Orcas

Hanna Miller was a natural resource specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2023, Miller was awarded employee of the year for NOAA Fisheries in the western United States.

Southern resident orcas are now listed as endangered under Oregon law, providing additional protections to their struggling population.

With only 73 orcas remaining among the southern resident pod that forages along the Oregon Coast, state officials are considering adding the orcas to the state's endangered species list. That listing would provide great protections to the orcas and the salmon they eat.

With Chinook salmon numbers dwindling along the Oregon Coast, the southern resident orcas who live in the Pacific Northwest increasingly face the risk of starvation. Oregon has listed the salmon as an endangered species, and now a state commission is petitioning to add the orcas to the same list.

New research suggests that inbreeding may be a key reason that the Pacific Northwest’s endangered population of killer whales has failed to recover despite decades of conservation efforts.

Charles Nye, a graduate fellow with OSU’s Marine Mammals Institute, said he was able to examine some organic material from the whale to help identify it.

A dead orca has been sighted again, after being adrift at sea for 11 days. The fisherman who spotted the body removed fishing or crabbing gear entangling it, and described it as sport rather than commercial.

Scientists are hoping to locate the carcass of an orca spotted off the Oregon Coast. This may be the first instance of a dead killer whale seen in the state.

A trio of hydrophones rests on the sea bottom, recording the sounds of Washington's Puget Sound, including endangered southern resident orcas.

The Bellingham Herald reports mother and grandmother L47, or Marina as she was also known, was missing from the center's 2021 census, and she hasn't been spotted since Feb. 27.