Killer whale ‘Granny,’ the 103-year-old matriarch of the Southern Resident killer whale community, last week led J-Pod up from California into the Strait of Georgia just in time for Mother’s Day in the Northwest.

And at 103 this year, Granny (officially known as J2) is thought to be the oldest living orca whale.

“It was great to have all of J Pod, a family of 25 Southern Resident killer whales, return for the first time since March 3rd,” said Captain Simon Pidcock of Ocean EcoVentures Whale Watching in an email exchange. (Those are his photos in the gallery above. He reminded us that the photos were shot with a telephoto lens and cropped. … So, no, they were not right on top of the whales invading their space.)

“What made the encounter extra special was Granny … leading the family and looking very healthy,” he said.

Back from California

News of the return of Granny and her pod was announced Saturday by Michael Harris, executive director of Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA). He wrote in a news release that the pod was believed to be off the coast of California near the mouth of the Russian River just eight days before showing up in the NW.

“And then yesterday we see her cruising through Boundary Pass on her way to Bellingham. That’s a distance of about 800 miles covered in a little over a week,” Harris said in the release. “Not bad for a great-grandmother. This is wonderful news – just in time for Mother’s Day.”

Pidcock was also quoted in the release enthusing: “We were thrilled to see her. And it’s mind-blowing to think that this whale is over 100 years old. She was born before the Titanicwent down. Can you imagine the things she’s seen in her lifetime?”

Harris wrote:

The average lifespan of a wild orca is between 60 and 80 years, and yet the Southern Residents – despite being listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act – have some extraordinary longevity stories, including the female K7, or Lummi, who died in 2008 at the age of 98. Another Southern Resident female, L25, or Ocean Sun, is thought to be 85 years old.

The Southern Resident orca Tokitae, or Lolita, now in Miami Seaquarium, and the Northern Resident orca Corky in SeaWorld San Diego – both about 50 – are the oldest killer whales in captivity. They are the last surviving orcas captured from the region for marine parks.

“These Pacific Northwest orcas certainly have great genes,” continued Harris. “I’m sure the pressures we put on them have made them resilient. They’re problem solvers, survivors. We’ve taken away their food and trashed their homes. We’ve done all sorts of awful things to them, and yet here they are – and here’s Granny, still out front, still running the family. It gives us hope that we can still turn this ship around and save them from this extinction slide. It shows that if we give these whales a little help, they’ll do a lot with it.”

So how do you know how old an orca is?

We hit up Harris for a quick explanation of how one can tell the age of an orca, especially when it was born before detailed records were being kept of these killer whale pods. Oh, and we wondered if orca years were like dog years or calendar years …

“No, it’s not dog years!!” he wrote us back. “Wild orca researchers use an extrapolation scheme to estimate ages of orcas. It’s a well-accepted technique used by both U.S. and Canadian scientists, based on the fact that offspring stay close to their mothers all their lives.”

Here’s the “scheme”:

When the study of Southern Resident orcas began in the early 1970s, they already had photos of both J1 “Ruffles” and J2 “Granny” taken in 1971 when both were already full grown adults. Orcas reach full size around the age of 20, so they made the estimated birth year for J1 Ruffles as 1951 (1971 – 20 years). Since Granny and Ruffles associated with one another, they concluded that she might be Ruffles’ mother. Since Granny was never seen with a new calf since the study began, they assumed she was post-reproductive, and that perhaps Ruffles was her last calf. Females generally stop reproducing around the age of 40, so if she had Ruffles when she was 40, her birth year would be about 1911. Again, these are estimations from scientists that require some extrapolation, esp. with J2, but it is generally accepted that Granny was born around 1911 and that she’s now 103 years old. In dog years I think that’s about 700 or so. 🙂

Harris also wanted to point out the difference in longevity between wild and captive whales … at best, its a 50-year loss to captive whales.

Even with all the problems we have out there, there are huge difference in longevity between wild and captive orcas. And as our release points out, the oldest orcas ever in captivity are Lolita from the Southern Residents and Corky from the Northerns, both around 50. Male orcas in tanks never live to be 30 (Keiko was the oldest male ever at 29) and females generally die in their late 30s and early 40s. What a difference a tank makes.

Keep ’em wild.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.

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