Humpbacks Returning and Lots of Orca

SEATTLE — A transient orca pod went for a swim in Puget Sound on a sunny Monday afternoon.
The pod was spotted by KOMO News helicopter “Air4” swimming off Richmond Beach, near Shoreline.
During their jaunt, the pod stopped for a late lunch.
At least one sea lion was killed, though several orcas appeared to continue the hunt.
Many orca pods were spotted in Puget Sound on Monday, the Orca Network reports.
These seal-eating transient orcas usually spend their time off the California coast.
Unlike the salmon-eating southern resident orcas that call Puget Sound home, the transients live on a diet of marine mammals like seals and sea lions.
They’ve been known to attack humpback whales, and are sometimes even thwarted by the humpbacks who come to sea lions’ aid.
Transients can be identified visually by their robust size and a solid saddle patch behind the dorsal, compared to the open saddle patch of a southern resident whale.

A pod of killer whales is stalking baby grey whales off Monterey Bay in California, but a patrolling group of humpback whales is doing everything in its power to foil the killer whales’ attacks.

At this time of year, gray whales and their calves are making their way up the California coast as part of their annual migration from Mexico to Alaska. A bounty of young, harmless grey whale calves is an irresistible lure for the top ocean-predators. [Watch Video of the Humpbacks Trying to Save the Gray Whale Calves]

Killer whales (or orcas) can always be found in the area off Monterey, but this year has been particularly grim for the killer whales’ prey. One orca gang, led by an adult female named Emma, has been camped out in Monterey Bay for the past few weeks, said marine biologist Nancy Black, who works with Monterey Bay Whale Watch, a whale-watching outfit. In the last 12 days, the deadly orcas have killed seven gray whale calves, she said.

Meanwhile, humpbacks have been in the area to feed on anchovies. They do not appear to be fans of the orcas’ deadly onslaught. Whenever they see an orca attack a gray whale calf, they rush in to stop it.

During the last 10 years, whale sightings in Southern California have been on the rise.
"Southern California is one of the best places in the world to spot gray whales and is arguably where whale watching eco-tourism was born," Diane Alps of the American Cetacean Society (ACS) and whalesafe.org said.
For residents of Malibu, spotting whales is as easy as a stroll down the beach around Point Dume, a favorite spot among migrating gray whales, which can be seen right off shore in the surf. For a bigger adventure, a trip on one of the many whale watching boats in the area not only yields gray whale sightings, but boaters may also encounter blue whales, fin whales, humpback whales, minke whales, dolphins, sea lions and killer whales.

A study suggests a warming climate and more killer whales could spell bad news for beluga whales in the southwestern portion of Hudson Bay.
The study included researchers at Oceans North Canada, the federal government and the University of Manitoba.
It looked at an attack by killer whales on belugas near the mouth of the Seal River in northern Manitoba in August 2012.
Research showed that after the attack, the belugas scattered northward along the Hudson Bay coastline, away from a traditional calving area near the Seal River.
The study suggests such scattering could impact the survival rate of young belugas.
Hudson Bay beluga cam allows viewers to get close, help scientists
It also notes that as the climate warms and the water in western Hudson Bay sees longer ice-free periods, the presence of killer whales may grow.

INTERNATIONAL

Baby humpback whales seem to whisper to their mothers, according to scientists who have captured the infant whales’ quiet grunts and squeaks.
The recordings, described in the journal Functional Ecology, are the first ever made with devices attached directly to the calves.
“When they’re born, these whales are around 5 meters long,” says Simone Videsen at Aarhus University in Denmark, who notes that this is “pretty big considering it’s a baby.”
Calves must travel with their mothers for thousands of miles during an annual migration to the food-rich waters of the Antarctic. Exactly what happens during that period is a mystery.
“These early life stages of wild whales are so elusive because they’re an aquatic animal,” Videsen explains. “We can’t follow them around all the time to see what they’re doing.”
However, she and some colleagues recently were able to track eight baby whales, using special sound and movement recorders.

One of the UK’s last killer whales was contaminated with “shocking” levels of a toxic chemical, scientists say.
The animal, called Lulu, was found dead on the Isle of Tiree in Scotland last year after becoming entangled in fishing lines.
But tests now reveal her body contained among the highest levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, ever recorded.
The chemicals were banned from the 1970s but are still in the environment.
Researchers now fear that other animals in Lulu’s pod also have similarly high levels of contamination. The group, which is found off the west coast of Scotland, is thought to consist of just eight animals.
Dr Andrew Brownlow, head of the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme and veterinary pathologist at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), told BBC News that Lulu had “shocking levels of PCBs”.
He said: “The levels of PCB contamination in Lulu were incredibly high, surprisingly so. They were 20 times higher than the safe level that we would expect for cetaceans to be able to manage.
“That puts her as one of the most contaminated animals on the planet in terms of PCB burden, and does raise serious questions for the long-term survivability of this group (of UK killer whales).”

In the summer of 2016, the European researchers counted the numbers of sea mammals in the European part of the Atlantic Ocean from boats and airplanes.
Previous counts were done in 1994 and 2005. The researchers did not discover any major fluctuations. They concluded that the number of porpoises, white-beaked dolphins and common minke whales has remained stable in the last 22 years. However, the researchers will require one more count to be able to make any substantiated statements about the other dolphins and whales. ….

"This is the first confirmed account of an orca predation on a white shark from South Africa," ?Marine Biologist Alison Kock from ?South African National Parks told Gizmodo in an email. "It’s mind blowing to think that a white shark of that size (almost 5m) was a target."

Another South African marine biologist who organized the autopsy, Alison Towner, told Gizmodo that she could only think of a few other times killer whales preyed on great whites. Boaters filmed a pod of orcas attacking great whites in California in 1997.

A few shark carcasses have turned up in the area around the Gansbaai beaches since 2012-dead great white sharks washing ashore is a rare event itself. But on the morning of May 3rd, someone spotted a 16-foot, 2500-pound dead behemoth. That’s around the same length and half the weight of a full-size Mercedes-Benz….

Wild dolphins are exposed to more pollutants than their captive counterparts, which could explain why they face higher rates of illness and disease, US researchers said Wednesday.

The study in the journal PLOS ONE analyzed the health of two wild dolphin populations — one group in Florida and another in South Carolina.

They were compared to two populations of captive dolphins in Georgia and California, which turned out to be far healthier.

Fewer than half the wild dolphins studied were “clinically normal,” and many had chronically activated immune systems, signaling they were fighting off disease.

“This is likely a result of encountering pathogens, parasites and anthropogenic pollutants in the ocean that do not exist in closely managed zoological habitats,” said lead author Patricia Fair, research professor at the Medical University of South Carolina.

In humans, this kind of chronic immune response has been linked to cancer, heart disease and increased vulnerability to infectious disease.

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