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Third orca calf born within two months off Vancouver Island

Orcas frequenting the waters of Vancouver Island are still endangered, but a third calf born in the last two months has buoyed hopes for the well-being of the southern resident community.
New Baby Orca.jpg
Eight babies were born this year to the southern resident orca population.

Orcas frequenting the waters of Vancouver Island are still endangered, but a third calf born in the last two months has buoyed hopes for the well-being of the southern resident community.

Newborn L121 was first spotted Tuesday with L94, a 20-year-old presumed to be the mother, about 24 kilometres off Westport on the mid-Washington coast.

The birth was confirmed Thursday by a marine biologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It looked really energetic,” said Shari Tarantino, board president of the Washington-based Orca Conservancy, a volunteer group working to protect orcas and their habitat. “We’re just crossing our fingers and hoping this baby boom with continue.”

The two-metre-long newborn likely weighs 180 kilograms, said Michael Harris, executive director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association, which represents about 30 operators in Washington and B.C.

The three recent births come after nearly three years without a successful birth.

The birth is more than welcome, but does not yet increase the size of the pod from 77, given that up to 40 or 50 per cent of newborns fail to reach their first birthdays, said Dr. Peter Ross, director of the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Pollution Research Program.

“We absolutely need every single one of these whales,” he said. “We can hold our breaths for the next few months.”

There are just 16 females of reproductive age in the pod and 7.4 million humans around the Salish Sea involved in activities that can cause them harm — from flushing toxins down toilets to driving piles into new docks, disturbing their sonar, Ross said.

One of the chief stresses is finding enough Chinook salmon, which represents 90 per cent of the whales’ diet. Chinook numbers are only half what they were a century ago, forcing orcas to swim further for food, depleting their energy and blubber reserves.

“They will swim through pink salmon to get to Chinook, according to my colleagues,” Ross said. Being so fixated on a single food means orcas are “incredibly vulnerable and may not be very adaptive,” he said.

Adults need up to 150 kilograms of Chinook every day. As they search, they tend to get thinner, whether from spurning alternative food or not getting sufficient nutrition from what they do eat.

The current pod population is 20 per cent lower than the recent peak of about 99 orcas around 2000, he said. Still, it’s a significant recovery from the capture of 47 orcas for marine mammal entertainment parks from 1968 to 1973. Before 1968, there were about 100 whales in the pod. It isn’t known whether huge pods existed a century or two ago because whalers did not seek them or record their numbers, Ross said.

Bans on PCBs and DDT in the 1970s have led to significant drops of toxins in whales — by three fold for PCBs and six fold for DDT, Ross said.

“We’re just waiting for them to clean themselves out even more. It’s really going to take the better part of this century before they’re considered safe from the health risks.”

Accumulated chemicals in the bodies of females can reduce their reproductive success, he said.

An autopsy report on J-32, an orca carrying a full-term fetus and found floating near Courtenay on Dec. 4, is expected in March.

kdedyna@timescolonist.com