Howie Tom recently captured some shots of a group of orcas swimming of the coast of Canada and shared his images on Facebook.
Tom was about 4.5 miles offshore when he spotted the group of whales and snapped some photos, he wrote on Facebook.
When Monika Wieland-Shields, who works with the Orca Institute Behavior Institute, caught sight of the photos, she noticed something special: there appeared to be a baby with the group, according to a Facebook post from the Center for Whale Research.
Researchers with the center have determined that the calf in the pictures appears to be over three weeks old. The new orca marks the first new calf in the group known as the L pod since 2021.
The center said researchers will conduct further assessments on the water to determine the calf’s mother, the baby’s health and assign it an alpha-numeric name.
“We hope to see this calf in our study area very soon,” the center wrote.
Tofino is on the western coast of British Columbia, about 130 miles west of Vancouver.
L Pod Orcas
The group of whales that Tom spotted are part of the L pod — the largest pod of Southern Resident killer whales, according to The Whale Trail.
The pod is composed of 11 matrilines, which are communities that descend maternally instead of paternally, The Whale Trail said. L pod’s population has fluctuated greatly, and its members seem to have the lowest survival rate of all Southern Resident pods.
Southern Resident killer whales are fish eaters that are mostly found off the coast of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, according to the Marine Mammal Commission. There are two other pods of Southern Resident killer whales called the J and K pods.
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