By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – There’s been a huge amount of buzz all day about an orca whale that found its way into the canal at the McKinley paper mill last night and hung around until about 9:00 this morning. A video shot by Sheriff’s Sgt. John Hollis and shared to our Facebook page has 24,000 views and hundreds of shares.
We spoke with someone who knows exactly who this orca is and told us about as much as there is to know about why he was here.
Erin Johns Gless is the Director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association. She says we were visited by a Biggs killer whale, also called transients. Based on the images and video shared on social media, this particular whale is an 8-year-old male well known by his ID number, T65A5.
“Yeah, so this one is a troublemaker for sure. The history is that usually orcas do stay pretty close with their families. But this particular whale started kind of wandering off on his own little adventures when he was…starting at 4 years old. So, it’s not atypical to kind of see the rest of his family and have him not be there. He usually turns up, you know, somewhere later on. But the location of this, for sure, was definitely, I’d say out of the norm.”
Gless says he was likely here hunting for those seals and sea lions we see hanging out on logs in the harbor this time of year. Meanwhile, we also know where the rest of his family was.
“Some of our other whale watching companies, they actually were with the rest of this whale’s family today, during their watching trip, about 50 miles away in Puget Sound.”
Gless reminded us that, unlike the southern residents, Biggs killer whales are thriving and increasing in number, so we should expect to see them in Port Angeles Harbor more and more each year hunting for seals.
It bears mentioning that T65A5 wasn’t the only whale that came all the way into the harbor today.
“Yeah, I will just tell you something kind of funny. So, we had some folks that went to the area to investigate the orca and there was actually a humpback whale deep inside Port Angeles Harbor this morning, as well. So I don’t know if you want to mention that. But yeah, seems to be a bustling whale spot today.”
Amazingly, the humpback whale is also known. In an email, Gless wrote, “I got confirmation from Tasli Shaw, a researcher with Humpback Whales of the Salish Sea. The whale in Port Angeles Harbor today was a one-year-old belonging to mother BCX1239 “Towers”. Because of its age, this young whale does not yet have a number or name of its own. Pretty cool, and good to see this youngster return to the region where it fed with mom last year. ”
Today’s event was fun, but if you ever see an animal in distress or on the beach, you should call the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding hotline at 1-866-767-6114 so the report can get to the proper agency.
Above: Humpback in PA Harbor.
(Orca image by Stephen Walker via Facebook)