Two of Puget Sound’s Southern resident killer whales were found dead recently. L95 or “Nigel,” a 20-year-old male, was found floating near Esperanza Inlet, B.C. on March 30. On March 23, a female calf less than two weeks old was found near Sooke, B.C.

The calf, who was not yet named, may have died of a birthing complication, though a Fisheries and Oceans Canada necropsy found no official cause of death. No clear cause of death was found for L95 either, who was identified by a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite tag scar on the dorsal fin.

L95 was tagged in February, but lost the tag after three days. The tagging and death have been deemed coincidental, though Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research wrote in a post on his website, www.whaleresearch.com, that “at least seven other satellite tagged whales are still carrying hardware embedded in their tissues…., and some of the wounds have festered with restructuring tissue around the attached hardware.” Balcomb believes the tag attachment methodology is defective and should be re-evaluated.

According to the Northwest Fisheries Science Center’s website, www.nwfsc.noaa.gov, the February encounter with L95 showed him to be in good health and the tagging was “routine in all regards.”

Their website also states that this satellite-linked tagging system has been used on “533 cetaceans in 19 species with less than 1 percent of deployments documented with attachment parts remaining post- tag loss.”