Heartbreak for Tahlequah: Famous orca mom loses another calf

Known as J61, the baby female orca was seen struggling according to a Christmas Day social media post

Published Jan 01, 2025  •  3 minute read

Tahlequah pushes her dead calf on the second day of her long, sad journey, in 2018. Photo by Ken Balcomb /Center for Whale Research

It’s not a New Year’s story anyone wanted to hear.

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Tahlequah, the mother orca who became world-famous in 2018 for carrying her dead calf on her head for 17 days and 1,600 kilometres, has lost a second calf.

J61 was born just before Christmas in Puget Sound.

“New Year’s Eve 2024 was a day of extreme highs and lows,” according to a Facebook post by the Washington-based Center for Whale Research. “We have confirmation of another new calf in J pod, but sadly, this was combined with the devastating news that J61 has not survived.”

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A team from the centre hit the water on Dec. 30 after receiving reports of another new calf, J62, which is when it discovered J61 had not survived.

The J-pod is one of three that make up the endangered population of southern resident killer whale.

“The death of any calf in the SRKW population is a tremendous loss, but the death of J61 is particularly devastating, not just because she was a female, who could have one day potentially led her own matriline, but also given the history of her mother, J35, who has now lost two out of four documented calves — both of which were female.

“The entire team at the Center for Whale Research is deeply saddened by this news and we will continue to provide updates when we can.”

J35, or Tahlequah, is shown in 2020 with her third calf, known as J57. J57, a boy, is still alive. Photo by Katie Jones /THE CANADIAN PRESS

Baby orcas have perhaps a 50-per-cent mortality rate, although it’s a very rough estimate, the director of marine mammal research at the institute for oceans and fisheries in UBC’s zoology department said before the news of the death was posted.

With the endangered southern resident pod, that figure could be as high as 70 per cent, Andrew Trites said, but it’s a guess.

“The average killer whale does not have many calves in her lifetime, she’s not like a rabbit,” he said.

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“She’s probably not going to start to reproduce until she’s around the age of 12, she’s going to have one calf maybe every three to four years and it’s a fairly short (reproductive) period.”

Often it’s an orca’s first baby that dies because the new mother doesn’t know exactly what to do, Trites said.

Tahlequah is obviously a caring mother — or she wouldn’t have tried to keep her 2018 baby above the water for so long — and, perhaps to a lot of people’s surprise, she’s an experienced mother.

“The first born has a higher probability of dying, largely due to inexperience,” Trites said. “It’s about the challenge of nursing.”

It’s not like there’s a breastfeeding clinic for orcas, he pointed out.

“In the case of Tahlequah, she’s now had four calves,” Trites said.

Her first, born 14 years ago, is still alive, as is her third (born in 2020). Both are male.

Because the now two deaths can’t be chalked up to inexperience, it’s possible both ill-starred babies died from a congenital problem, Trites believes.

The reasons given are many for why the southern resident orcas struggle so: Underwater noise, contaminated water, lack of their preferred fish.

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They’re all problems the group faces, but Trites thinks a lot of the population’s problems come down to its small size — about six dozen — and inbreeding.

It would be impossible to know exactly why so many of the calves die without performing autopsies on each.

“In some respects, from the science side, it’s unfortunate we weren’t able to find out what the cause of death was (in 2018), and so we can just speculate, and my speculation would be probably inbred with some congenital problem.

“And we know among humans that not every baby that’s born survives, that there are complications that come up, sometimes during the birthing itself.”

A calf born to another mother in the pod two months ago didn’t survive.

But Trites noted that until relatively recently, before modern hospitals and things like antibiotics, human babies also had a high mortality rate.

It’s estimated Tahlequah is 26 years old, so she may have three or four more babies, he said.

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