Hope persists for Brave Little Hunter, a year after orca was freed from a shallow North Island inlet​on March 25, 2025 at 2:54 pm

Towers noted that Brave Little Hunter’s grandmother has a new calf, which could be an issue with her reconnection to the little orca. “We feel that the cost of taking on an orphan would be even higher at this point than it was before. That may be part of the reason she’s not showing up with them.”

Young killer whales separated from their pods have survived in the past, including Springer, a northern resident killer whale that was separated from the family line in 2002, captured in a sea pen near Seattle and brought back to the Island near Alert Bay and released into the wild.

“It took a while for her to integrate, but she did and she’s alive and doing well with two offspring of her own,” said Towers, noting Springer was the same age as Brave Little Hunter at time.

In 2013, a three-year-old Bigg’s orca — T46C2 — was separated from his mother on the north coast. He never rejoined his mother, said Towers, but reintegrated with another orca community and now has several preferred travel partners, some of which are maternally related, some not. “He’s still alive and doing quite well.”

Such cases “give us hope,” said Towers.

The Bigg’s, or transient, killer whale population that ranges along the B.C. coast is at about 380 animals and considered under threat in Canada due to high levels of toxins in their bodies from being high on the food chain, Towers said.

He said every time an animal is lost, it’s a hit to the future of the population. “[Brave Little Hunter’s mother] was not only young and really had a potentially long life with several calves in front of her, but she was also pregnant at the time with another female,” said Towers. “So it’s a heartfelt tragedy for all of us.”

Bay Cetology is encouraging those out on the water to photograph killer whales they see — while keeping the required distance — using good cameras that clearly show dorsal fins and saddle or eye patches, which are unique on each orca.

The information is fed into a photo identification database called Finwave, developed and managed by Towers and the Bay Cetology group. Finwave was launched in the summer of 2023 with more than 500 contributors who tested it. It was opened to the public last month.

The database is likely the place where Brave Little Hunter, if alive, will be identified.

Finwave is invaluable because it can track entire populations, said Towers, adding users can see the T109A pods’ range, for example — the places they’ve been seen and who they travel with.

“It’s allowed us to track killer whales through space and time, their status, longevity, behaviours … things that we can do to help conserve them really become apparent.”

He said Bay Cetology has photographed Brave Little Hunter and those images will be used to ID her in the future. The database is available to researchers and watchers in the field.

Brave Little Hunter could be on a remote part of the coast, but if she doesn’t show up this year, “we’re going to have to start considering the possibility that we might have to presume her as deceased,” said Towers, who notes that only a small percentage of west coast killer whales that die ever wash up.

He said because orcas live in such socially cohesive pods, “you can infer an individual is dead if they are not present” with others.