Revised 01/15/2011 KILLER WHALE (Orcinus orca): Eastern North Pacific Southern Resident Stock
Killer whales have been observed in all oceans and seas of the world (Leatherwood and Dahlheim 1978). Although reported from tropical and offshore waters, killer whales prefer the colder waters of both hemispheres, with greatest abundances found within 800 km of major continents (Mitchell 1975). Alo...
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Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.233.3541 http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/po2010whki-pensr.pdf |
Summary: | Killer whales have been observed in all oceans and seas of the world (Leatherwood and Dahlheim 1978). Although reported from tropical and offshore waters, killer whales prefer the colder waters of both hemispheres, with greatest abundances found within 800 km of major continents (Mitchell 1975). Along the west coast of North America, killer whales occur along the entire Alaskan coast (Braham and Dahlheim 1982), in British Columbia and Washington inland waterways (Bigg et al. 1990), and along the outer coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California (Green et al. 1992; Barlow 1995, 1997; Forney et al. 1995). Seasonal and year-round occurrence has been noted for killer whales throughout Alaska (Braham and Dahlheim 1982) and in the intracoastal waterways of British Columbia and Washington State, where pods have been labeled as ‘resident, ’ ‘transient, ’ and ‘offshore ’ (Bigg et al. 1990, Ford et al. 1994) based on aspects of morphology, ecology, genetics, and behavior (Ford and Fisher 1982, Baird and |
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