Researchers from the College of British Columbia say they’ve recognized a probably new inhabitants of open-ocean orcas, that hunt the most important predators on the planet.
In a examine printed Friday, researchers stated a bunch of 49 orcas has been noticed searching sperm whales off the coast of California and Oregon.
Lead writer Josh McInnes stated in a information launch that in a single case the orcas had been seen searching a herd of 9 grownup sperm whales, “ultimately making off with one.”
McInnes stated it’s the primary time killer whales have been reported to assault sperm whales on the West Coast.
“Different encounters embrace an assault on a Pygmy sperm whale, predation on a northern elephant seal and Risso’s dolphin, and what seemed to be a post-meal lull after scavenging a leatherback turtle,” stated McInnes, who’s a masters scholar within the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.
Researchers stated the orcas that had been noticed in 9 encounters from 1997 to 2021 may both belong to a subpopulation of transient killer whales or a novel oceanic inhabitants.
The report stated researchers had been in a position to establish the orcas as presumably a brand new group partially due to chunk scars on their our bodies from the cookiecutter shark, a species of parasitic sharks that lives within the deep ocean.
McInnes stated virtually all the orcas had the scars, whereas they haven’t been seen on different killer whales.
“However the large query is, the place do these killer whales sort of slot in? We don’t know … however what we do know is that they characterize a inhabitants that appears to spend extra time within the open ocean,” McInnes stated in an interview.
Co-author Andrew Trites from the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries stated it’s “fairly distinctive” to discover a new inhabitants of killer whales given the time wanted to collect pictures and acknowledge the animals as totally different than recognized populations.
Researchers stated in addition they noticed bodily variations within the killer whales comparable to patches on their fins and saddle.
They stated they hope to doc extra sightings and information from the brand new inhabitants with a purpose to examine precisely how totally different these orcas are from different documented populations.
McInnes stated the invention is the primary a part of a enjoyable puzzle that they’re engaged on.
“We’re simply sort of on the tip of the iceberg of what these whales are doing. I imply, are all of them one inhabitants? Are they a number of? We don’t know. So, I really feel like that is sort of the massive begin of the following steps in our analysis, and to possibly get extra sightings and extra data,” stated McInnes.
