By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Killer whales are not uncommon in Southeast Alaska, but the one spotted near Kake last week and again Monday near Petersburg was an immediate cause of excitement.
It was all white.
Stephanie Hayes, a University of Alaska Fairbanks marine biologist who was on the Petersburg-based wildlife tour boat Northern Song, described the moment she saw it Aug. 6 near Kake.
“A white dorsal fin broke the surface and the killer whale cleared the surface of the water and everyone on the bow gave an audible gasp because what we were seeing was so incredible,” Hayes told the Sentinel.
She saw it again two days later near Petersburg.
Northern Song skipper Dennis Rogers, who has spent decades voyaging in Southeast Alaska, was just as amazed.
“We saw the killer whales, which we always like to share with our guests, and we stopped to take a look at them cruising near shore. We suspect that they were hunting sea otters. And we noticed one of them was unusual – it was a white killer whale,” Rogers told the Sentinel.
“It sure made spotting him easy. When they went down under water, usually they disappear and are typically very hard to follow. But having a white one under the water you could see him an easy ten feet below the surface, this big white shape moving along there,” Rogers said in a press release.
Hayes, who was also first mate on the Northern Song, said excitement on the boat ran high after the sighting.
“Once we realized this is not a regular killer whale, this is a white killer whale, I was beside myself with excitement. We followed the pod along. They’re transient killer whales,” she said.
A white orca is pictured August 7 near Pt Bendel and Kake. (Photo by Stephanie Hayes)
As it turns out, the white orca in this pod had previously been given a name, Tl’uk, from its previous history in the Pacific Northwest. Tl’uk, which means “Moon” in Salish, is a male member of a transient orca pod originally from British Columbia waters, and while he has been sighted as far south as Puget Sound, this was his first known trip to Alaska.
Hayes said that the orca population of the Eastern Pacific Ocean numbers around 500, but this is the first confirmed sighting of a white one in Alaska since one was seen in the Aleutians 12 years ago.
She said the white coloration is caused by a rare mutation called lucism, not albinism.
“There are fewer than five in the whole world,” Hayes said. “And it is not albinism, it is lucism that causes it,” she said. “Lucism is a genetic mutation that causes the pigments to not fully express themselves; the pigments are there but they’re not very vibrant. So in this case, it causes killer whales to look a ghostly white gray color.”
Hayes is currently working on her UAF dissertation, focusing on cephalopods, or squids.
After initial sighting of the white orca last Thursday, Rogers was back home in Petersburg when his daughter-in-law sighted orcas in front of their house.
“And I thought, ‘What are the odds that this is the same group?’” Rogers said. “But sure enough, I could see a white one.”
Rogers, Hayes, and others got in a truck and followed the white killer whale from land, watching the pod as the orcas hunted seals in shallow water.
Hayes said the white orca looks healthy, and seems to be about two years old.
“It looks like a healthy member of the pod. And the biggest concern is that being white you glow underwater, and so hunting mammals... you’re not very camouflaged,” she said.
While a search for a white whale draws parallels to Capt. Ahab’s obsessive quest for the titular character of Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick,’ Tl’uk is not in fact a whale. Despite the informal designation ‘killer whale,’ the animals are porpoises, like dolphins, Hayes said. Melville’s Moby Dick was a sperm whale.
A male orca can live for between 30 and 50 years, while a female can possibly live for 80 years, Hayes said.
“We’re really excited,” she said. “This is the first time Tl’uk has been documented up in Alaska. It will be interesting to see if he comes back or stays around,” she said. “But we know so little about white killer whales that it’s really exciting to have one that is near people so we have a chance to observe it as it ages. Is it healthy, is it hunting?”
Hayes encourages anyone who sights a white dorsal fin to submit that information to happywhale.com, a citizen science website dedicated to marine mammals.
