By Brian Gawley
© Peninsula Daily News

DUNGENESS -- Published Jan. 7, 2001
Scientists say they still don't know where the young male killer whale rescued from the Dungeness Spit's inner bay might be swimming. A small radio transmitter placed near the dorsal fin didn't work, or fell off, and the orca hasn't been seen since late Friday.

When last spotted, the five-ton, 22-foot orca was in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, apparently in reasonably good shape, heading west toward the open Pacific at speeds up to 7 or 8 knots.

"Where is it now? Nobody knows, we never did pick up a signal Friday night or Saturday afternoon," Brian Gorman, National Marine Fisheries Service spokesman, said Sunday.

After three days of efforts, the killer whale was towed by rescuers into the Strait on Friday after swimming lethargically in the bay, despite no apparent health problems, and repeatedly beaching itself near a dead female orca believed to be its mother.

Scientists are making arrangements for more studies on the dead female after a necropsy failed to turn up an apparent cause of death. Scientists also want to check DNA samples to see if the two whales are related, and studies will be conducted on the whale's head to see if the animal could have been injured by U.S. Navy sonar tests. There is no indication of any human link to the whale's death at Dungeness, however.

The dead female is destined to produce valuable information about the health of killer whales, according to researcher John Calambokidis, who helped collect tissue samples. It could take weeks to get test results back about disease and toxic chemicals.

Whales IDed
Meanwhile, the Southwest Fisheries Science Center and Cascadia Research identified the two orcas by the shape of spots near their dorsal fins. Both had been seen in a group of 10 whales in Coos Bay off Oregon on Sept. 12, 1996. They were recorded as CA-188 and CA-189.

They were coastal, transient whales — not belonging to any of the local pods that live in the Strait and Puget Sound — and were probably in Dungeness Bay hunting seals, said Kelley Balcomb, a researcher at the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor.

That they were seen together earlier bolstered researchers' theory that the stranded male became disoriented after the death of the female. Scientists don't like to use human terms such as "grieving" or "mourning," but they acknowledge that male orcas often form close bonds with their mothers that can last into adulthood.