Revised 12/15/2006 KILLER WHALE (Orcinus orca): Eastern North Pacific Southern Resident Stock

• Main Authors: Stock Definition, Geographic Range
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Barlow; Pacific; Killer Whale; Kodiak; Orca; Orcinus orca; Alaska; Killer whale
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.294.5193; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/po2006whki-pensr.pdf

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 Stacey 1988, Baird et al. 1992, Hoelzel et al. 1998). Through examination of photographs of recognizable individuals and pods, movements of whales between geographical areas have been documented. For example, whales identified in Prince William Sound have been observed near Kodiak Island (Matkin et al. 1999) and whales identified in Southeast Alaska have been observed in Prince William Sound, British Columbia, and Puget Sound (Leatherwood et al. 1990, Dahlheim et al. 1997).