The end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 brought some bittersweet calf news as well as an exciting update for the community that follows Southern Resident killer whales, also known as orcas.

Researchers say that the killer whale’s newborn calf in Puget Sound has also died and she’s unable to let go. By Adeel Hassan The mother orca nudges her dead calf with her snout, draping it ...

J35, a southern resident killer whale also known as Tahlequah, carried her child's body on her head for 17 days across a distance of 1,000 miles in 2018, according to the Center for Whale Research.

Researchers spotted Tahlequah the killer whale swimming with her new calf, J61, on Dec. 20. The baby whale died a little over a week later Sabienna Bowman is a Digital News Editor at PEOPLE ...

A bereaved female killer whale who carried her dead calf for more than two weeks in 2018 has again lost a newborn and is bearing its body, US marine researchers said. Scientists say whales are ...

and each whale is given a number and name.Traveling together in matrilineal groups, the orcas at times can be seen breaching around Puget Sound, even against the backdrop of the downtown Seattle ...

She went on to successfully rear two other calves. But now, Tahlequah, part of a struggling group called the southern resident killer whale population, appears to be grieving another calf.

Tahlequah is one of 73 endangered Southern Resident orcas, a killer whale population that lives in three pods − J, K an L − along the Salish Sea near British Columbia and Washington State.

Weiss says we can never truly know what she is feeling. “We know that the bond between killer whale mothers and their offspring is incredibly strong, about as strong as a social bond can be ...

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She only lived for around a week and has been dead for a few days. “The death of any calf in the Southern Resident killer whale population is a tremendous loss, but the death of J61 is particularly ...

Whale researchers in the Pacific Northwest reported a day of extreme highs and lows on the last day of 2024. On the low side, they learned that a Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) calf ...