Our Local Whales
The ocean around Victoria is home to a southern resident community of three orca pods, totalling 79 whales. In the waters of Northern Vancouver Island, a northern resident community totals 217 whales which patrol the Johnstone Strait in 16 pods.
The shape of the orca whale’s dorsal fin and the markings on the gray "saddle patch" area behind the fin of each whale is unique and remains consistently identifiable over time. It was in the early 1970's that scientific researchers named the world’s pods by letter and number and developed a system of photo-identifying individual whales in order to better understand their natural history and monitor the population.
The southern resident community's pods are named J, K and L pods. Each whale within each of the pods is assigned a number, but the whales also have common names that have been given to them by the Centre for Whale Research and the Whale Museum (both are in the San Juan Islands).
In J pod, "Ruffles" is named for his ruffled dorsal fin and is the largest male. His dorsal fin is estimated at close to \six feet high. "Lummi" is the oldest killer whale in all of the three pods. She is female and her estimated year of birth is 1910. The last adult male, with a notched dorsal fin, is "Mega", of L pod. The notch is caused by a natural occurrence such as friendly combat. "Hugo", "Flash" and "Saanich" are three males in L pod who have just started to "sprout". At the age of 14 or 15 years, the dorsal fin begins to grow (or sprout), signaling that the whale is ready to become sexually active.
The most unique whale in the southern resident community is a new baby that was spotted October 29, 2001. At the time of the sighting, it was only a couple of days old, as its white patches were still bright orange and it had fetal folds around its nose. Both K and L pod females were seen with the calf, so it is yet to be determined to which pod the baby actually belongs.
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