UPDATE: Aug. 11, 9 p.m.
After I posted this blog entry this evening, I received this note from Ken Balcomb:
Hello all,
J35 frolicked past my window today with other J pod whales, and she
looks vigorous and healthy. The ordeal of her carrying a dead calf
for at least seventeen days and 1,000 miles is now over, thank
goodness. She probably has lost two others since her son was born
in 2010, and the loss of her most recent may have been emotionally
hard on her.
—–
It has been heart-breaking to follow the story of the 20-year-old orca mom named Tahlequah (J-35), who has been carrying her dead newborn calf for nearly three weeks. But Tahlequah’s travails might add new insight into the mysterious death of a 3-year-old orca, who washed up on the Long Beach Peninsula in 2012.
Ken Balcomb, the dean of killer whale research in Puget Sound, has always maintained that the young whale, designated L-112, was killed by a concussive blast of some sort that caused massive trauma inside her skull. He suspects that military operations were to blame.
Photo: Center for Whale Research
The Canadian Navy acknowledges that it was conducting exercises near the U.S.-Canada border up to seven days before the dead whale was found. The activities, which included the use of sonar and detonations, started 85 miles northwest of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and ended up inside the Strait. The detonations were said to be too small to kill a whale except at a very close range.
