Status: Endangered (Canada and United States).

Name:
Killer Whale or Orca. From the Latin phrase Orcinus orca, meaning Greek god of the underworld or describing the species’ rounded, barrel-like body. Other names: blackfish, grampus and killer.

Size & Weight:
Mature females up to 7.9 metres and 3,800 kg. Mature males from 7.5-9.5 metres and 5,600 kg. Calves up to 2.6 metres; 160 kg at birth.

Physical Features:
Striking black colouring with grayish saddle patch and white belly. Conical-shaped head with small beak and 10-13 conical teeth on both sides of upper and lower jaw. Paddle-shaped flippers or pectoral fins, and distinct dorsal fin on its back (curved in females and immature males; straight and up to 2 metres in males). The male’s dorsal fin reaches full height at 12-20 years.

Natural History:
Females give birth every three years starting at age 13. Mating usually takes place in summer, but calves are born year-round. Both females and males mature by age 10. Orcas display strong social bonds, belong to pods. Each pod has its own language, or dialect. Pods’ movements are determined by availability of food. Orca society is matriarchal. Although breeding occurs outside the family, both males and females return to their matriarchal groups.

Diet & Life Span:
Resident Orcas are fish eaters (salmon, cod, herring), 45-135 kg per day. Males generally live into their 30s, females into their 50s (both can live 20-40 years longer). When they die most just disappear below the surface of the water.

Playful Activities:
Breaching. Leap, twist in the air and land on their sides or backs (requiring an exit speed of 40 km/hr). Spyhopping. Rise vertically above the water surface to look around, showing their white bellies up to their pectoral fins. Pec or Fluke Slaps, and Lobtailing. Repeatedly splash the water surface with their pectoral fins or just slap the surface with their tails.

Top Speed:
50 km/hr. Swim from 120-160 km every 24 hours.

Range:
Commonly seen from June-September. J-pod is observed in the region’s waters year-round. During the winter, members of K and L pods have been seen well off the west coast of Vancouver Island and as far south as Monterey, California.

 

How do you identify Killer Whales?»

How do Killer whales locate food?»

What do Killer whales like to eat?»

How far do Southern Resident pods travel?»

Why are Killer whales black and white?»

Can you tell male calves from females?»

Where in the world are Killer whales found?»

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How do you identify Killer Whales?

Killer whales have a ‘dorsal fin’ and ‘saddle’ patch — the grey area behind the dorsal fin — that are distinctive to each individual whale. Whale researchers use detailed photographs of the saddle patch and dorsal fin to identify unique characteristics — including nicks, scratches, and other marks — that distinguish individual whales from each other.


Resident Orca whales travel in tight family groups commonly referred to as ‘pods.’ Orca pods are multiple matrilineal sub-groups — mothers with offspring — traveling as a cohesive family unit. These subgroups travel together year-around, and in some cases there are as many as four to five generations traveling together in one large sub-group.

Tight social units are another reliable way to identify orca whales. Look for the most distinctive whale or distinguishable features of a whale, then identify that whale. Once one whale is identified, refer to the family tree to assist in identifying other whales in the vicinity.

Researchers rely on this detailed information to determine mothers of new calves, whale survivorship, and social preferences during large multi-family gatherings (aka ‘Super Pod’)
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How do Killer whales locate food?

Locating and catching food is a daily routine for Killer whales, much like it is for most mammals.

At any given moment, a whale may come upon an unsuspecting fish, seal, or other prey. The ability to locate and catch that prey is paramount to a whale’s continued survival.

In the dark depths of the undersea world where whales spend most of their life, finding and catching prey can be particularly challenging.

Therefore, Killer whales — like dolphins and bats — have developed a highly specialized sonar that relies on echoes from the world around them for navigation and to locate food.

Essentially, the whale emits a rapid series of high-frequency “clicks” from inside the nasal cavity. These clicks travel as sound waves through the fatty “melon” (see diagram at upper right) which acts as a lens, focusing the sound forward into the dark waters ahead of a traveling whale.

The sound wave “clicks” move rapidly through the water, bouncing off objects in the whale’s path. As the sound waves strike objects, the echoes produced bounce back towards the whale and are received through the lower jaw — which also contains a dense fatty material — and is then transfered deep into the whale’s inner ear.

This echo signal — “echolocation” — provides data that the whale is then able to translate into information of the surrounding world. Thus, whales are able to navigate through even the darkest ocean depths.

Killer whales also use echolocation to locate and hunt down prey. Once a fish or other prey has been located, they send out an even more rapid series of“clicks” as they focus in — and close in — on their often unsuspecting next meal. It is only when a whale’s prey is within a few feet that the whale may rely on eyesight to actually catch it.
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What do Killer whales like to eat?

Just about any creature living in the ocean could be the prey of a Killer whale, but generally speaking Killer whales in this region are considered either meat-eaters or fish-eaters — which researchers call “Transients” and “Residents.”

“Transient” Killer whales regularly travel several hundred miles hunting for seals, sealions, and other large mammals. They travel in small packs and,
generally speaking, tend not to stay in one area for any length of time, thus the name “transient.”

“Resident” Orca whales, on the other hand, eat primarily fish, catching salmon, schooled herring or even the occasional rockfish. Resident orca whales travel in larger groups and collectively cooperate to locate and catch schooling fish. Local resident Orca whales spend a high percentage of time in the waters of Washington State following the many regional salmon runs, thus the term “resident.”
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How far do Southern Resident pods travel?

Orca whale families — often referred to as “pods”— may travel an average of 75 miles a day, and are capable of sustaining an average speed of over 6 knots (nearly 8 miles per hour) for long periods of time. These whales are also capable of traveling over 30 miles per hour for short periods.

Whether they are a small “transient” pod or a large group of “resident” whales, orcas are in constant motion, socializing, foraging, feeding, resting, playing or just traveling. The whales navigate the ocean depths day in, day out in a generally constant search for food — salmon, seals, or even large whales.

When photo-identification studies first began in British Columbia during the early 1970s, it was quickly found that there were two separate and distinct populations in Pacific Northwest coastal waters.

These two communities were designated the “Southern community” and the “Northern community,” in direct relation to their travel patterns in and around the waters of Vancouver Island.

The Southern community whales were most often encountered off the southern end of Vancouver Island — including the inland marine waters of Washington state — whereas the Northern community whales were most often encountered off the northern Vancouver Island region, including Queen Charlotte Sound and southern Southeast Alaska.

As a result of more than thirty years of study, it is now well known that the annual summer feeding grounds for Southern community orca whales encompass the inland marine waters of Washington state, particularly around the San Juan Islands and lower British Columbia.

This focused distribution is due to large numbers of Pacific Northwest salmon returning to the Fraser River in British Columbia.

During the autumn months in recent years the whales shift their travel patterns southward, following salmon heading to rivers draining into Greater Puget Sound.
During the winter months, however, the whales spend
a increasing amounts of their time in the outer coastal
waters; and, in recent years some members of the Southern community — K- and L-pods — have been observed as far south as Monterey, Calif., and as far north as Langara, Queen Charlotte Island.

On several occasions all three Southern community pods have been observed returning to the inland waters of Vancouver Island from the north in late spring — through Johnstone Strait — on their way to the San Juan Islands. They circumnavigate Vancouver Island.

Over the past three decades of study employing photo-identification methods developed here, an astonishing amount of bio-geographical information has been learned about orca populations world-wide.

For example, there are separate and distinct salmon-eating populations frequenting the Soviet Kamchatka Peninsula, the Aleutian islands, Prince William Sound and Southeast Alaska, northern British Columbia, and southern British Columbia (our whales).

There is a more oceanic population of fish-eaters that have been found to be related to the ancestors of all of these populations.

And finally, there is a meat-eating population, called “Transient” that travels widely in smaller groups feeding upon seals, sea lions, other whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Some transients have even been observed in the San Juan islands only to be seen in northern Southeast Alaska just a few weeks later.

— with Ken Balcomb, director of the Center for Whale Research.

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Why are Killer whales black and white?

Killer whales have a very distinctive pattern of white, black and gray coloration over their entire body. The distinctive patterns are a form of camouflage to hide their presence when in search of food.

Since Killer whales hunt for fish, seals and other large mammals, their very survival hinges on successfully catching prey — which in most cases will be on the alert for predators.

Just as military airplanes are colored light on the undersides and dark on top during wartime — making them less visible from both above and below — so too are the whales.

In the dark undersea world the whale’s white areas also tend to create the illusion of much smaller objects, while the black body virtually disappears in the darkness — allowing the whale to visually appear to be much less of a threat than it actually is.
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Can you tell male calves from females?

Whale researchers at the Center for Whale Research, based on San Juan Island, have been documenting the local orca populations since 1976. During the course of this study over 95 whales have been born.

For researchers, determining the gender of a calf adds a tremendous amount of information to the general understanding of the social structure and health of this local orca population.

To determine the gender of a new calf — or any orca whale — researchers rely on photographs of the underside of a whale when distinguishing a male from a female.

The difference is quite pronounced, if you know what to look for. Male orca whales have an elongated white pattern stretching towards the tail in the genital region, while the females’ white patterns are much more rounded with mammary slits visible.

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Where in the world are Killer whales found?

Known by many names in many languages, orcas/killer whales/blackfish/etc. are found in all oceans and seas, particularly where food supplies are abundant. Since the pioneering efforts of the late Dr. Michael Bigg — who compiled the first photographic catalogue of orca whales for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, beginning in the early 1970s — photo-identification of marine mammals has made leaps and bounds forward in both global coverage and our common understanding of the species world-wide.

In those early days, by simply circumnavigating Vancouver Island and photographing every pod of orcas he encountered, Bigg amassed a tremendous amount of baseline information about orca populations of the Pacific Northwest.

Bigg’s efforts were the basis of recognizing distinct populations and differentiating “Northern” pods from “Southern” pods — those residing nearly entirely along the northern end of Vancouver island, and those residing mostly around the southern end of the island.

Much like a yearbook is a photographic representation of a human community (eg. a school student population), a photo-identification catalogue of whales represents a whale community at a particular time. The main difference is that many orca whale communities remain together throughout life for many generations, always appearing together in sequential catalogues (yearbooks). And when they travel, they do so as a community like nomadic tribes in the sea.

The vocalizations within a whale community are distinct and different from those in other communities, serving to keep the pods together, or bring them together over large expanses of water when it is impossible to see each other.

As studies of the world-wide distribution of orca whales have grown progressed using this widely-accepted technique, a much clearer picture of orca populations and societies has emerged. For example, they form multi-generational groups of genetically related families — clans — that travel together throughout life.

Clans of Killer whales roam every ocean, travel along nearly every coast of every continent and frequent core areas such as the San Jaun islands on a regular basis. Our orcas come here for the salmon that are seasonally abundant.

Others inhabit the cold arctic waters where large clans may gather to feed on schooling herring — such as Iceland — while in the Argentinian waters of Peninsula Valdez yet another clan teaches their offspring to slide up specific beaches to capture young elephant seals.

Along the shores of the remote Crozet islands south of Madagascar another clan has been observed waiting just off shore at the mouth of a river where unsuspecting young sealions are just beginning to learn to swim.
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Instantaneous Behaviors

Aerial Scan - an orca raises its head at an angle starting from a horizontal position.

Backdive - an orca leaps out of the water and exposes two-thirds or more of its body and then lands on its back.

Bellyflop - an orca leaps out of the water and exposes two-thirds or more of its body and then lands on its ventral surface.

Breach - an orca leaps out of the water and exposes two-thirds or more of its body and then lands on its side.

Burp - an above-surface vocalization that sounds like a whale is "letting gas."

Bubble Blowing - the sound that is produced as the orca releases air from its blowhole under water.

Cartwheel - an orca throws its flukes, caudal peduncle, and rear part of its body from one side to another in at least a 45-degree arc.

Dorsal Fin Slap - an orca rolls on its side and hits the dorsal fin on the surface of the water with force.

Fluke Lift - an orca brings its flukes up and down above the water in a fluid motion with no force.

Fluke Wave - an orca lifts its flukes and part of its caudal peduncle above the water, pauses for at least two seconds, and then brings its flukes down with no force.

Half Breach - an orca leaps out of the water and exposes only half of its body, landing on its side.

Inverted Pectoral Slap - while on its back, an orca raises its pectoral flippers straight up and slaps the dorsal surfaces down on the water's surface. (Many times an inverted pectoral slap is immediately followed by an inverted tail lob.)

Inverted Taillob - while on its back, an orca raises its flukes above the water's surface and brings them down with force.

Kelping - an orca "plays" with seaweed by dragging it on any body part; often it tries to position the seaweed in the notch of its flukes.

Lunge - an orca breaks the surface of the water with its rostrum, melon and a large part of its body in a charging mode. Many times the lunge has a sideways component, expecially when the orca is chasing something.

Mating - a male orca actually inserts its penis into the female orca's genital slit.

Pectoral Slap - an orca lies on its side, lifts a pectoral flipper, and slaps it on the water's surface with force.

Pectoral Wave - an orca lifts a pectoral flipper in the air for at least two seconds and brings it down with no force.

Rolling - an orca rolls halfway or all the way around in the water, along its longitudinal axis. This behavior is very helpful for researchers to determine the sex of a killer whale.

Seasnake - the pink male penis which in adult males attains a length of 3-feet.

Spyhop - an orca raises its head vertically above the water, at least above the eye level, and then slips back below the water's surface.

Tactile - an orca coming into physical contact with another orca; for example, caressing one another with their pectoral flippers, or rubbing rostrums.

Taillob - an orca lifts its tail flukes above the water and brings them down with force.

Tail Trashing - an orca violently trashes his tail fluke through the surface. Often seen when in pursuit of prey.

Prolonged Behaviors

Chasing - an orca making sudden movements, including lunges and sudden accelerations; for example, when in pursuit of prey.

Circling - an orca making "circling" movements, often in the context of a chase.

Direction Change - an orca changing its direction of travel and proceeding in a new direction; often preceded by milling.

Feeding - an orca is seen with prey.

Groups Spread Out - tight groups of orcas separated by distances of 100 yards or more.

Joined - individual orcas or groups of orcas who have just "joined " with one or more other orcas.

Logging - an orca rests at the surface exposing its melon, upper back, and part of its dorsal fin for a period of at least ten seconds.

Loose - individual orcas who are traveling thirty to fifty yards apart.

Milling - orcas surfacing in constantly varying directions while remaining in the same area.

Porpoising - orca(s) traveling at high speed with the majority of their bodies breaking the surface and often creating a "V" of spray alongside their bodies. At top speed, an orca can actually rise up to seven feet above the water's surface and leap 30 to 35 feet horizontally.

Split - an orca, or a group of orcas, who have moved away from an individual orca, or a group of orcas.

Spread Out - orcas predominately traveling as individuals who are separated by distances of 100 yards or more.

Tight - orcas traveling in a group who are almost in physical contact with one another.

Travel Fast - orca(s) traveling at a speed of more than five knots.

Travel Medium - orca)s) traveling at a speed of three to five knots.

Travel Slow - orca(s) traveling at a speed of one to two knots.