CWR provides update on J31 with deceased calf

||| FROM THE CENTER FOR WHALE RESEARCH TEAM |||

Our team is saddened to report that Southern Resident killer whale J31 has been observed with a deceased newborn calf.

CWR researcher Mark Malleson encountered J31 and her immediate family on October 3rd near Sombrio Point in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It’s unclear whether the newborn was a male or female, if it had been carried to full term prior to birth, and if it died after birth or was a stillbirth.

The loss is particularly significant given J31’s reproductive history and the continuing challenge of successful reproduction within the critically endangered Southern Resident killer whale population.

J31, born in 1995, has previously experienced reproductive loss and failed pregnancies, and was observed carrying a deceased calf once before in 2016. She has one surviving offspring, her daughter J56, born in 2019.

Although the cause of this calf’s death is not known, it occurs against a backdrop of longstanding reproductive difficulties within the population. For a population as small as the southern residents, the successful birth and survival of every calf matters. Many factors limit the population’s ability to reproduce and recover, but one of the most significant is the availability of the large, nutritionally rich Chinook salmon these whales depend on.

The Southern Resident killer whales remain critically endangered, and their recovery depends not simply on increasing the number of pregnancies, but on creating the conditions in which mothers and calves can survive and thrive.