About this Website
Our ocean remains the last great frontier here on Earth, full of mysteries and knowledge yet to be discovered. Most exciting about this fact is its accessibility to all, whether by the purchase of a ticket for a voyage or personal vessel ownership. The latter is how I have had the opportunity to come into contact with Orcas of the ETP, which prompted more questions than answers, and has served as an inspiration for building this site.
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So far, my firsthand experience with Orcas of the ETP extends in a narrow range, from San Pedro, California to Oceanside, California. When compared with the entirety of the "ETP", this 60 mile stretch of ocean is infinitesimally small! As of July 2020 I have been fortunate to have had 8 days of encounters which are documented on this site.
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What I have experienced in those 8 encounters, combined with more than a dozen other days spent with transient and offshore Killer Whales in California, fuels my strong interest in this species in my backyard of Southern California.
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This website does not seek to be authoritative or exhaustive on the topic. It exists merely to fill a void in the public knowledge easily available on the internet, based around my personal experiences. Submissions from visitors to further the collective knowledge is appreciated!
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Ryan Lawler, July 2020
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UPDATE 12/14/2023
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I reserved the domain to this site and wrote some initial text and uploaded a few photos back in 2020. The site was embarrassingly incomplete and aside from paying the annual hosting fee I had completely forgotten about it. Recently I googled the search phrase "eastern tropical pacific killer whales" and was surprised to see it actually ranked high in Google result. Which goes to demonstrate how information about ETP Killer Whales on the internet is substantially lacking. I decided to spend some time adding encounters information. There is still a lot of photos to add, to build out a catalog of individuals based on my experience.
Ultimately I would like to help collaborate with established biologists to use my information in the publishing of a paper. If you'd like permission for photo usage and/or details of what I've published on this site for your work please email me, Ryan@newportcoastaladventure.com
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As is established custom, do not use any of the information or photos on this website to independently build work for only yourself. Science is a collaborative undertaking and credit/citations must be given where due. All photos, words, and ideas on this site are my own unless otherwise specifically stated.
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About Killer Whales of the Eastern Tropical Pacific
The Killer Whales known merely as those inhabiting the Eastern Tropical Pacific seem to be little studied when compared with their northern counterparts. Cetologists have not yet placed them into the familiar "Eco-Types" that define Killer Whales in known populations.
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NOAA describes the the Eastern Tropical Pacific as "roughly extending from San Diego west to Hawaii and south to Peru."
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A catalog of photo identified individuals published by NOAA's Soutwest Fisheries Science Center and authored by Paula Olson and Tim Gerrodette in 2008 is a significant effort in describing and helping to track life histories of our Orcas of the Eastern Tropical Pacific. The link is here.
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With credit to the two authors Gerrodette and Olson, here are some selected excerpts from the catalog:
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-Killer whales have been studied extensively in coastal areas of the northeastern Pacific Ocean; however, populations in tropical pelagic regions have been little studied. Knowledge of their ecology, population structure, and other characteristics is limited.
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-The catalog contains 195 individual killer whales from 52 groups documented in the ETP.
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-The longest point-to-point distance traveled by one of these whales is 700 km. The re-sights of whales in the Baja area over such distances and long periods of time (2 to 14 years) add to the body of evidence that these waters support a population of killer whales that range widely throughout the area. Whales re-sighted together over time spans of 2 weeks to 10 years suggest some stability in group structure as found in other areas of the Pacific.
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-Immediately noticeable in photographs of killer whales from the ETP is that many whales have faint to almost non-existent saddle patches. This is unusual relative to most other known populations of killer whales. In general, saddle patches in the ETP are narrower and fainter than what is observed on killer whales in temperate waters of the northeastern Pacific.
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-Another distinctive feature of killer whales in the ETP is the prevalence of the specialized cetacean barnacle, Xenobalanus sp., attached to the dorsal fin. Over 30% of the killer whale groups photographed in the ETP carried these barnacles...
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