The Center for Whale Research (CWR) announced last week that a new calf, L125, was born in the Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) population.
The discovery was made after CWR received word that J, K, and L pod were in the Haro Strait. The organization dispatched two boats with field researchers to photo-identify as many other southern residents as possible and spotted the new calf.
The center’s photo-ID expert, Dave Ellifrit, captured images that show L125 with fetal folds, indicating a relatively recent birth.
“It is nicely filled out and appears to be a perfectly normal little calf,” said Ellifrit in a press release.
The size and shape of L125 are characteristic of a calf in good physical health. The mother of the new calf is L86, her fourth offspring.
Drs. Drs. John Durban and Holly Fernbach have taken drone photographs of L125 and, given its size, are believed to be one to one and a half months old.
L125 and L86 (John Durban, Holly Fernback Photo).
L125 has one living sibling, L106, a male, born in 2005. L86 had given birth to two other calves, L112 and L120, both now dead. L112 was born in 2009 but was killed by violent trauma during military exercises in 2012. L120 was born and died in the year 2014.
L125 is the first calf born into L pod since Jan. 2019 when L77 gave birth to L124.
The last meeting of the Center for Whale Research with the Southern Resident Orcas in the Salish Sea was on Jan. 20. (J and K pod). The center’s most recent prior encounter with L pod was on Sept. 24, 2020.
The other calves born into J pod in 2020, J57 and J58, were observed recently and looked to be doing well according to CWR researchers.
J35, or Tahlequah, gave birth last September when she and her healthy, precocious newborn calf, J-57, a male, were spotted by the Center for Whale Research. In 2018, Tahlequah caught the attention of the world as she carried her dead calf—which is thought to have died within a few hours of her birth—with her for 17 days.
The chances of survival for a newborn calf born to the Southern Residents after the first few years are just around 50%.
