This orca community numbers only just over 300 individuals, and they specialise in hunting salmon, so their movements are influenced by the salmons’ seasonal migrations. Their range is huge as they roam the entire coastline of British Columbia and beyond into southeast Alaska. They live in closely bonded family groups of mothers, sons and daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It is a matriarchal culture and females are the family leaders.

Heading further north again to the outer realm of the British Isles, the Shetland and Orkney Islands boast the most sightings of orca in the UK. Orcas can be seen here at any time of the year. The more regularly encountered pods are known as the 64s - comprising four individuals, the 65s - a group of six, and the 27s with eight members. Until relatively recently, the 64s and 65s were one group but split for reasons that remain unclear. Maybe it was the death of a matriarch or because they reached their natural maximum group size for hunting seals and are now more effective as smaller units. Interestingly, in 2017 the 27s pod headed from Shetland to the north coast of Iceland. This pod has been observed preying on harbour porpoises at both locations. Our biggest effort is our Exhibit Hall which is open to the public nearly year-round. Through two floors of exhibits, visitors learn more about the Southern Resident Community of orcas, other marine mammals and the Salish Sea ecosystem. We hope that by learning about this richly diverse yet fragile ecosystem, visitors will be inspired to become better stewards. It was nearly a decade later before Mousa was positively identified in Shetland as she and her pod were seen cruising through Mousa Sound in 2008 – hence her name. Since then, she has been a regular seasonal visitor to Scottish shores. Even as I write this word reaches me from Katie, my WDC colleague in the Moray Firth, that Mousa, together with her three kids, Gunnar, Summer and Tide have just been spotted off Lossiemouth and only a few miles along the coast from our Scottish Dolphin Centre where they are more accustomed to spotting bottlenose dolphins. NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. Orcas worldwide face a number of threats. They get caught in fishing nets and gear accidentally, face problems with toxic waste and pollution in the sea. Increase in boat traffic can result in collisions with orcas and an increase in underwater noise pollution.

WHY ADOPT AN ORCA?

Born Free is a member of the Dolphinaria-Free Europe coalition, established in 2014, representing a global community of NGOs and professionals working together on behalf of cetaceans throughout Europe. Born Free works to raise awareness of poor conditions and encourage an informed public to consider directing their support away from keeping cetaceans in captivity. We are proud to have rescued individual captive cetaceans, rehabilitating them and safely returning them to the wild, and we support the development of high-quality sanctuaries to provide improved lifetime care for cetaceans currently in captivity who cannot be released to the wild. What you can do to help If you can’t decide which of our adorable animals you want to adopt, you may be interested in becoming a Born Free supporter by setting up a monthly donation. The money we receive from our regular donations is unrestricted, and allows us to support the projects that need it the most. Choosing to pay by Direct Debit helps your money go further; it helps our long-term planning and keeps our administration costs down. Cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) suffer physically and mentally from life in captivity. The physical, sensory and social environment in which these animals have evolved to live contrasts dramatically with the restricted and barren tanks found in dolphinaria, where cetaceans are held for viewing or performance to entertain visitors. How Born Free is working on this issue

Born Free campaigns for changes to national and international legislation to bring the exploitation of cetaceans in captivity to an end, whilst calling for higher standards of care and animal welfare in the short term. As a priority, Born Free calls for the end to wild capture and breeding of cetaceans in captivity, and an end to the training of cetaceans to perform unnatural behaviour and interacting with humans in swim-with and petting activities.

J-31 Tsuchi

Linkedin set this cookie to store information about the time a sync took place with the lms_analytics cookie. Holly tends to favour the southerly waters of Georgia Strait during the winter months and sometimes during the summer as well. So much of Holly’s family history has been connected with these southerly waters. Before she was born, in 1968 and again in 1969 her entire pod was captured. Tragically, 12 orcas were taken from the wild into captivity. Holly’s mother, grandmother and uncle were among the six who were left behind, no doubt scarred from living through such a traumatic experience. Holly has certainly always avoided the location where her family was captured, speaking to the deep connections within orca families that span generations. Dolphins and whales are closely related. Orcas were given the name ‘killer whale’ by ancient sailors’ observations of groups of orcas hunting and preying on larger whale species. Their Latin name, Orcinus orca, also reflects this observation of orcas feeding on large whales. Orcinus translates to ‘of the kingdom of the dead,’ and orca refers to a kind of whale. We know that orcas are top predators, yes, but not the vicious ‘whale killers’ that the ancient mariners thought them to be. If you could give orcas another name, what would you call them? What do orcas eat? Researchers believe the West Coast community of orcas contains eight individuals but in recent years only sightings of John Coe and Aquarius have been recorded. A ninth member of this group, a female called Lulu, washed ashore dead on the Hebridean island of Tiree in 2016. She was found entangled in fishing rope and subsequent analysis of her blubber showed some of the highest levels of toxins (PCBs) ever recorded in a marine mammal. Sadly, the future for this small, isolated community looks bleak. I’ve been passionate about orcas for as long as I can remember. Initially, I was just in awe of how majestically beautiful and powerful these creatures are, but as I had opportunities to learn more about how socially complex, sentient and highly mobile they are, my respect for these apex predators grew enormously.