New Scientist
Image: Matthew_Allen
Call him the tip of the iceberg. Six years ago, on 11 August 2010, whale researchers working in the western North Pacific encountered something very unusual: a white male killer whale, or orca. Two days later the white whale, nicknamed Iceberg, reappeared in a large group of orcas – a group that included a second white whale.
In fact, over the past few years the researchers have encountered no fewer than five – and perhaps as many as eight – white orcas in the western North Pacific. They are virtually unheard of elsewhere in the world’s oceans. Their unusual abundance in this one particular region could be worrying evidence of inbreeding.
“What we are seeing is strange. It’s a very high rate of occurrence,” says Erich Hoyt at Whale and Dolphin Conservation in Bridport, UK, who co-directs the Far East Russia Orca Project.
Hoyt and his colleagues estimate there are several thousand orcas in the region, which could mean as many as one in 1000 individuals is born white. “All the other areas where orcas are studied intensively have zero or one or two [white whales] historically,” he says. Read more on newscientist.com…
