105-year-old ‘Granny’, world’s oldest known orca, presumed dead in blow to endangered whales

The world’s oldest known orca – a century-old matriarch of a small population of endangered Puget Sound orcas – has been missing for months and is presumed dead by researchers in what is being described as a tremendous blow to an already struggling population.

Known as Granny and believed to be 105 years old, the orca has not been seen by researchers since mid-October, according to the Centre for Whale Research in North America’s Pacific Northwest.

“With regret we now consider her deceased,” researcher Ken Balcomb, who has studied the population for four decades, wrote in a post on the group’s website on Saturday. He had last seen Granny leading her pod north through the Haro Strait as they searched for food.

In recent years researchers had observed Granny take the helm of the J-pod, one of three family groups that make up the Southern Resident Killer Whale population – a genetically unique population of some 80 or so orcas that is classified as endangered in both Canada and the US.

Easily recognisable by a half-moon nick on her dorsal fin, Granny was first identified by researchers in the 1970s. It was later estimated she had been born in 1911 – one year before the Titanic sank – with a 12-year margin of error.

Her disappearance capped off a year that has been a challenging one for the orcas of the Salish sea, with six other whales from the population reported missing or presumed dead by researchers. It was a contrast to one year earlier, in 2015, when the population welcomed eight newborn orcas.