News, Orca Adoption, Updates

Orca Awareness Month 2018

This June we celebrate the 12th annual Orca Awareness Month! Whilst our adoptee is a Northen Resident Orca, and the population is beginning to flourish, Orca Month aims to raise awareness of the plight of the endangered Southern Resident orca population. The Southern Resident population now numbers only 39 Orcas, due in part to the diminishing Salmon population on which this critically endangered orca population depends. If you’d like to learn more about Orca Awareness Month, visit their website!

The team at Orcalab are expecting that the Northern Resident adoption Orca families will start to appear in Johnstone Strait and the surrounding areas in July following the eagerly anticipated early and brief scouting missions this month. Small family groups are often seen in the Strait monitoring the Salmon population, to best decide when the first family will move in for the Summer months. In recent years the Salmon population has suffered considerably and this has delayed the first arrivals but researchers are hopeful that Holly will be confident and secure enough with her new calf that her family will return to the Strait this year, however late, to enjoy the bustle of one of the busiest parts of the coast!

There’s been great news this week as Canadian researchers have announced that Holly’s extended family, the Northern Resident Orca population, has grown up to 309 individuals. Since the 1970’s when many of the Northern Resident population were killed or taken in to captivity, the wild population has now more than doubled!

If you’d like to be one of the first to spot the Summer arrivals, Orcalab have a live camera stream running from their base. Be sure to check back in with us soon for our next update!


Julz

If you’d like to learn more about how your group fees and our donation works, please visit WDC here to learn more about their conservation efforts.
If you’d like to learn more about Orcalab’s work with the Northern Resident community, please visit them here.
Any group fees received in excess of our regular donation payment continue to be reinvested in to improvements on our builds and in to continuing to provide our environments for your enjoyment.
Main Image Credit – Wouter Jan Strietman | Subnautica – Unknown Worlds Entertainment, via WDC.

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