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Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Puget Sound pods vacation in California
Two of the three orca families that frequent Puget Sound and nearby waters have long been known to vanish in the winter, and the question long plaguing researchers has been: Where the heck do they go when it turns rainy and cold? Why, they go to California, of course!
That's part of the answer, anyway, unveiled at a Seattle science conference on orcas Tuesday sponsored by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island, who has studied the whales since the 1970s, said the K and L pods were first spotted in Monterey Bay, Calif., in January 2000. "That just completely blew people away." The orcas were seen there again in March of 2003 -- then spotted in May 2003 clear up at the north end of Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands.
The orcas appear in many years to work back to the area around the mouth of the Columbia River in spring, then range into Canada as it warms.
Balcomb credited reports from observers up and down the coast as well as research by Brad Hanson of the fisheries service, who has taken trips out onto the stormy winter seas in search of the killer whales.
"We always seem to find the whales two days before the end of the cruise," Hanson said.
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