Mother orca Tahlequah still carries dead calf after 11 days

Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times on Jan 10, 2025

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SEATTLE — Mother orca Tahlequah is continuing to carry her burden of grief: a dead calf that she now has been refusing to let go of for at least 11 days.

Tahlequah is the orca whose story shocked the world in 2018 when she carried a calf that lived only half an hour for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles.

The orca and her family, the southern resident J pod, were seen in Haro Strait off San Juan Island on Friday morning before they headed west toward the ocean.

Tahlequah has two living sons. But this baby lived only a week. The birth was confirmed on Christmas Eve, and the baby was confirmed dead on New Year’s Eve. She has been carrying the calf at least since then, in what is understood by scientists to be an indication of grief.

Other animals including other species of dolphins are known to carry their deceased young, and other orcas have also been seen carrying young that did not survive.

The newest baby born to the endangered southern residents remains a ray of hope. J62 is doing well, said Michael Weiss, research director for the Center for Whale Research, who also confirmed the mother is J41.

Both mother and calf appeared to be doing fine, Weiss said.

“I’m cautiously optimistic about J62,” he said of the newest baby. “Though with these young whales, the first year is always challenging.”

J41 has two other offspring, a juvenile male, J51, and a female, J58, born in 2020, Weiss said.

The southern residents are battling extinction, facing multiple threats, from lack of Chinook salmon, their preferred food, to vessel noise that makes it harder to hunt and pollution in their food.

All of those threats are made worse by climate change, which is upending ocean food webs, depleting summer stream flows and warming stream temperatures. Those factors hurt salmon survival — and when salmon are scarce, the other threats the southern residents face are intensified.

The loss of Tahlequah’s calf was a particularly hard one as that calf was a female. Some also worry about the toll it is taking on J35, or Tahlequah.

“If ever there has been an individual animal that has without a doubt demonstrated grief at the loss of an offspring, it’s Tahlequah. And here she is doing it again,” said Deborah Giles, science and research director for the research nonprofit Wild Orca.

Every time the calf slides off her head, Tahlequah has to make the decision to dive down and pick it up again before the waves carry the calf away. Though the calf weighs hundreds of pounds, it is not the physical effort so much Giles worries about for such a strong animal but the toll it takes on J35 because she can’t forage when she’s carrying the calf, Giles said. She also worries about the orca’s mental health.

“This is really sad and scary to me,” Giles said. “She has this deep connection to her calves ... all of our hearts and brains went to the possibility that she would do another tour of grief.

“And here she is. Well into it.”