Puget Sound’s orcas have a baby: L124!

| Seen at sea | West Seattle news | Wildlife

If you haven’t heard the promising news yet: The endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales that visited central Puget Sound on Thursday had a brand-new visitor with them – as announced by the Center for Whale Research, L-Pod has a new calf, L124, born to 31-year-old L77. This is the third calf known to have been born to L77; the first one died in 2010, same year it was born, and the second one is L119, born in 2012. As CWR somberly points out, many calves don’t survive their first year, so everyone is watching and hoping for the best. The Southern Resident population is now at 75.

HS January 11, 2019 (11:22 pm)

Three weeks ago I treated myself to an amazingly delicious salmon. It was both the best and the last salmon I will be eating. A small change, within my means but one person can create a ripple. Thankful to read of a new orca calf today.

Robin January 12, 2019 (7:37 am)

My daughters are excited. Great way to send home the message about pollution and making “sound” choices. They have also decided that L124 is a bit of a bland name and have renamed her “Hope.” We are rooting for you Hope!!

anonyme January 12, 2019 (9:37 am)

HS, thanks for making that choice. Noise and pollution are also serious problems, but I think that humans stealing essential resources from other species that rely on them to survive is a biggie. The only way to curtail overfishing is to decrease demand. The fishing industry has tried to portray sea lions as a major issue, which is laughable. On that note, I’m not sure many people know that Trump/Congress passed a bill in December easing restrictions on killing sea lions, so we should expect the recent slaughter of sea lions to continue – if not accelerate. Meanwhile, welcome L124! May you live long and prosper.

Donna January 12, 2019 (10:56 am)

The new calf is great news indeed! Now it’s our turn to give the new baby and the best possible chance to survive. The best thing we can do for L124 and her family is to turn down the noise that is making it harder for them to forage, rest and socialize. It’s not just the number of salmon that matter, it’s how available they are to the whales. Orcas are acoustic animals and need to be able to hear to find their prey – and each other. To recover the whales, science shows that we need to increase salmon abundance by 15% and decrease noise by 50%. Noise and salmon availability are inextricably linked. Noise and disturbance from the whale watching industry and commercial vessels are costing the southern residents 5.5 hours of foraging time each day. That means, for a significant party of their lives it doesn’t matter how many salmon are in the sea, because they can’t hear to find them.The Governor has proposed a suspension on whale-watching by all vessels on the southern residents for three years. Please join us in supporting this bold, necessary and effective action to help the whales find what food is there. The whales can’t wait and neither can we. Learn more at our next Orca Talk at C&P Coffee on January 24 at 7 pm.

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