



When a killer whale calf is born, it's dorsal fin is bent over. When we first saw J49, in August 2012, it's fin was bent. We wondered how long it would take for it to straighten. We found the answer to that question very quickly.

In this three minute video, Dave Ellifrit takes us through the first few months of a killer whale calf's development, from "tiny little wrinkly, pencilly thin sorta thing" to scaly skin and then to a plump and yellowish little whale. Very interesting and lots of fun to watch.

This video is an excerpt from Dave's presentation on July 21, 2017, at CWR's Celebrating Science workshop.

#whales #southernresidents #Transients #endangeredwhales #killerwhales #orcas