On 19 January 2002 in the Puget Sound waters between Seattle and Vashon Island, Joe Olson made what is believed to be the first recordings ever of an individual wild killer whale calf using a Cetacean Research™ C54 hydrophone.
The calf had been sighted a few days earlier by a ferry captain and reported to local whale researcher, Mark Sears. Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research was asked to identify the whale and he didn't recognize it as belonging to the Southern Resident killer whale community. Mark then called for Joe's assistance to record the little whale's vocalizations.
Thanks to Joe's recordings and those made a few days later by Dr. David Bain, the whale was subsequently identified as a member of the Northern Resident killer whale community — a population of orcas that traditionally never visits Puget Sound! The whale's scientific identification is A-73 and she had already been named Springer by Dr. Paul Spong of OrcaLab.
The two recordings provided here are good examples of the range of sounds that Springer was making on that cold winter day in 2002. Notice the high background noise level. This is from Washington State Ferries because Springer had taken up residence in a major ferry lane! The MP3 and OGG links to the right are the sound of one of those Washington state ferries recorded from a distance of 200m with a Cetacean Research™ C54 hydrophone.
On 14 July 2007, most of the people involved with returning Springer (A73) to her family met for a five-year reunion at Telegraph Cove, British Columbia. We took to the waters of Johnstone Strait aboard the M/V Gikumi skippered by Captain Jim Borrowman of Stubbs Island Whale Watching. To our great joy, Springer joined the reunion — 5 years to the day that she was released from Dong Chong Bay on Hanson Island! She was accompanied by other members of her extended family belonging to the A8, A11, and A12 subpods. This recording of those whales was made with our portable SQ26-MT underwater recording system.
For more information on the Springer 5 year reunion, please join the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Cetacean Society and read the August 2007 issue of the Whulj .
For more details on the Springer story, please see this article from 15 July 2002 in the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
For more information on the Orphan Orca Fund (OOF) please see the ACS National web site.
The sound clips are in either MP3, WAV, or OGG format. If you need a player, we have some on our links page.
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Underwater and Bioacoustics Instrumentation & Consultation
Springer - 2002