New research aims to understand how two populations of North Pacific resident killer whales find food and what they eat. Scientists studied two populations of fish-eating killer whales: the Southern Residents and the southern Alaska residents. They wanted to know if these two populations of fish-eating killer whales eat different things and how their […]
New technical memorandum provides 31 years of killer whale entanglement history in Alaska. NOAA Fisheries has released a new technical memo, Killer Whale Entanglements in Alaska: Summary Report 1991–2022. It provides comprehensive detail of 37 reported killer whale entanglement cases in Alaska over the past three decades. This technical memo has been in development since spring […]
Coffman Cove is a small, tightly-knit community on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. Many people both work and recreate on the waters in the area. In mid-August, two killer whales were observed in Barnes Lake. The unexpected sight was said to first appear as if jet skis were moving across the lake. Community […]
The small size and isolation of the endangered population of Southern Resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest have led to high levels of inbreeding. This inbreeding has contributed to their decline, which has continued as surrounding killer whale populations expand, according to research published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. The groundbreaking new study combined modern genomics […]