In 2018 a female orca off the coast of Washington gave birth to a calf that died within half an hour, and rather than let the body sink she carried it with her, pushing it through the water on her head for 17 days and more than a thousand miles before finally letting go, and in 2025 the same whale did it all over again with another dead calf.
The mother’s designation, in the follow-up records kept by the researchers monitoring her, is J35. His name is Tahlequah. She is a member of the southern resident killer whale population that lives in the Salish Sea between Washington State and British Columbia and, at the time of the events described in the title of this … Read more
