Three mystery whales have been surprising whale watchers from Canada to Olympia.<\/p>\n
When somebody gets the thrill of seeing an orca in Northwest waters, that whale is almost always well known. Scientists have probably given it a number and documented its family tree, perhaps even its DNA. Whale lovers have probably given it a cutesy name, like Yoda or Kelp.<\/p>\n
But on March 6, a trio of orcas showed up in Canada\u2019s busy Vancouver Harbour, later heading south to Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia, that were a mystery to scientists.<\/p>\n
For decades, researchers have compiled photographic catalogs of essentially all the orcas of the Pacific Northwest, including the endangered southern resident killer whales and the more abundant, mammal-eating Bigg\u2019s killer whales, also known as transients.<\/p>\n
Photos taken during the four days that the trio of whales spent in a busy harbor bounded by Vancouver\u2019s Lions Gate and Trans-Canada Highway bridges showed these were Bigg\u2019s killer whales, but they matched none of the whales in the catalogs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn’t place these individuals,\u201d said Jared Towers, head of Bay Cetology, a whale-research organization based in Alert Bay, British Columbia. \u201cAt first, the photos weren’t great quality, but from what we could see, these whales were new. It took a few days, but when we finally got good photos, we were able to confirm that they were indeed new whales for the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
Towers said it was very rare for a new orca to be spotted anywhere in British Columbia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the Salish Sea, it’s absolutely unheard of,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
RELATED: Rare orca superpod comes to Seattle<\/a><\/p>\n Higher-quality photos revealed the trio had highly unusual, circular markings, about the size of a large chocolate-chip cookie.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that was really notable were these circular scars, which are remnants from cookie-cutter shark bites,\u201d said Gary Sutton, a whale researcher with the Vancouver-based nonprofit Ocean Wise.<\/p>\n Cookie-cutter sharks live far from land in the deep, open ocean, usually in much warmer waters, typically south of Hawaii. The small sharks, sometimes called cigar sharks, spend their days 3,000 feet or more underwater and have undersides that glow green in the ocean depths. They rise closer to the surface at night.<\/p>\n How this tiny shark feeds might be its most unusual characteristic: It latches onto much larger prey with sucking lips and sharp teeth, then spins its body to remove a cookie-shaped plug of flesh from its victim.<\/p>\n \u201cThey’re micro-predators, like a horsefly or something,\u201d Towers said.<\/p>\n All three of the orcas, a female and two younger males, had scars indicating they had spent time in cookie-cutter shark country.<\/p>\n