By: Staff Writer
September 29, 2023
Eleuthera was the location where a small pod of Killer Whales were seen in search for food, but being in Bahamian waters is not unusual and actually, it is a “welcomed sight” says one marine biologist.
Diane Claridge, executive director at Bahamas Marine Mammal Research Organisation, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that Bahamian waters “was part of the Orca’s natural habitat.”
There is no need for alarm as these once thought to be cold weather animals drifting south into the Caribbean as they once called everything from the Arctic Circle all the way down to the coast of Venezuela their territory.
Ms Claridge also said: “We do have killer whales throughout the wider Caribbean region. They’re here all the time all year long. There’s just not very many of them and we know very, very little about killer whales in the rest of the world.
“It’s fantastic that the sightings get so much attention because they are well deserved, it’s a big deal. In the Bahamas, we’ve had just over 50 sightings in the last 100 years. And of course, there’s more people out there on the water with cellular phones and we hear about them more nowadays, but it’s still pretty rare. Now we probably have about two sightings a year sometimes just one.”
These majestic animals used to feed on seals in the 1700’s before they were hunted out of their swimming grounds by whalers in Bahamian waters, so “it’s a welcomed sight,” when they return. “often times they are the same killer whale pod that returns to the same hunting ground year after year. We have some of them tagged and they even have names,” Ms Claridge said.
She also said: “There could be some shift in their distribution but it’s most likely a shift from the north to the south.”
She continued, “It’s not unusual for them to be here. They’re just not here very often, because there isn’t enough prey here to support top predators like that. The groups that we’ve seen here in the Northwest Atlantic, they’re specialized types of orcas that specializes on just eating fish. And so they might be following like the big pelagics like Mahi and Wahoo and some tuna. Then the other types are more generalist, so they will take marine mammals and fish, but more likely to be taking small marine mammals are the more generalist types.”