New species of killer whale discovered off coast of Chile
Mar 30, 2019, 5:54 AM
A new species of killer whale — now known as Type D — has been discovered and sighted off the coast of Chile. Dr. Bob Pitman works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research lab in San Diego, and joined Seattle’s Morning News to discuss this find that was years in the making.
“It started back in 1955. There was a stranding of 17 killer whales in New Zealand, and they were very peculiar-looking killer whales,” he said. “They were quite small, they had very rounded heads, and they had very tiny eye patches.”
“Maybe this was a genetic anomaly, maybe it was an extremely rare form of killer whale, maybe they went extinct, but we didn’t see or hear anything related for the next 50 years.”
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Then Pitman went to a killer whale meeting in Seattle in 2005, and a researcher from the Crozet Islands in the south Indian Ocean showed him a picture of peculiar-looking whales, and there they were again.
“I nearly fell over. I’ve been looking for these ever since.”
He heard they had been appearing off of Chile, got a boat, and “We had a group come over to the boat. They spent the next three hours right there with us.”
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How do they differ from the killer whales found locally?
“They live out in deep water in some of the nastiest weather in the world, and they are probably much deeper-diving than regular killer whales, and they probably have to rely on acoustics more, as they’re hunting in the dark quite a bit,” he said. “I think that’s why they have a rounded head, a big melon for projecting the acoustics when they’re hunting.”
The next steps for researchers will be to put dive depth tags on them to see how deep they can go, and collect acoustic recordings, so it they’ll be able to listen for them, instead of trying to track them visually.
“We’ve got a fair more amount to do with these Type D killer whales,” he added.
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