Orcas, it seems, are moving north. Last Sunday, a group of scientists from the New England Aquarium on an aerial survey spotted a pod of four orcas about 40 miles south of Nantucket. They were surprised to see orcas that far north; they usually stay in warmer water farther south. “It’s always unusual to see killer whales in New England waters,” said Orla O’Brien, who led the Aquarium’s team. Katherine McKenna, another scientist on the plane, said, “As we circled the area, two whales surfaced too quickly to tell what they were. On the third surfacing, we got a nice…

Orcas, aka killer whales, have attacked several boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal in the past few months, and marine scientists are trying to figure out why. The black and white orcas, the largest in the dolphin family, are high intelligent social animals. They’re also very powerful; an adult male can grow to be 26 feet long and weigh 10,000 pounds. They often play in the bow waves of boats. But in the past two months several captains of boats off Spain and Portugal have issued distress calls after orcas have damaged their vessels. One attack, off Cape…

Here’s a good explanation about why the story of Tahlequah, the mother orca whale who’s been carrying her dead calf on what researchers call a “grief tour” of the San Juan Islands for more than ten days, resonates so clearly with us. The author, Susan Casey, writes: “To learn the orcas’ natural and cultural history is to understand how closely connected a mother and calf are, how tight-knot their bond. Like us, orcas are self-aware, cognitively skilled individuals that communicate using their pod’s signature dialect. Unlike us, their core identity is communal: It encompasses not just themselves, but their family…

The orca whale population in the Pacific Northwest is in trouble. Not a single calf has been born in the past three years; normally four or five would be born each year. The overall orca population, numbering about 100 in the last 1990s, is now down to about 75. And researchers are worried that female orcas are aging out of their reproducing years and can’t be replaced. The largest problem has been the disappearance of big Chinook king salmon. Orcas usually eat 30 of them a day.  And then there are man-made problems. The underwater world, particularly the Haro Strait,…

Say “hello” to Wikie, a 16-year-oll orca whale, pictured above. Better yet, let Wikie say “hello” to you. Or “good bye.” If that’s not enough, Wikie also can count, at least as far as “one, two, three.” New research, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, says that Wiki is able to mimic a variety of human sounds on command, adding to the growing body of evidence that killer whales learn new sounds through social interaction. In the wild, orcas live in tight-knit pods with unique vocal traditions. Now scientists believe that the whales acquire these dialects…

Killer whales are harassing and hunting down fishing boats in Alaska, often tracking them for days before attacking their nets full of fish. The whales are smart and can distinguish between different kinds of boats, even recognizing the drone of the fishing boats’ hydraulic systems as they lower their nets into the water. And they’ve learned to ignore the electronic horns that were designed to drive them away; instead, the sound of the horn, one captain told the National Post, “became a dinner bell.” The problem is widespread, covering the Gulf of Alaska, the Aleutians and up to the Bering…

The last time anyone saw Granny, the world’s oldest killer whale, was more than two years ago in the Salish Sea between  Vancouver, B.C., and Seattle. Researchers, who had been studying orcas there for many years, thought she was about 100 years old then, qualifying her as the oldest killer whale on the planet, and she was still using her accumulated wisdom to find food for her whale family. They now assume that she has died. Read about Granny here: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38496164 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38496164