A new sighting of killer whale, Orcinus orca, in Caribbean inshore waters off Colombia

Laura C Franco-L,Oscar Delgadillo-G

doi:10.7773/cm.v47i1.3129

Abstract

Killer whales, Orcinus orca, are known to be one of the most widespread cetaceans, inhabiting all the oceans of the world, but their presence in the Southern Caribbean has been scarcely recorded up to date. An unusual sighting of a killer whale is described for the first time in inshore waters of the Gulf of Morrosquillo. The whale was sighted on 22 March 2015 and it was a solitary individual of unrecognized sex that showed ongoing diving and surfacing behavior at a site 6.3 km from the coast with depths between 20 and 24 m. Its occurrence could be related to favorable environmental and oceanographic conditions and to the potential effect of recent seismic offshore oil and gas operations in the gulf, which may impact a whale’s location and behavior. This report contributes to the scarcity of information about the distribution of O. orca in the Caribbean Sea along the coast of Colombia.

Highlights

Killer whales, Orcinus orca, are identified by their distinctive appearance, exhibiting a robust body, a black-and-white color pattern, a tall and erect dorsal fin, large oval-shaped flippers, and a characteristic postocular white spot (Heyning and Dahlheim 1988)
The gulf has an area of approximately 1,000 km2, depths down to 55 m, and a continental shelf 70 km wide at maximum extension, the widest on the Caribbean coast of Colombia
The O. orca sighting reported in this study is unusual given the rarity of killer whales in the Gulf of Morrosquillo

Summary

Introduction

Orcinus orca (family Delphinidae), are identified by their distinctive appearance, exhibiting a robust body, a black-and-white color pattern, a tall and erect dorsal fin, large oval-shaped flippers, and a characteristic postocular white spot (Heyning and Dahlheim 1988). A cosmopolitan species whose range extends from polar to tropical waters and from offshore to nearshore habitats, including enclosed seas, shallow bays, estuaries, and river mouths, they are the most widely distributed marine mammal. Most of their described ecology and behavior refers to the populations in the Pacific along the northwestern coast of North America, in waters off northern Norway, and in the higher latitudes of the Southern Ocean (Wade and Forney 2006, Jefferson et al 2008). Bolaños-Jiménez et al (2014) found that from 1866 to 2012 there were 176 records, which

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