I wanna be a killer whale

My son, August, has been sharing some outrageous sounding stories about killer whales with me. He told me about Luna, an orca who plays with human friends regularly, orcas who share food with family and friends, orca languages, and even suggestions that orcas have cultures of their own. August also told me that there had been no documented case of an orca killing a human in the wild. These stories didn’t jibe with what I’d heard about orcas, so I decided I needed to know more.

Let’s start with the story of Tilikum, a killer whale who was involved in the death of three humans. Tilikum was captured when he was 2 years, in 1983. In 1991, a young trainer slipped and fell into the pool where Tilikum was held. Tilikum and his two tank mates proceeded to drown the poor woman, but not before she surfaced three times. A few years later, in 1998, a man was found dead and draped over Tilikum’s back one morning. The man had wounds, abrasions, and his genitals were bitten off. We can only speculate about how the man got there - perhaps he thought he’d like to a have swim with the beautiful animals and managed to evade security during the night. And then in 2010, during a show at Sea World, Tilikum grabbed a trainer’s pony tail, pulled her into the water, and drowned her. This did not sound like the playful Luna my son had described. To finish Tilikum’s story, he was isolated after the third human death, grew listless, and eventually died of a lung infection in 2017. After much pressure, in 2016 Sea World finally decided to stop breeding orcas, and stop capturing new killer whales.

And it is not only in captivity that killer whales are known for their brutality. I mean, look at their name. Orcas are known to kill sharks, and surgically remove and eat the shark’s liver leaving the rest of the carcass. Likewise, orcas will kill other whale species and eat only their tongues. It is perhaps this brutality which leads humpback whales to intervene in killer whale hunts of seals, grey whales and other species.

However, it turns out there is an altogether different side to orcas as well. To start with, my son was right that there has never been a documented case of an orca killing a human in the wild. And marine photographer, Brian Skerry, has had some remarkable, and touching, encounters with orcas. Brian was photographing killer whales off the coast of New Zealand, watching them use a unique fishing technique of turning sting rays upside. When the ray is upside down it experiences toxic immobility and becomes paralyzed. The orcas then remove the ray’s stinger and gobble up the rest of the ray. One day, an orca placed an immobile sting ray about 5 feet in front of Brian on the sea floor. The orca then circled Brian and then faced off with him, stopping directly in front of him. Brian, sensibly, remained as still as possible. The orca stared at Brian, at the ray, and back forth a few times. Brian felt like the whale was saying “Are you gonna eat that? I dropped it there for you.” Brian responded by making himself as small as possible, and undoubtedly snapping a few photographs. The whale then inverted itself, with its tail pointing upward, and gently picked up the ray and went off a short distance to share the ray with another orca. Was the orca trying to share food with Brian? It sure seems like it.

Brian tells other stories about energetic young orcas checking him out and hunting orcas warning him to stay back. But perhaps the most poignant of his orca encounters is the day he witnessed a very unusual procession of orcas. They showed no interest in him, rather the pod moved in a very purposeful way. As they drew closer, he saw that one of the adult females was carrying a dead calf. He felt like an intruder on a very private funeral procession.

As we learn more about killer whales, it is no surprise to learn that they experience grief when one of their own dies. They are believed to have the closest family structure of any animal on the planet, including ours truly. The young never leave their mother. Daughters may break off slightly when they start their own matriarchal line but they will still remain connected to their mother’s pod. Thus you might understand why this mother of two young men, who are out in the world, jokes that she’d like to be an orca. What’s more, as an orca I would never have to bicker at my sons to clean up after themselves or to eat better either. We’d get along just swimmingly.

Each matriarchal orca family unit, or pod, has its own unique hunting behaviors and vocalizations. Indeed, researchers can identify which pod an orca belongs to based solely on its pattern of calls. The vocalizations also reveal what the whales are doing be it foraging, resting, or socializing. For instance, clicks are used for echolocation, whereas as calls and whistles are used for social occasions. As an aside, a hugely exciting and expansive research project has been launched to use AI to try to unlock sperm whales’ languages.

With regard to the distinctiveness of each pods’ hunting techniques, resident pods eat fish while transient pods hunt and eat marine mammals. As mentioned above, a pod near New Zealand uses toxic immobility to hunt sting rays. Other pods will work as a team to herd herring into a giant swirling ball and then swim through the mass stunning them with their tail. Some pods of killer whales will drown a blue whale by taking turns swimming across its blow hole and preventing it from surfacing for air. Other groups have learned to drive sharks to the surface and then slap the sharks with their tail - leaving the sharks disoriented and easy to kill. One captive orca learned to leave bait on the side of his pool to entice wild birds in - whence the orca snatched the bird for a fresh treat. There is even a pod off Paagonia that actively teaches its young by pushing the calves onto the beach and encouraging them to attack and eat seals. Other orca groups have learned to swim in tandem and flap their tails at the same time to create a wave to flush a helpless seal off of an ice raft.

These many instances of pod-specific hunting patterns, as well as pod-specific vocalization patterns, have led many to conclude that orcas are passing on social behaviors. In other words, that orcas have culture. While our modern era has long denigrated ascribing culture to animals, both Aristotle and Darwin believed certain non-human animals have culture. And the explosion of research into animal behaviors in the past few decades have demonstrated multiple cases of passed on behaviors, complex interactions, and even grief in the animal kingdom. More and more scientific papers agree that whales, in particular, are passing on culture. Even the English sub-species of Homo sapiens is now believed to have culture, though we are still unsure about their United States cousins.

Something unique to orcas is that they have the longest post reproductive phase for females of any non-human animal. While narwhals, pilot whales, and belugas all have a post reproductive phase, female resident killer whales will spend 30% of their adult female life span in the post menopausal phase. What could be the point of this? It turns out that having grandmother orcas around increases the survival rate of grandchildren orcas and the effect is strongest if the grandmother herself is not reproducing. Furthermore, the inter birth period of the daughter decreases if she has a non-reproducing mother around. Grandmothers increase the success of foraging, they share their food with the pod, and they have deep ecological knowledge. Post reproductive females are the most common swimming leader of pods and this is most prominent when food is scare. This follow-the-matriarch behavior makes sense as she can live to be 90 years old and will have experienced more food shortages than anyone else in the pod. The elder will have ideas about where to go look for backup food sources.

My son was right. Orcas are complex creatures with rich social lives and strong family ties. And, orcas don’t kill humans in the wild, but we are killing them. Many orca populations are threatened with extinction due to depletion of food sources, habitat loss, pollution, and other human impacts. The constant noise and hum of our ships and mining are interfering with the survival behaviors of orcas. And being at the top of the food chain, orcas bioaccumulate plastic as it works its way up the food chain, which we know reek havoc on hormonal and immune systems in other mammals. Orcas are going to need all of their grandmothers’ wisdom and fortitude to navigate the cocktail of problems we are throwing at them.

Our delight in the richness of orca lives and our despair over our treatment of them can spur us to make changes to protect them. What is an average Jo to do to save killer whales? As fate would have it, I have a brand new baby niece named Jo this week, so instead I could ask what can I do to save the whales for Josephine and the rest of the future?

First of all, we can each aim to cut down on our carbon emissions. Global warming is affecting ice coverage, fisheries, ocean currents, and the food chains in the ocean - all of which impact orcas. What’s more, about 1/3 of the carbon we emit is absorbed by the oceans, which is good for global warming but it is acidifying the oceans. Ocean acidification reduces the ability of shellfish to make their shells, depresses metabolic rates and immune responses in some ocean critters, and further threatens oceanic food chains. As part of cutting our carbon emissions, we can strive to live more locally. In addition to reducing carbon emissions, this will also reduce both ship noise and ship strikes on whales. Ship noise of course interferes with whale communication, navigation, hunting, and presumably their peace of mind. And ship strikes are a major cause of whale deaths.

Of course reducing our purchasing of sea food will help fish stocks rebound, but if you still want the occasional seafood dinner try to source fish and shrimp that has been more responsibly harvested. For instance seek, we can seek out products labeled with a Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) logo. All our water ways lead to the ocean, eventuall,y so we can be careful to not put any toxic chemicals down the drain. In the US, the EPA’s “Safer Choice” label is a good bet for cleaning products. We can try to reduce our contribution to plastic litter as well, for plastic packaging is the number one source of litter in the oceans. Plastic bags in particular pose a problem as they look like jellyfish to marine predators. We can also support various marine mammal protection efforts which work to help create sanctuaries, educate the public, and address various environmental issues. Or we can get involved in citizen science or volunteer opportunities, for example with NOAA.

That’s a lot of homework for you all, so you better get cracking. But seriously, even though we may not live near killer whales, we can make a few positive behavior changes that will improve the quality of orca’s lives and give them a chance to survive into the next centuries. And perhaps the Josephines and the Augusts of the future will actually be able to talk to the orcas and apologize on all of our behalf.