The researchers, self-dubbed “orca-holics,” are collaborating to try out a new technique to study the orcas.
Killer whales have plenty of other food sources, but if they bail on the bay to find food elsewhere, they will be even harder to find and study. Each spring gray whales migrate north from Mexico, towing their newborn calves over the formidable Monterey Canyon for the first time. Orcas also come into the bay. to hunt the baby grays.
Like humans, orcas shed cells everywhere they go. These DNA fragments, known as eDNA, can tell us about their whereabouts, relationships to each other, and even their health. After they collect the samples, Killer Whale Project researchers send them to the Ocean Wise Environmental DNA lab in Vancouver. They run the samples through PCR analysis, which allows them to search for specific species. “We can set the primers in our analysis process to look for bacteria on killer whales rather than, you know, salmon,” said Sutton.
“Fewer calves means less of that particular food source for the killer whales, so they could be traveling in different areas to attack different species or dolphins or even attacking gray whale calves in different areas,” said Talty. Dr. Chloe Robinson, Director of the Ocean Wise Whales initiative, has done similar studies filtering out bacteria from eDNA in dolphin breath. She is confident in this technique. “I think it has about 99% chance of succeeding,” said Robinson, “And even if a handful of samples work, then that’s still a success.”
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