105 Year Old Orca -Still Alive & Well

bill barilko

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Mar 4, 2009
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Granny', the world's oldest killer whale, is STILL swimming in the Pacific: 105-year-old orca was alive before Titanic sank


Granny was sighted with other whales on 27 July in the Salish SeaScientists have been studying the remarkable cetacean since 1971Officially known as J2, she is the oldest known orca in the worldTypically killer whales live to between the age of 60 and 80 in the wild


Experts have been studying whales in the North Pacific Ocean, called the Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW) since the early 1970s. Granny, pictured in 2014, is said to be the matriarch of the group and was spotted in the Strait of Georgia at the weekend

Her presence has stunned scientists because killer whales, or orcas, typically live to between the age of 60 and 80 in the wild.


Granny is a matriarch of a group called the Southern Resident Killer Whales in the Pacific Ocean.

Experts from Ocean EcoVentures Whale Watching were able to identify her thanks to a marking on her dorsal fin, as well as as a half-moon-shaped notch.

They said in a blog post: 'J2 and and her family have spent the past few weeks foraging and travelling the Georgia Strait.'

Simon Pidcock, from the company, added: 'Granny has been swimming pretty much non-stop for over 100 years.

'The Southern Residents on average travel about 72 miles in a 24-hour period day in, day out.

'This means in Granny’s lifetime she has swam around the world the equivalent of a 100 times.'

In 2014, Granny was spotted in the Strait of Georgia, when she was thought to have travelled up from California with her pod.



Executive director Michael Harris said J-Pod had travelled up from the coast of California, near the mouth of the Russian River, where it was spotted eight days before Pidcock’s 2014 sighting.

This means the pod covered around 800 miles (1,287km) in just over a week.

Mr Pidcock captured the whale on camera. He said: ‘We were thrilled to see her. And it’s mind-blowing to think that this whale is over 100 years old.

'She was born before the Titanic went down. Can you imagine the things she’s seen in her lifetime?’

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