Southern resident killer whales are a critically endangered population protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Their current population is about 73. The animals are social and live in close-knit family groups led by mothers and grandmothers. <\/p>\n
The whales are given tracking numbers by the Center for Whale Research and are closely observed by researchers, photographers and whale watchers \u2014 particularly when they\u2019re near communities along Puget Sound, like Seattle. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would venture to say it\u2019s the most well-studied population of whales on the planet regardless of species, because it\u2019s been going on for 50 years,\u201d Giles said. <\/p>\n
How, then, did this stunning behavior escape researchers’ notice for decades? <\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t have the right perspective. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really cryptic behavior. It\u2019s happening almost entirely underwater and it\u2019s a piece of kelp wedged between two animals that\u2019s only about 2 feet long,\u201d Weiss said. <\/p>\n
More recently, researchers have started using drones to document the whales from an aerial perspective. As drone technology has improved, so has the data they\u2019ve collected. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s really changed for us in the 2024 field season \u2014 we got a new drone,\u201d Weiss said, noting that it provided higher-resolution video. <\/p>\n
He said the researchers first noticed a whale pushing kelp against another whale in April and then observed whales rubbing against each other for about 15 minutes. <\/p>\n
Once the researchers noticed the strange behavior, they began to see it more often. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe started seeing it a lot \u2014 to the point now where most days we fly the drone, we do see at least one pair of whales doing this behavior,\u201d Weiss said. <\/p>\n
The researchers suspect the behavior has been happening all along. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have the right vantage. I do believe this is something that\u2019s probably been happening since time immemorial,\u201d Giles said. \u201cI think we\u2019ve just scratched the surface of understanding these animals, partly because of technology.\u201d <\/p>\n
The southern residents have been in the spotlight of conservation efforts for decades. The whales are facing a number of threats, including declining quantity and quality of prey, toxic pollution and disturbance from vessel noise, according to the Marine Mammal Commission. Some research suggests the southern residents are on a path toward extinction, if more aggressive measures aren\u2019t taken. <\/p>\n
Weiss said the new findings offer yet another reason why it\u2019s important to take care of the species. <\/p>\n
\u201cDiscovering something like this, late in the game for how long we\u2019ve studied them, says there\u2019s a lot more to learn and they need to be around to learn those things,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is not just a collection of 73 whales \u2026 It\u2019s a unique culture and also a society. These are whales with a set of traditions that go back thousands of years.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southern resident killer whales are a critically endangered population protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Their current…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-8595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114733956810639905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}