SCIENCE RECORDER - RARE NEWBORN BABY ORCA OFF WASHINGTON COAST full article from early January 2015...
This is good news for the pod, which has not seen a new addition to its community in more than two years.
Balcomb was monitoring the pod, known as J-pod, in the Puget Sound when he noticed the just-born baby orca, dubbed J-50 for now.
According to Brad Hanson, a wildlife biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the birth of the baby whale is an encouraging sign for the pod, which was listed as endangered in 2005, a report by Live Science said. This is especially true since the pod lost a pregnant female earlier in December, probably caused by a bacterial infection following the death of her fetus.
“The loss of J-32 was a disturbing setback,” Hanson told Live Science. “We lost a lot of reproductive material.”
Balcomb does not yet know which whale is the calf’s mother—it could be an older 43-year-old female called J-16, who has given birth to three other surviving calves, or a younger whale, J-36, according to the Live Science report. Sadly, deaths among newborn killer whales are not uncommon. About 35 to 45 percent of all newborn orcas fail to survive past their first year, according to NOAA.
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