Killer whales in a newly discovered WA hotspot are communicating with "Aussie accents", according to researchers.

Project Orca has been photo cataloguing killer whales and recording their vocal calls in the Bremer Sub-Basin, 70 kilometres offshore between Esperance and Albany.

Key points: Killer whales communicate with Australian accents, researchers say

Killer whales communicate with Australian accents, researchers say Orca gather at the Bremer canyons off the coast of WA, which has an abundant food chain

Orca gather at the Bremer canyons off the coast of WA, which has an abundant food chain Oil and gas extraction could jeopardise the region

Bec Wellard is a marine biologist at Curtin University and a supervising researcher with the project.

She has also recently returned from Antarctica where the same sort of acoustic research yielded subtle differences to the whales which congregate in WA every summer.

"They do have an Australian accent," she said.

"They're slightly different to other killer whale call repertoires from around the world."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 24 seconds 24 s Killer whales communicate with Australian accents

While the recordings were not able to reveal what the whales were saying, differences could be seen in the visual representation of the sound waves recorded.

"We can only look at different types of calls in the context of their behaviour, so we can look at the calls and try and relate it to what they're doing but to understand the calls I think is beyond our scope," Ms Wellard said.

More than 150 individual whales have been photo catalogued from the Bremer population, which appeared to be growing by three to four per cent a year.

"Killer whale populations in the northern hemisphere have been studied for 40 or 50 years," Ms Wellard said.

Researchers don't yet know where the orca come from before they reach the Bremer Sub-Basin or where they go when they leave. ( Supplied: Riggs Australia )

"We've only been studying this for nearly 10 years, so for us to get an understanding of the health of this population, we need to continue monitoring them."

The Bremer Basin whale study is being helped by citizen scientists, who are paying $385 for a day to see the whales as part of a budding ecotourism industry.

Paul Cross was the first whale boat operator in the area five years ago and has marine biologists on his vessel for the entire summer season.

He encourages customers on his daily expeditions to take photographs and contribute them to the research catalogue, which is beginning to reveal family groups among the orca population.

"It's a long way off shore, we're dealing with big ocean conditions on a regular basis and it's very costly to run a vessel like this out to a location like this, so we need the people to support the product so we can actually find out what is going on out here," he said.

The orca congregate in the Bremer Sub-Basin due to its astonishing marine food chain. ( Supplied: Naturaliste Charters )

Fuel extraction a worry

Local filmmaker Dave Riggs discovered the Bremer whale population while working as a deckhand for Spanish scientists surveying southern bluefin tuna populations.

He documented the story in Search For The Ocean's Super Predator, which he helped make for ABC TV in 2013.

Mr Riggs believes the abundant food chain is a result of methane hydrate seeps at the base of deep undersea canyons.

In a paper he co-authored for an international gas industry conference, he found a direct link between the seeps and gas and oil deposits.

Mr Riggs said he was worried that the environment could be damaged by oil or gas extraction.

Although killer whales are well documented in other parts of the world, the WA Government believes the Bremer canyon is unique because people can see orca hunting and feeding. ( Supplied: Naturaliste Charters )

Seismic surveys had identified 37 canyons in WA's southern ocean and four within the Bremer Basin that have fuel in or near them.

"Those four tend to have this aggregation of killer whales and other species whereas the other ones don't seem to, so we know so little about the mechanisms that drive this ecosystem," Mr Riggs said.

"I think it's time to be cautious with regard to the extraction of resources."

There are currently no active exploration plans for the Bremer canyons, with previous oil and gas leases expired.

The area is included in Australia's national marine reserve network, which prevents any oil, gas and mineral exploration.

In 2017 the government went further, expanding the national park zone within the Bremer reserve to add even greater protection.

Researchers say killer whales are important to study because they're apex predators and can give an indication of the health of their ecosystem. ( Supplied: Naturaliste Charters )

However, Mr Cross believes the area is still vulnerable.

"Unfortunately this marine park is a great start but it doesn't go far enough," he said.

"They can just put something outside this marine park, tap into the inside of the marine park and still have the same outcome, so we want this whole section of coastline from Albany to Esperance locked off from oil and gas, every canyon system."

Environment Minister Sussan Ley's office said there were no current plans to make further changes to Bremer Marine Park but all marine parks were regularly scientifically monitored and reviewed.

Watch this story on ABC TV's Landline this Sunday at 12:30pm or on iview.