{"id":637269,"date":"2026-10-21T20:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637269\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T20:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:14:08","slug":"new-calf-born-to-endangered-southern-resident-orcas-in-b-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637269\/","title":{"rendered":"New calf born to endangered southern resident orcas in B.C."},"content":{"rendered":"

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The endangered southern resident killer whale population has increased by one after a calf was spotted in waters near British Columbia.<\/p>\n

The Center for Whale Research says in an email statement that the new calf was first spotted on Monday with its mother, designated J35 by researchers.<\/p>\n

The centre’s researchers then spotted the mother and calf again on Tuesday and determined the “very young” whale is a male likely less than a week old.<\/p>\n

The calf has been designated J65 and is J35’s sixth documented calf, her first being born in 2010.<\/p>\n

The centre says J35 previously lost calves, and was seen carrying a dead calf for 17 days in 2018, while another calf born in 2024 did not survive.<\/p>\n

Researchers say J65 shows no health issues and is “moving well, socializing, and nursing,” but only about half of all calves survive their first year.<\/p>\n

Another southern resident, J31, was spotted with a dead calf earlier this month near Sombrio Point on Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n

The centre says that as of July, the population of southern resident orcas was 76.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 1 minute The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-637269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}