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,…