By Sentinel Staff
The white killer whale sighted recently near Kake and Petersburg was seen weeks earlier and closer to Sitka, three local boaters report.
Their sightings occurred in mid-July at locations north of Sitka and west of the August 6 appearance that was reported on in the Sentinel Aug. 14. A marine biologist who saw the white killer whale near Kake identified it as the one that had first been seen in British Columbia waters, and had been given the Salish name Tl’uk.
Jay Stelzenmuller of Sitka said he was in Salisbury Sound July 18 when he saw the dorsal fins of a killer whale pod and something white in their midst. At first he thought he was seeing orcas eating a beluga whale, which are white, but are very rare in Southeast.
“I saw some fins, so I slowed down and just kind of drifted there for a bit... and I saw some orcas rolling and it looked like they were eating a beluga,” Stelzenmuller told the Sentinel. As they came to the surface he saw that the white thing was actually one of the orcas.
“They went down and they came up again and it was a white, kind of violet,” he recalled. “And the white one had other guys on each side of it real close.”
Stelzemuller said the pod got within a hundred yards of his boat before he headed on his way.
“I didn’t want to bother them too much, so I kept going,” he said. “It was a brief encounter, and it was interesting and unique.”
Other Sitkans saw Tl’uk around the same time.
Kate Croft and Tyler Orbison said it was July 16 or 17 when a pod of orcas, one of them white, surfaced near their skiff in Nakwasina Sound.
“I was surprised because I had never seen one before,” Croft said. “I thought it was an albino or something, and my first thought was ‘I hope it will be OK.’”
She added that a man aboard a nearby sailboat had pointed out the orcas first.
Like Stelzenmuller, she thought it might be a beluga whale before confirming it was actually an orca.
“I was confused for a second, I’ve seen a lot of (orcas), I grew up here... I wasn’t sure what I was seeing,” she said. The orcas approached within about a football field of the skiff before leaving.
Since killer whales don’t seem to be around as much now as they once were, Croft was happy to see this pod.
“It was really nice to see them, and there used to be so many more orcas around here growing up that I get excited seeing them,” she said.
Like Stelzenmuller, Croft guessed that the white orca was an albino. However, Stephanie Hayes, the marine biologist who was aboard the boat that spotted the white orca near Kake on August 6, said the coloration is not albinism but is caused by an extremely rare genetic mutation known as lucism.
She asked that anyone who sees a white dorsal fin to submit that information to happywhale.com, a citizen science website dedicated to marine mammals.
