Researchers inch closer to answers after latest ‘tour of grief’
Updated Sept. 24, 2025
Researchers with the SeaDoc Society spotted a new member of the J-pod in Saratoga Passage on Thursday, likely born to 18-year-old Echo, or J42.
The new baby, not yet named, comes just over a week after Alki, or J36, was seen pushing a deceased calf in Rosario Strait with the umbilical cord still attached.
Deborah Giles, a killer whale researcher with the SeaDoc Society, was among those responding to the scene on Sept. 12. [Ed.: Clarified Giles’ affiliation.] Alki was first spotted by a whale watch captain, Giles said, followed by the Center for Whale Research.
After documenting the incident with drones, the research team gave space to the orcas. By 3:30 p.m. the following day, the dead calf was gone.
The scene is reminiscent of when Tahlequah — J35 — made headlines around the world for her “tour of grief,” carrying her dead calf for 17 days and 1,000 miles.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Giles said. “It’s very indicative of what’s happening in this population right now.”
According to a 2017 study published in PLOS One, fecal hormones show that nearly 70% of SRKW females are unable to bring their calf to term. Either they die in utero before being born, they are miscarried or the baby dies within days or hours of birth.
Alki carried her calf in utero for 17 months, Giles said.
“We don’t know whether or not the baby ever breathed,” she said, “but regardless, we had seen (Alki) pregnant three days prior. On that third day, the baby had been born and at least by that point was dead. This is just — it’s a very bad situation.”
As for why infant mortality is so high among the SRKW, “right now, the honest answer is that we don’t know,” she said.
Giles’ research suggests that lack of prey, increased toxins and vessel disturbance are potential causes of the decline, but partitioning these pressures has been difficult.
Currently, she is analyzing fecal samples to update the paper and see if any insight has come in the last eight years.
Tradition under pressure
Chinook salmon make up about 80% of the SRKW annual diet. Southern resident foraging is strongly centered on these large, high-fat salmon, specialized through evolutionary and cultural influences.
Bigg’s orcas, Salish Sea’s transient population, differ fundamentally — they feed almost exclusively on marine mammals such as harbor seals, porpoises and sea lions. Transients avoid fish entirely, with adapted hunting tactics to surprise marine mammals.
Northern Resident killer whales, found primarily in British Columbia and Alaska, also prefer chinook salmon but their diet is more balanced, with higher proportions of chum and coho in summer compared to SRKW.
While the decline of chinook is a contributing factor to infant mortality, the cultural shift to a new diet is complicated and won’t happen overnight, Giles said.
“When you think about the size of chinook salmon in the past, even as recently as 20 years ago, it wasn’t unheard of to find a 40-pound chinook salmon in the Salish Sea,” she said. “Now, the average size salmon in Washington state is 12.5 pounds.”
Fish coming from the Snake River as recently as one orca’s lifetime ago would have been in some cases over 100 pounds, she said.
“When we talk about, ‘gosh, these whales are picky eaters, and they’re cultural eaters, and they preferentially forage on Chinook salmon,’ in the past, that made good biological sense because you’re hunting a predator that doesn’t have massive teeth, that can’t fight back like a sea lion can,” she said. “If a killer whale grabs one of those 60-70-80-100-120-pound chinook salmon, that’s a lot of a dense caloric meal that’s big enough to share with multiple family members.”
There are several examples of orcas being forced to change their diet in captivity, which has made them more susceptible to vitamin deficiencies and dehydration.
Pink salmon are much more abundant than chinook in the Salish Sea, and SRKW have been documented chasing and playing with them but not eating them.
Last month, Giles verified a report of SRKW catching and playing with porpoises but also not eating them. This phenomenon has been confirmed by a 2023 study published in Marine Mammal Science that showed that individuals from all three killer whale pods — J, K and L — have been observed harassing and killing porpoises without consumption.
One possible explanation for this is that that orcas respect their boundaries, Giles said. Since the only predator that can kill orcas is another orca or a human, they may have learned to avoid certain foods to prevent potential conflict.
The porpoise harassment — which started in the L pod and then was adopted by the K and then J pod — could be the first recorded case of a nonprey species being introduced to SRKW culture. The research shows that this behavior is seemingly passed down the matriline — from the matriarch through her daughters and their offspring through social learning.
Ocean Sun, or L25, at nearly 100 years old, is considered the oldest living SRKW and the senior of the others by about 40 years. However, the elders are often not the matriarch of the pod in the way that orcas with the more dominant personalities are, Giles said. For the J-pod, the matriarch is likely Shachi, J19, who is 45.
While some have wondered if the passing of these matriarchs may lead to cultural and dietary shifts, Giles is skeptical, she said. That kind of change is more likely to occur if a young male orca — who depend on their mothers more than females do — accidentally takes a bite from a porpoise and “asks forgiveness” from a mother or grandmother, but this is speculative.
In other words, it likely wouldn’t be behavior taught through the matriline.
“These guys have been under duress and in what many would call starvation mode for 20 years or more,” she said. “That’s a tiny little nanosecond in time when you look at the entire evolution, cultural and behavioral and physical evolution of these animals. They have been eating fish exclusively for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s only within the last 100 years that we have decimated their prey base. To ask a population of animals, an entire culture and population of animals to shift in that amount of time — it’s just such a small amount of time for a shift like that to happen.”
Survival is our choice
Time is not on the orcas’ side. The Salish Sea is changing faster than the SRKWs can keep up with, Giles said.
“Over evolutionary time, animals can adapt,” she said. “What we’re talking about is a massive change in their ability to make a living and survive and thrive that’s less than the length of one whale’s lifetime.”
That lifetime is shrinking as well, she said. Currently, both females and males are passing while they’re still in breeding age.
For Alki, “going through 17 months of pregnancy only to lose the calf. This is not good physically for her, it’s not good mentally for her and certainly it’s not good for the population,” Giles said.
SRKW joined the endangered species list in 2005 with a population of 88. Today, 74 remain.
“This is just going in the wrong direction,” Giles said. “We’re not doing enough to actually recover this population of animals.”
Both the U.S. and Canadian governments have passed regulations alleviating vessel pressure.
“I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but we’ve kind of done everything that, at least with small vessels that can be done,” she said.
According to Giles, more emphasis needs to be put in getting Chinook back into the SRKW’s home range. Most of the Chinook born locally are captured in Alaska, branded as Alaska-caught and sold around the world as “sustainably harvested” fish.
“A lot of that fish caught in Alaska in mixed stock fisheries on the outer coast are not native to Alaska,” she said. “They’re from down here, from the Southern Resident’s range. We need to be doing things that will ensure that enough high-quality fish is making it back down here to the natal rivers that are within the Southern Resident’s range.”
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Orcas display uncanny behavior in historic Penn Cove visit,” Nov. 20, 2024
• “Science denialism and the bright extinction of killer whales,” May 23, 2024
• “Senate bill changing vessel-orca distance moves forward,” April 24, 2023
• “How much of orca decline is in their DNA?,” Dec. 9, 2022
• “Can Southern Resident killer whales have legal rights?” April 28, 2022