A group of killer whales spotted hunting off the coast of California and Oregon over two decades may actually be their own unique population of animals, a new study says.
A group of killer whales spotted hunting off the coast of California and Oregon over two decades may actually be their own unique population of animals, a new study says.
When the notorious black fin of an orca emerges from the waves, it is almost always followed by another and then another.
The social, family-oriented animals travel in pods, part of larger populations of animals that hunt the same species and circulate the same waters.
But a new study published in the journal Aquatic Mammals suggests there is a group of killer whales that have gone uncategorized by researchers.
“The open ocean is the largest habitat on our planet, and observations of killer whales in the high seas are rare,” study author Josh McInnes, a master’s student at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, said in a March 15 news release. “In this case, we’re beginning to get a sense of killer whale movements in the open ocean and how their ecology and behavior differs from populations inhabiting coastal areas.”
To do this, McInnis and others examined sightings and photographs of 49 different orcas from 1997 to 2021 to see if they had been cataloged in any other existing orca population.
