Welcome New Baby L124

L124, the youngest living SRKW friskily following L25, the oldest living SRKW. Photo by Dave Ellifrit, CWR Senior photo-identification analyst

This just in from the Cen­ter for Whale Research…

On Jan­u­ary 10, 2019, TV sta­tions in Seat­tle aired live aer­i­al footage of sev­er­al groups of killer whales in Puget Sound near Seat­tle, and dis­cern­ing view­ers were able to see a very small whale among them. CWR researcher, Melisa Pin­now, was able to see that L pod indi­vid­u­als were in one of the groups with a new baby. It was asso­ci­at­ed with a female, L77. 

The whales were still in Puget Sound by night­fall. At 5:45 am this morn­ing they were heard on the CWR spon­sored hydrophone at Bush Point in Admi­ral­ty Inlet. We dis­patched a research team from San Juan Island, and they encoun­tered the whales exit­ing Admi­ral­ty Inlet at 9:50 am with their new baby! 

The moth­er is L77, a 31-year old moth­er of two known calves. Her first known calf was born in 2010 and died the same year, and her sec­ond known calf is L119, a female born in 2012. The new calf with her will be des­ig­nat­ed L124, sex unknown at this time. 

Approx­i­mate­ly 40% of new­born calves do not sur­vive their first few years, but we hope that this one makes it to matu­ri­ty, espe­cial­ly if it is female. The South­ern Res­i­dent killer whale pop­u­la­tion is now 75.

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