SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Have you ever considered the social life of the killer whale? Josh McInnes is a marine ecologist. He's spent over a decade studying orcas - their habits, their diets and quirks. What bar do they go to after work? Do they like the music of BJ Leiderman, who does our theme? And he has a new study in the journal PLOS One about a certain West Coast population of these mammals which stretches from California to Alaska. Josh McInnes joins us now from Vancouver Island. Thanks so much for being with us.
JOSH MCINNES: Hey. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: What have you learned about the social lives of orcas?
MCINNES: Well, this was a big study. We were focusing on a population that eats marine mammals that are called transients. And there's a population called the West Coast transients. So we cataloged over 500 different whales. Then we did what we call the social network analysis, where we looked at the associations between individuals. And then we compared that to where we saw them, so their particular habitats. And what was really cool was that there was two big clusters, or subpopulations, that one spends their time completely out in the open ocean, you know, far offshore, and another that spends their time really close to shore in coastal habitats.
SIMON: If I were to run into one, what would be the tipoff that they would belong to one group or another?
MCINNES: So they're hard to - like, you can't really tell them apart with, like, how they look, but it's where they are is the big feature. Here's just an analogy. Think of, like, a city dweller that loves to be in the cities. They navigate the busy streets. You think of the inner coast, this coastal group of whales as being kind of that city dweller. They like the inlets, the bays. And then you think of this outer coast group as kind of the mountain dwellers, you know. They're out - they live out in the...
SIMON: Yeah.
MCINNES: ...Country, you know, the deep canyons, out on the offshore areas.
SIMON: So do the city dwellers go to Starbucks?
MCINNES: I should hope so. They sure like elephant seal lattes.
SIMON: (Laughter) You were ready for that, weren't you?
MCINNES: (Laughter) I was.
SIMON: So they don't spend much time with each other.
MCINNES: They don't. We looked at 2,232 encounters, and only 1% of that was where we actually saw them in proximity of each other. We think that at one point, you know, they were once a large population. And potentially due to climate change or natural phenomena, or it could have been human-induced - you know, between 1900 and 1970, there was massive culls, so killing of seals and sea lions for competition with fishing in British Columbia and Oregon and Washington. And we believe that potentially the decrease in their prey caused these killer whales to kind of separate into different populations in search of food.
SIMON: Mr. McInnes, may I ask why you've dedicated your life to this kind of research?
MCINNES: You know, it started in the 1990s when I first observed these transient killer whales hunting, and I was just in awe of how much power they have. They're apex predators. They're charismatic. They're black and white, and they have this beautiful look to them. They're large, and they come out of the water. They're on everything, too, in BC, if you look at postcards and totem poles, the sides of buildings, you know, as part of the West Coast culture. I find that they're so fascinating. They're the reason our ecosystems are doing so well. I mean, they're the top of the food chain.
So the more I look, the more I want to learn, and there's always more questions. 'Cause for decades, most research has suggested that killer whales are very coastal species. The offshore environment is kind of just this unknown. It's like - exploring the outer coast group, I think that's what's exciting, is that their ecology and behavior is new to us.
SIMON: Josh McInnes, a marine ecologist and co-founder of the nonprofit conservation group the Oceanic Research Alliance. Thanks so much for being with us.
MCINNES: Thank you. I'm off to have that elephant seal latte.
SIMON: (Laughter).
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