vancouver Island, identified in part by the remnants of the satellite tag still embedded in his skin where he had been darted about a month prior. Many people immediately drew the conclusion that the dart killed him. I doubted that was the case at first, thinking it was probably an unfortunate coincidence, trusting perhaps too much in the studies done before about how safe the tags were. But in October, with the release of the necropsy report, it became clear that a fungal infection at the site of the tag wound was in all likelihood the reason for Nigel’s death, resulting in the indefinite suspension of the Southern Resident Killer Whale tagging program.

I honestly don’t remember Nigel too well from my early years of whale watching. The rest of his family had much more distinct saddle patches to my newly trained eye – his mom L43 Jellyroll, big sister L72 Racer, little brother L104 Domino, and nephew L105 Fluke all had or have such distinct open saddles that Nigel was just the “other” whale in the family. But when Jellyroll and Domino passed away in 2006, Nigel became more known to me. I worried about his chances for survival as a young male without his mother, and watched over the years as Racer seemingly filled that roll for him. The remaining members of their matriline – Racer, Nigel, and Fluke – became a tight threesome for many years. While Racer became Nigel’s adopted mother, Fluke became like his little brother, and the two were often seen playing together.

Additionally, as I got better at identifying whales, I also realized Nigel wasn’t just a nondescript whale in the crowd, despite the flashy saddle patches of his family members. The wispy top edge of his saddle patch and distinct “black spine” became the key features I’d look for to identify him, even as he reached his teenage years and began growing the taller dorsal fin of an adult male.

One particularly memorable encounter with Nigel and his family happened in July of 2009 when I was working aboard the Western Prince. We were following along Fluke and Nigel when the strong flood tide seemed to push them into the heavy currents of Cattle Pass at the southern end of San Juan Channel. Fluke breached a couple of times, and then it wasn’t long until the other twenty or so whales in the area followed these first two into the pass. The underwater geography of Cattle Pass includes some extreme depth changes, and with the up to twelve-foot tidal exchange we have, the narrow channel can make for some intense and unpredictable currents complete with upwellings, back eddies, tide rips, and whirlpools. At times, Cattle Pass can look more like a river with running rapids than a saltwater channel, and on some days we would even stop the boat to let the passengers experience the phenomenal power of the currents as they spun our 46 foot vessel with ease. On this day, it simply looked like L-Pod was playing in the tumultuous water. They were being pushed by the water as they hung at the surface, rolling around, slapping their fins, and doing lots of spyhopping. They truly seemed to be enjoying themselves! On our morning trip this day my camera battery had died, and while it was special to just sit back and watch these whales play in the current, it was also the day I learned to always, ALWAYS carry a back-up battery.

As he got a bit older, Nigel started becoming more independent from Racer and Fluke, sometimes even traveling in a different group from them entirely. His new favorite traveling companions seemed to be other adult males.

My last encounter with Nigel occurred in September of 2015 when I was aboard Serenity hanging out with a group of foraging L-Pod whales at Kellett Bluffs. The whales were milling about nearshore, so we stopped our engine offshore and dropped the hydrophone. We listened to several minutes of awesome L-Pod vocalizations when all the whales disappeared on a long dive. They got totally quiet as well, when suddenly my hydrophone picked up some very close echolocation. “Somebody’s RIGHT here….” I told my friend, and less than 30 seconds later L95 Nigel surfaced off our stern, both startling and thrilling us. I’m pretty sure I literally jumped!

I don’t want to say Nigel was seen as an “expendable” member of the Southern Residents, because obviously we value each and every whale – but honestly, his chances for survival were always lower after the loss of his mother, and the fact that he was a young male is also one of the reasons he was chosen as a target for satellite tagging. Unlike the other whales we lost this year, he was not seen as an iconic whale among the Southern Residents, lesser known than many others. But I write this tribute to him to say that the Southern Residents won’t be quite the same without his presence, either.

J55 and unnamed calf of J31

In mid-January, during a winter foray into Puget Sound, researchers documented two neonates with J-Pod. One, designated J55, was seen swimming with the J14 matriline, and the other, likely a stillborn, already dead but being pushed at the surface by would-be mother J31 Tsuchi. A month later, J55 was also absent, and the loss of these two newborns at the end of the 2015 “baby boom” was a reminder of the high mortality rate of young calves, and the potentially widespread difficulty Southern Resident mothers seem to be having of carrying calves to term and birthing them successfully. We don’t know if J55 was the offspring of J14 Samish or her daughter J40 Suttles, and we will likely never know unless Suttles happens to give birth in the near future (making it impossible that she was also pregnant at that time). If it was Suttles’ calf, it’s especially heartbreaking to me, as both she and Tsuchi would have been denied the right to be first time mothers at the same time. The fact that Tsuchi, a whale who has always been so in love with babies, was seen carrying around her deceased offspring is the undeniable evidence to me that these whales grieve. I never got to meet either of these little ones, so I’m simply left wondering who they might have been, had they survived.

J14 ~ Samish

What happened? I always thought of J-Pod as the most resilient of the three pods, yielding successful calves when Ks and Ls struggled to do so, and living into their elder years rather than dying during their prime. The death of J14 Samish underscored for me that even J-Pod is not immune to the issues that are plaguing the Southern Residents, be it lack of food, difficult births, or disease. We really have no clue what happened to Samish, as she was still looking robust in the middle of the summer when suddenly she simply disappeared at the age of 42, leaving her three surviving offspring motherless.

What can you say to pay tribute to an icon? Samish was the likely granddaughter of matriarch J2 Granny, and together their family group is undoubtedly the one with which I’ve spent the most time over the years. From my very first encounters with J-Pod, Samish was always right in there with other J-Pod icons J1 Ruffles, J2 Granny, and J8 Spieden.

Samish was also one of the most prolific mothers I’ve known, though she experienced both success and tragedy with her offspring. Her sons J23 and J30 Riptide both died before their prime, and her fifth known calf J43 only lived a few weeks. But surviving her are her oldest daughter J37 Hy’shqa, youngest daughter J40 Suttles, and seven year-old son J45 Se-Yi’-Chn. In 2012, Samish became a grandmother for the first time when Hy’shqa gave birth to her own first calf, J49 T’ilem I’nges.

I’ve always thought of Samish as an iconic Southern Resident not only because of her role as a J-Pod mother that spend so much time in inland waters, but because of her looks as well. My major field mark for her was that she had a perfect dorsal fin – so elegantly curved to a perfect tip. Her bold, solid saddle patches were equally perfect. One of my photos of Samish is on the Washington State Ferry Samish; both she and the vessel were named after the local Coast Salish tribe. This is the photo, which I think captures her elegance perfectly:

Samish was just reaching the end of her breeding years, and I fully expected her to live decades more and go on to live a role like Granny as an elder leader of J-Pod. Thankfully, her tight family still has J2 Granny as the glue to potentially hold them together, though there is no replacing a mother. Already, J45 Se-Yi’-Chn has been wondering further from his sisters, spending more time with other whales since the loss of his mother.

It’s hard to think of a single encounter or two to share about Samish, because she was nearly always there! I just think of her as the quintessential mother, embodying not only the perfect looks of a resident killer whale, but the ideal mother, her offspring always surrounding her.

As is almost always the case – we never know when an encounter with a whale may be our last. But I suppose that’s true for all aspects of life, when you think about it.

J-Pod just isn’t the same without you.

J28 ~ Polaris and J54 ~ Dipper

I always thought losing whales without the chance to say goodbye was hard to take, but it turns out watching them slowly decline is even harder. It was in early August I first noticed J28 Polaris was looking thin, and other researchers confirmed she showed signs of being in ill health and that her young son, J54 Dipper, was also small and skinny. At the time, people thought Polaris was in her final days. Would this be the last time I would see her? Would this? Yet still she hung on. She was slow moving, spending a lot of time logging or drifting, but she managed to keep up with her pod. As the weeks passed, and at one point she looked a little more robust, I allowed myself a flicker of hope that she would pull through, and that she only battled a temporary illness. But her decline continued. Her daughter Star spent a lot of time babysitting Dipper, presumably to let mom rest. Star was also observed catching salmon not only for herself but to share with her family. But the heroic efforts of the eight year old Star weren’t enough, and in October the suffering of Polaris ended. There is a heart-wrenching account of Star still not giving up on her younger brother, cradling him at the surface even when he was unable to swim on his own. With a caring family and a grandmother nursing her own calf, some thought that maybe, maybe this nearly one year-old baby could survive without his mom. But no one still that small and dependent can live without his mother, and Dipper passed away too.

I haven’t seen the J17s since Polaris died, but it is going to feel so bizarre to not have her there. During my earlier years here, the J17s were a threesome – mom J17 Princess Angeline and daughters Polaris and J35 Tahlequah. It was like that for years, until suddenly within the span of less than a year all three of them had calves, doubling the size of their matriline just like that. With the addition of J44 Moby, J46 Star, and J47 Notch, I thought that might just be the beginning, with the fertile and successful mothers helping to boost the Southern Resident population in the coming 10-20 years. But those early successes were not to be repeated. Tahlequah hasn’t been seen with another calf in the last six years, and Polaris is believed to have had a failed birth in early 2013 when a neonate that washed up was genetically determined to be hers. Things looked up when Princess Angeline and Polaris again had a calf within a few months of each other last fall, but now this.

Polaris was so nondescript to me early on, but I remember first seeing her in 2003 after she had acquired a new tear in the trailing edge of her dorsal fin. Never again would she be hard to find in a crowd, easy to identify even at great distances or backlit by that unique notch. 

I always love the more abstract whale photos, ones where you can’t tell exactly what you’re seeing or only part of the whale is in the frame (I’m notorious for not zooming out even when the whales are right on the rocks to get these kind of photos). One of the reasons I love this kind of shot is because of this early photo of mine of Polaris – one of my longtime favorites. I love the feeling of this whale swimming *right* at you.

Polaris came into the kelp a lot…how can you not love that about a whale?

One of my most poignant memories with Polaris was in November of 2009, when a friend reported hearing whales on the hydrophones and I dropped everything and headed out to Lime Kiln. When I got out there, I recognized most of the other cars in the parking lot: this time of year, the local whale fanatics don’t take a whale report for granted, and without many tourists around we were just about the only people at the Park. It had been nearly a month since I had seen the whales, and I felt sure I would see them at least one last time before I could really call the season “over”. Sure enough, as soon as I got down to the water I could spot blows in the distance to the north. It was J-Pod, having appeared seemingly out of no where as the whales are apt to do in the winter months, with fewer people on the water to detect their comings and goings. With her obvious notch, I was able to spot Polaris despite the backlighting, with a small whale in tow. I figured at first she was babysitting her new younger brother J44 who had been born 10 months earlier. That summer she had often been seen with him, and I figured she was the right age (16) to start learning about taking care of little ones. With this being the first addition to her family in eleven years, it was her first real opportunity to experience being around a calf. As the two whales got closer, however, something wasn’t quite right. This little whale was too small to be the ten-month old Moby. This was a new baby whale: this was Polaris’ first calf! This was the first time I was on scene the first time a new calf was seen; its identify was confirmed later in the day and the little whale was designated J46. 

Polaris was a doting mother on J46, and the two were rarely apart, unlike Polaris’ sister Tahlequah and her first calf, Notch, who was a lot bolder and roamed around a lot. When Dipper was born, Polaris was the same way – I don’t think I ever saw another whale babysit Dipper until Star did in Polaris’ final months.

Sometimes when a mom has another calf, her older offspring will become more independent or spend more time away from her. But that didn’t really happen with Star. While they started spending time away from the rest of the J17s, they were always a tight threesome.

At the end of July, before I heard Polaris wasn’t doing well and before she looked thin to me, there was one of those magical evening passbys at Lime Kiln. It was one of those epic nights – it lasted several hours, complete with thunder and lighting, a double rainbow, an spectacular colorful sunset. My favorite moment, though, was the J28s passing right offshore. This is the image I will always remember of them:

I last saw Polaris at the end of September. She was right in with a group of whales, which I took as a hopeful sign, but she surfaced along in this moment – the last photo I took of her. Any other whale, and I would have had no idea who she was. But there was that notch.

So yes, it’s hard when a whale simply disappears as did J14 Samish. We have no idea what happened to her, and no chance to say goodbye. But it was even harder watching the slow decline of Polaris, doubly so as we knew her dependent calf was suffering with her. She fought for over two months. It’s easy to anthropomorphize, but she showed such tenacity, and I believe it was out of love for her son and daughter that she held on for so long. Surely they all knew it was coming, as we did. How did she prepare Star for life without her? How did she comfort Dipper? I can’t imagine how her family – mother, sister, brother nephew, son, daughter – dealt with her decline. They probably felt as helpless as we did. Even more than usual, my heart breaks for the family she left behind, particularly Star. But I have a vision of Star growing up to become the prolific mother that Polaris, at the age of 23, didn’t have the chance to become.

This post is to remember those we have lost – but as always, I also want to celebrate the new ones we have gained. Last year at this time, we had six new babies to celebrate and amazingly, all of them are still with us. And the 2015 baby boom wasn’t quite over yet – J54, J55, and L123 were still to be born over November, December, and January. But as mentioned above, we have since lost both J54 and J55, so the only new one we have to welcome here is L123 Lazuli, a male, the first calf of L103 Lapis. 

Since January 2016, we’ve again gone through a dry spell with no new births for the Southern Residents. Prior to the 2015 baby boom, with nine new little ones, we went two and a half years without a calf. We’re all crossing our fingers this isn’t the beginning of another such drought. This May, K27 Deadead, who gave birth to the last successful K-Pod calf in 2011, was seen pushing a stillborn at the surface. Another failed pregnancy.  Ongoing research has hinted that these whales are getting pregnant, so they are fertile, but they’re not carrying calves to term. More will be revealed in the coming years about why that is, and we can only hope we take action soon enough to reverse that trend and help this population recover. In the meantime, it’s so difficult to watch. But what do you do, when a friend or a loved one is going through a hard time? You don’t turn your back on them, unable to handle what they’re going through. You stay with it, you help where you can, and,  today, for now at least, you remember the ones who have lost the battle at too young an age.

Originally posted on Monika’s blog, Orca Watcher, on November 2, 2017

The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is about honoring those who have passed on – every year, I take a moment on this day to remember the Southern Residents we have lost in the previous year. Over the years these posts have gotten harder to write, as the population continues to decline. But now more than ever, as we continue to fight for the survival and recovery of the Southern Residents, it’s important not to forget the stories of the whales we have lost along the way.

J2 ~ Granny

We all knew we would lose this great matriarch one day, but that didn’t make it any easier when the day finally came. The oldest living Southern Resident Killer Whale, Granny’s estimated birth year was 1911. While we will never know her exact age, we do know she lived through all the major changes the Southern Residents have experienced in the last many decades, including the live capture era, the commercial fishing boom, the rise of whale-watching, and the crash of Chinook salmon. Of all the whales, how I most wished I could have a conversation with Granny.

Granny was a leader in a the true sense of the word. We suspect she held and shared important communal knowledge for the Southern Residents, such as where to travel and forage in different times of year and different seasonal conditions. We know she was often out in front, literally leading the way as her pod traveled from place to place. It wasn’t uncommon to see Granny a mile or even several miles ahead of everyone else as they went up and down Haro Strait.

While at times she seemed to be “all business”, other times she definitely showed that even an old gal can “kick up her heels” and play, too.

For many years Granny’s most constant travel companion was J1 Ruffles. The two were so close, it was assumed they were mother and son. Genetics have indicated this may not be the real story; it begs the question what kind of relationship they had, and if J1 wasn’t finding in Granny something similar to what the orphaned L87 Onyx would find from her years later.

Granny regularly associated with many different whales. Whenever whales from outside of J-Pod would travel with Js for a period of days or weeks, it was often Granny’s group they were associated with.

Granny wasn’t only an important whale in her whale community, she was an important whale among the human world as well, including to me personally. She was the first whale I saw swimming through the kelp at Lime Kiln, an image forever etched into my memory. She was the whale I chose to get tattooed on my arm, and the one I painted a mural of on my family’s houseboat. When we bought our boat and had our first-ever Southern Resident encounter, she was the one who came out of no where and circled around us, giving us what felt like a proper “christening”.

Even after another full season has passed, it still feels bizarre to see J-Pod without Granny. It will likely take years for us to see what the result of her passing might be, if we will ever know. One thing we can say is that she lived a long life, and we can only hope her descendants get a chance to do the same.

K13 ~ Skagit

Just like the loss of J14 Samish last year, the death of K13 Skagit really came as a surprise to me. She was another productive mother just as the end of her reproductive years, who had the potential to enter to the matriarch role for her pod, and then, out of no where – gone. Because K-Pod was so scarce in inland waters this year, it took a while before we knew for sure if she was gone or not. I held out hope as long as I could, but when her whole family came by Lime Kiln without her, there was no mistaking her loss.

Having been born in 1972, Skagit likely just narrowly escaped being taken into captivity for the marine aquarium industry. Instead she went on to become a mother of two sons and two daughters, and also lived to see the birth of her first two grandsons. While her daughters are past due to give birth to their second calves, I had really hoped Skagit would be around to see her family and her pod grow.

I’m anthropomorphizing here, but with Skagit’s loss I was most worried about her older son, K25 Scoter, who has always been such a mama’s boy. He was rarely more than a few body lengths away from her in recent years, and we know that the likelihood of survival for males goes way down after the loss of their mothers. It was good to see Scoter this summer, and according to the photogrammetry research team he was looking pretty plump, but it must be a hard adjustment for all the remaining K13s.

I wonder if Skagit’s loss had anything to do with the fact K-Pod was barely around this year? Will their travel patterns completely change without her?

J52 ~ Sonic 

Sonic was the first-born calf to J36 Alki and part of the amazing stretch of births that occurred between December 2014 and January 2016.Sadly, in recent months he became the latest “baby boom” calf not to make it, bringing us down to just five survivors among the ten known births during that time. To me, it felt like his birth was the one that made it a baby boom. We had J50 and J51 after nearly 3 years with no live births, and then within the same 3 month span J52 was born and I remember my reaction was one of disbelief: “No way….another one?!” His arrival was especially hopeful because he came to a young first-time mom. So many young females that should and could be having calves are not, and it was reassuring to see Alki have her first calf at a “normal” age.

Sonic was a spunky little whale, and he regularly found willing playmates not only in his mom, but in his sisters J42 Echo (who liked to babysit him) and J50 Scarlet, who was just a few months older than him. His faint saddle patch was just visible enough to see that it was an open check-mark shape like several of his other family members, and I had been excited to see what it might look like as he grew older.

Sonic’s decline was pretty rapid. In my last few encounters with him he looked okay, but the photogrammetry team documented him with peanut head in September and the Center for Whale Research has a final encounter with him where he was very lethargic and clearly malnourished. His mom Alki had looked skinny in the spring of 2016 (not totally unusual for a nursing mom) but recovered, and I was thankful at least that the photogrammetry team thought she looked “okay” this fall. The fact that he was so thin and she wasn’t makes me wonder if a disease or something played a complicating role in his demise. As with most orca deaths, we will never know for sure. What I do know for sure is that the J16s won’t be the same without him.

When will the next birth happen?

Usually in these blog posts I also take a moment to acknowledge the new whales that have joined us, but there are no new Southern Residents to welcome this year. After the birth of J49 in 2012, we went over 2 years before another live calf was seen, and over 3 years until the next calf survived. We had the baby boom from the end of 2015 through 2016, but again we’re coming up on 2 years without a live calf seen. Meanwhile the population has dropped to just 76 whales, a 30 year low. The situation is dire.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that the state of emergency the Southern Residents are in is beginning to be acknowledged on both sides of the border. In October, the federal government of Canada held a workshop to assess actions to be taken on behalf of the Southern Residents. The San Juan County Marine Resources Committee also held a workshop to brainstorm immediate actions that can be taken at the County level. Two days later we had our 5th CALF (Community Action – Look Forward) workshop, also focusing on citizen actions to help the whales. Washington Governor Jay Inslee has indicated his concern, and willingness to take unprecedented action. The first action to come out of all this was Canada adopting at 200 meter vessel rule to match the 200 yard limit in the US; additionally the Canadian government promised lots of funds towards continued ocean noise monitoring. While dealing with vessel noise may help the whales hunt more efficiently, the fact is that even silencing our oceans entirely won’t give the whales enough fish to eat. If the Southern Residents are going to have a fighting chance, major actions need to be taken to address Chinook salmon recovery. It remains to be seen is what concrete actions will be taken regarding salmon. Yesterday, the Puget Sound Partnership  passed a resolution to accelerate Chinook salmon recovery efforts on behalf of the whales. Let’s hope this is just the first of many such efforts in the coming months.

Meanwhile, the whales continue on, and so must we. The writing of this blog post was delayed by the unexpected appearance of the Southern Residents in Haro Strait this evening.  After hearing them on the Lime Kiln hydrophones, I went out to the west side. Even though they were several miles offshore, it was obvious they were in party mode, as there were breaches and tail slaps galore. When it got too dark to see, I came home and am still hearing all three pods (and many more percussives) on the hydrophones right now as I finish this post. We didn’t have a true superpod all summer, where the entire Southern Resident community was together, but I wouldn’t be surprised, with all the crazy vocals and surface activity, the first Salish Sea superpod of 2017 is underway today. 

Day of the Dead isn’t part of Southern Resident Killer Whale culture, but how fitting if today they too are coming together in celebration. It never ceases to amaze me that despite their losses, they still carry on and clearly still know how to have a good time. I have no doubt they remember their ancestors, and here’s hoping some new calves are being conceived among all that partying tonight!

Below you will find my twelfth annual installment of taking a moment on Dia de Los Muertos to honor the whales we have lost over the previous year.

I am in the process of transitioning all these posts to OBI’s website here, where you can read the tributes from 2016-2021, but you can still find all the Day of the Dead posts dating back to 2010 on Monika’s blog here.

K21 Cappuccino

K21, known as “Cappy” during his early days, was born in 1986. He was an iconic whale from the get-go. It was with his birth that scientists decided to move the whales in his associated family group from L-Pod to K-Pod, the first and only time Southern Residents have had their pod designations changed. The groups that would be known as the K18s and K30s were unclear in their familial relationships, and during initial surveys had been observed traveling with L-Pod. Their later “switch” to K-Pod, along with the fact that they made traditional K-Pod discrete calls, led to the re-designation. Cappuccino’s mom, K18 Kiska, was thus originally known as L18.

When I first met Cappuccino, he was part of the memorable trio which included his mom Kiska and his sister K40 Raggedy. Both Kiska and Cappuccino had bold, check mark-shaped saddle patches on both sides, and Raggedy was so-named for all the notches on the trailing edge of her dorsal fin. These identification marks made them some of the first Southern Residents I was able to ID, and they further endeared themselves to me when, during my first-ever week spent with the Southern Residents, they circled the whale-watching boat I was on, turning to look up at us from underwater.

Kiska passed away just a few years later in 2003, so Cappuccino and Raggedy became the inseparable brother-sister pair I would become more familiar with over the next decade. For some reason, Raggedy was never seen with a calf, and in some ways perhaps that benefited Cappuccino, who defied the odds and lived a long life as an adult male after the passing of his mother. The two would continue the pod-wandering tradition of their family group, spending days or sometimes weeks traveling with J or L Pods.

After Raggedy died in 2012, it was now a certainty that K21 would be the last living member of both his matriline and the unique K-Pod subgroup that had originally been seen with Ls. With no living female relatives his future became even more uncertain, but he found an adoptive mother figure in K16 Opus and could regularly be found traveling with her and her son K35 Sonata, again sometimes separating from the rest of K-Pod as a wayward trio.

Whenever there was a male gathering when multiple pods were traveling together Cappuccino always seemed to be in the middle of it. Whether it was “sword-fighting” (you know what I mean, right?) or surfing a freighter wake, this often stoic male was always also up for some fun and games.

While the K13s and K14s were seen in the Salish Sea in early 2021, and the K12s made an appearance in early July, the K16s and K21 were MIA during these visits, which was not altogether unusual. It wasn’t until all of K-Pod came in with Js and Ls on July 27th that there was an opportunity for us to see K16, K21, and K35. The whales didn’t make it to the west side of San Juan Island until nearly sunset, and they were all spread out and in mixed subgroups. I found Opus and Sonata in my photos but didn’t see Cappuccino, but knew I hadn’t seen about half the whales present, so didn’t think anything of it….until the next day.

The Southern Residents were already heading back west on the morning of July 28th but later in the day a disturbing report came in of an adult male orca with a collapsed dorsal fin in Race Passage. Photos and videos showed it to be K21, emaciated and with a completely collapsed dorsal fin the likes of which I have never seen before. The heartbreaking images made their way to social media and research teams scrambled to assemble to reach him. Given that he was undoubtedly past the point of no return at this point, I was somewhat thankful that he was not found the next day, and I can only hope that he passed in peace overnight.

The death of this striking adult male at age 36 raised questions, some of them uncomfortable, and led to debates, even among researchers. Why had he been left alone when he was dying? Did he die of starvation or something else? Did he live a full life or did he die young?

As with nearly evening when it comes to orcas, we will never know all the facts and can only speculate. Rather than delve further into the varying claims that were made as the result of his death, I will choose to remember Cappuccino as the striking adult male he was, one who defied the odds and lived on as the sole representative of the K18 matriline for many years. He was beloved by so many and will be deeply missed.

L47 Marina

Marina was always a quiet presence in L-Pod to me, overshadowed perhaps by some of the larger or more distinct whales in her sub-group, but always still distinct with her shorter triangular fin and fingered saddle patches that always reminded me of her mother, L21 Ankh.

I have a fun “side challenge” with myself to photograph orcas with as many different species of birds as I can. I’m not even sure what my count is at, but I always remember being so excited to add black oystercatchers to the list when I photographed one flying by Marina in 2014.

Her story as a mother was always a bittersweet one. As matriarch of the “M” matriline, her reproductive life started out well by giving birth to two daughters, L83 Moonlight when Marina was sixteen and L91 Muncher five years later. What followed was a series of births that was hard to witness, with 4 calves being born and getting alphanumeric designations but not living longer than a year: L99 in 2000, L102 in 2002, L107 in 2005, and L111 in 2008. Somehow, the pattern was broken in 2010 with the birth of her son L115 Mystic, who livedhtIn addition to her three living offspring, Marina is also survived by her two grandsons, one born to each daughter: L110 Midnight and L122 Magic.

Some of the most memorable encounters I had with the L47s occurred when they were traveling with their separate sub-group of L-Pod (which I always refer to as “the greater L4s”). On several occasions they’ve gone through San Juan Channel on their own, leading to always-unforgettable passes from Southern Residents at Cattle Point. This group of L-Pod in particular seems to love playing in those strong currents that can form in Cattle Pass! The one that stands out most in my mind, however, was in September 2008, when this group of Ls ended up within 1/4 mile of the T18s. At this point, this L sub-group didn’t have any adult males, and the way they behaved was very unusual. They were all in one tight group, moving quickly, doing much longer dives than usual as they made their way north towards Spieden Channel and presumably the more open waters of Haro Strait. Usually, on those rare occassions when Ts and Southern Residents intersect, it seems like the residents are the “aggressors”, or at the very least that the Ts are the ones that divert course and leave the area. On this day, it as the Ls who seemed to be the ones vacating the area, with the four Bigg’s killer whales in fairly close pursuit.

In recent years, it seemed Marina was most often with Mystic, her daugthers elsewhere with their own offspring. I have so many memories of sitting on the west side and watching Marina and Mystic foraging together, spread out just the two of them searching for fish, then converging, presumably to share prey between mother and son.

Here’s hoping Marina’s legacy as a dedicated mother lives on through her offspring, and that her daughters are able to have some more successful births of their own to carry on this important L-Pod matriline.

New Additions

While it’s important to honor the whales we have lost, it’s also a sad process to go through. It’s nice to end these posts by celebrating the new additions to the population, too. This year we got to welcome L125 Element, a female born to L86 Surprise! early in 2021. Any calf is a cause for celebration, but in the male-biased L-Pod, a daughter is even more crucial to the future recovery potential of the population. I first got to meet L125 in late July when members of all three pods made that brief evening appearance. She would have already been over 6 months old at this point!

With the changes to the population this year, as of this writing the Southern Residents number 73. With word of several late-term pregnancies we have our fingers and toes crossed for some more successful births soon.

Originally posted November 2, 2018 on Monika’s blog, Orca Watcher

The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is about honoring those who have passed on – every year, I take a moment on this day to remember the Southern Residents we have lost in the previous year. You can see the whole series of blog posts here. Over the years these posts have gotten harder to write, as the population continues to decline. But now more than ever, as we continue to fight for the survival and recovery of the Southern Residents, it’s important not to forget the stories of the whales we have lost along the way.

L92 Crewser

After the first May on record without any Southern Residents in inland waters in 2018, June 11th was an even happier day when word came in there were lots and lots of whales in Haro Strait. The joy at the return of J-Pod and part of L-Pod was dampered however when it became apparent that L92 Crewser was not with them. The group of L-Pod made up of the L4s, L26s, L47s, and L72sthus went from being referred to among naturalists as “The 19 Ls” to “The 18 Ls”.

As the Southern Residents have become even more well studied in recent years we’ve learned, in the words of NOAA researcher John Durban, that there’s “a social basis to vulnerability” among resident killer whales. It is not surprising then that Crewser was at risk, being a young adult male (age 23) without a mother or other strong social connections with successful adult females. Males are known to be more likely to die after the death of their mothers, though Crewser survived a pretty remarkable 16 years after the death of his own mother L60 Rascal, having attached to his likely grandmother L26 Baba until her death in 2013. Crewser’s only surviving relative is L90 Ballena, a 25 year-old female who has never been seen with a viable calf. If Ballena fails to reproduce during her lifetime, this will spell the end of the L26 matriline.

Crewser was easily picked out of a crowd, being both the only sprouter/adult male among his sub-group of L-Pod and also having a distinct kink at the top of his fin.

When the opportunity presented itself, he would often associate with males from other pods and sub-groups.

With Crewser’s death, the population of the Southern Residents numbered 75 whales for the summer of 2018.

J50 Scarlet

I will never forget being out on the water on December 30, 2014 with J-Pod in Haro Strait, and hearing over the radio that Dave from the Center for Whale Research was on scene with the leaders in Swanson Channel with a new calf. It had been more than 2 years since there had been a successful calf born, and after the recent death of J32 Rhapsody with her near full-term daughter deceased inside her, it was the symbol of hope we all needed to start a new year. And what a year it was. The new calf – J50 Scarlet – was the whale the kicked off the baby boom of 2015.

It was a record spate of births not seen among the Southern Residents since the 1970s, and included another calf in Scarlet’s matriline when J52 Sonic was born at the end of March. The J16 matriline quickly became the “nursery group”, as the two little ones were seemingly always rambunctious and goading the rest of their family into playing as well. It was so special seeing two such little calves together all the time, and I dreamed of getting a shot of the two of them surfacing right together – a wish that was granted in June 2017 when they passed right off the rocks at Lime Kiln together:

From the beginning, Scarlet was a little different. The namesake scars she bore on her dorsal fin led to speculation that she had a difficult birth.

She also roamed a lot – away from mom further and younger than we see from other calves. Even at less than a year old it was not uncommon to see her all by herself.

She also didn’t seem to be growing properly – while whales of a similar age like J51 Nova were gaining length and girth, Scarlet remained a petite whale, both slender and short. When I saw J-Pod in March of 2018, however, she still looked good. But when J-Pod returned in June, she had the beginning signs of peanut head, showing undernourishment. Experts thought she probably had weeks to live. But the weeks ticked by, and she hung on.

Scarlet’s story took center stage when J35 Tahlequah brought international attention to the plight of the Southern Residents by carrying her deceased calf for 17 days in July and August. Suddenly, there was a renewed interest in trying to “rescue” Scarlet, and what unfolded in the following weeks was a media frenzy as researchers tried to diagnose what was wrong with her by taking breath and fecal samples, treated her by darting her with antibiotics and deworming medication, attempted to feed her by releasing salmon down a chute off a boat, and laid plans to go as far as capturing her if needed. While the debate raged over whether or intervene or leave her alone, she somehow still swam on, despite her condition continuing to deteriorate.

She was a swimming bag of bones at the end, and it came as a surprise to no one who had been observing her when she disappeared. The circus still wouldn’t come to an immediate end, however, as a helicopter search continued for several days after her disappearance until it was fully acknowledged she was deceased. Regardless of which side of the intervention debate you were on, there was no arguing that, either directly or indirectly, we had failed her.

Scarlet became the latest of the baby boom calves to die, leaving just five survivors from that incredible year. It was just three years ago, but it is already hard to recall what it’s like to have a healthy, active newborn in the population. It’s now been over 3 years since the last successful birth. Population down to 74.

J35’s Calf

I often end these posts with acknowledgment of the new whales that have joined the ranks of the Southern Residents, but for the third year in a row, there are no more to add. It’s also impossible to write about the whales we lost this summer without mentioning the deceased neonate J35 Tahlequah carried around for an incredible 17 days. As a grieving mother, Tahlequah made an incredible statement that resonated around the globe.

So much more could be said about her vigil and the emotion and activism it inspired, but to put it simply, it has reignited my dedication to not only the living whales but to the next generation of Southern Residents. We have learned about the incredible rate of failed pregnancies among Southern Residents in recent years, while meanwhile the thriving transient killer whale population has had something like 90% survivorship of calves. My goal is that Tahlequah and all the other future moms will not have to go through this again. And so, we fight on.