Hope still remains for the fate of the orphan orca calf who caught the world's attention last year, when after a month stranded inside a Vancouver Island tidal lagoon, she made a bid for freedom.
While there have been no confirmed sightings since August last year of the two-year-old female killer whale named Kwiisahi?is or Brave Little Hunter by the Ehattesaht First Nation, research group Bay Cetology has not given up on the calf.
“No news is good news for the most part,” said Jared Towers, executive director of the group based in Alert Bay. “I'm hoping she's still out there.”
After she escaped from the lagoon in April, the calf was documented travelling alone in the waters around Nootka Island every month through to August.
Sightings were reported later in the fall, says Towers. But, due to a lack of photographic evidence, they remain unconfirmed.
However, Towers says he “feels good” about the reports, which he describes as “encouraging.”
“There's really not very many lone baby orcas out there,” he said.
Also encouraging for Towers are the photos taken of the whale in July, which indicated she was either feeding herself, or was travelling occasionally with other killer whales who helped her to feed.
“She looked pretty good,” he said. “And given that she'd been on her own out of the lagoon for almost two and a half months … that’s encouraging. If she can keep that up, that would be great.”
Since the autumnal sightings, Brave Little Hunter has evaded detection, but Towers is not surprised as the number of killer whale sightings normally drop during the winter.
But as the days grow longer, he is optimistic good news could be on the horizon.
“I'm quite hopeful that as more people take to the water in the spring and summer, that perhaps some more sightings will come in,” said Towers.
Brave Little Hunter’s story of survival began in March last year when she followed her pregnant mother into a lagoon near the northern Vancouver Island village of Zeballos.
She was left to fight for survival alone when her mother died after becoming stranded on a rocky beach at low tide.
News of the trapped orphan sparked a string of rescue attempts, all unsuccessful, making international headlines as the world waited for news of the calf.
After four weeks in the lagoon, it was Brave Little Hunter who ‘saved’ herself, swimming out to the ocean on her own, where researchers hoped she would eventually reunite with her natal family.
While Brave Little Hunter remains unaccounted for, there have been multiple sightings of her family up and down the Island, including a visit from her grandmother, along with four other whales, to Victoria’s Inner Harbour in October.
The same pod of whales, identified as T109As, were recently spotted in the Tahsis Inlet, which Towers notes is close to where Brave Little Hunter was last seen in the summer.
“We just don't have really good photos of them to confirm whether or not she was with them,” he said.
Is it possible Brave Little Hunter may have reunited with the pod?
"That's one of a million different outcomes," he says. "That's the favourable one, that she reunites with her natal group."
As for where she might show up next, Towers says anything is possible.
“She could turn up anywhere, or she could turn up in the same place that she was seen last year,” he says. “She's got a very big extended family, and they were showing up everywhere from southeast Alaska down to Washington.”
Towers says if the orphan orca fails to appear this year, he and his colleagues at Bay Cetology may have to consider she has not survived.
But considering it's only been a few months since she was last seen, he says the research group will wait “several more months” before entertaining the possibility.
For now, Towers and his team remain positive, and encourage the public to document any orca sightings with their online photo-identification database: https://finwave.io.
“Photographs of killer whales are really helpful, especially in remote parts of the coast,” he says.
