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Tale of Orphaned Orca May Be Coming to End With New Beginning

Aired July 25, 2002 - 11:28   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The tale of an orphaned orca maybe coming to an end with a new beginning. Check this out, the whale known as Springer, or Boo, researchers says she appeared to have struck up a relationship with a 16-year-old female. Joining on the phone again, Lance Barrett Lennard of the Vancouver Aquarium.

Lance, thanks for talking time to talk with us again. Glad to see you have got some good news to report here.

LANCE B. LENNARD, VANCOUVER AQUARIUM: You're very welcome.

HARRIS: As I understand it now, you believe that this 16-year- old female, you're calling it A-51, and you believe that she's looking out for Springer right now?

LENNARD: That seems to be the case. Last Thursday, the 18th of July, Springer was last seen having close contact with the female, acting just like a calf. In fact, it took myself and my colleague, Gray Miller, the photo identification expert, quite some time to convince ourselves it was Springer. She's not very particularly striking marked, and her suction cups tags were off by that time. In fact it was her. And as I say, she was behaving just like a calf with this female. And then the whales headed out to the sea, left the Johnson (ph) Strait area, and didn't come back again until Tuesday.

HARRIS: Now you say she was acting like a calf. What do you mean by that? Because the pictures we've seen of Springer show her eating fish, so I'm assuming she's weaned; she's not nursing, is she?

LENNARD: No, I don't believe she's nursing. But when I say acting like a calf, female orcas and their offspring maintain very close proximity. They're constantly touching each other, rubbing, swimming very closely with each other. The calf tends to get underneath the female and get a bit of a boost right along in her slip stream, so to speak, and that's the way Springer was behaving with this animal Thursday night when we watched them go to sea. And then Tuesday, they came back into Johnson (ph) Strait, and goodness knows where they've been in the meantime, but they were behaving in exactly the same kind of way.

HARRIS: Have you been able to listen to them talk to each other?

LENNARD: We've certainly listened to them. It's always hard to know when you drop a microphone into the water which of any group of whales, which particular individual is vocalizing. But they have been vocalizing, that group has been vocalizing very actively.

HARRIS: Has the grope seemed to embrace them now, or what?

LENNARD: Well, I don't know if I could say embrace or tolerate. Certainly, the female, the young female, A-51, seems to be behaving in a reciprocal way to Springer. In other words, I don't it's just that Springer is just tagging along, the geeky whale from the city who won't let go.

Because what happened on Thursday night when I was out watching them in the boat, I moved in reasonably closely to take identification pictures so that I can confirm Springer's identity, and she ignored the boat. But after about three quarters of an hour, she turned and moved toward the boat. And this is Springer's problem, she learned in Puget Sound during her period of isolation to approach boats. And so I quickly moved away. And as I did, I looked back, and I saw A-51 followed Springer out, and what I call scoop her, or kind of gathered her and directed her back toward the pod, and that was encouraging to. This was something females do with their own calves quite often.

I'm not sure if 51 was trying to keep Springer away from my boat or just keep her in my group. But one way or another, it was clear that she was attracting with Springer, not just the other way around.

HARRIS: Well, Lance, let me ask you the big picture here. If this is, what you're witnessing here, an orca adoption, what are the implications here? Is this the first time it's ever been done? And if it is, what does this mean?

LENNARD: Well, we know that resident killer whale pods are incredibly stable. This means that, effectively, in 30 years of studies in British Columbia and 20 years in Alaska, there's been no evidence of a killer whale moving from one pod to another. They are born in the pods, they live in the pods, and they eventually die in the pods. So this kind of adoption is unknown.

These two pods are very closely related, I should say Springer's birth pod and the pod, that A-51 belongs to, are very closely related. They probably split from a common pod in the last hundred years, and that may have something do with why this -- they have a very similar vocal dialect. That may be why this apparent -- I'm not calling it an adoption yet. It seems too early for me. But this affiliation is developing. But if so, I think this will be a very unusual event.

HARRIS: At least the relationship is getting off to a good start, if nothing else, there.

LENNARD: It is. It's about as good as we could have hoped for, I think.

HARRIS: That's great. Dr. Lennard, thanks so much. Doctor, we would love to talk with you again down the road once the next step is accomplished.

LENNARD: Certainly.

HARRIS: Thank you very much. Good luck. Great story. Nice to have a story with a happy ending.

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