Science
Killer whales are killer whales, right? It might be a lot more complicated than that
More than 150 years ago, a San Francisco whaler noticed something about killer whales that scientists may be about to formally recognize — at least in name.
Charles Melville Scammon submitted a manuscript to the Smithsonian in 1869 describing two species of killer whales inhabiting West Coast waters.
Now a new paper published in Royal Society Open Science uses genetic, behavioral, morphological and acoustic data to argue that the orcas in the North Pacific known as residents and transients are different enough to be distinct species. They propose using the same scientific names Scammon is believed to have coined in the 19th century.
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Killer whales, found in all oceans, are currently considered one global species. The new proposed species would mark the first split of the ferocious apex predators, which, if approved, could have significant conservation and scientific implications — in addition to furthering a decades-long quest to properly classify the whales.
The two proposed species may look indistinguishable to the untrained eye, but there are subtle differences in their fins and markings — and many more unseen ones. They don’t speak the same “language” or nosh on the same food. And they have no interest in hanging out with one another, despite often dwelling in the same waters. Most significantly, researchers say, their DNA shows clear distinction.
Transients — also called Bigg’s killer whales — hunt seals and other marine mammals in small packs in expansive waters stretching from Southern California to the Arctic Circle. And they’re not very chatty while they sneak up on prey — they need to maintain stealth. They sport pointy, triangle-shaped dorsal fins with a solid white “saddle patch” behind it.
Residents, meanwhile, stick to fish — primarily Chinook salmon. They love to gab and hang out with the family. In fact, most offspring stay with their mothers their entire lives. Because fish don’t hear very well, they’re free to chatter as they chow down. Residents hew closer to coastlines, from Central California to southeast Alaska, where salmon congregate. Their fins tend to curve back toward the tail and intrusions of black sometimes extend into their saddle patches.
A third type of killer whale roams the Pacific, but less is known about it; these offshore whales live farther out and prey on sharks and other large fish. A recent study found evidence of another, previously unknown group in the open ocean.
Taxonomy, the scientific discipline of naming and classifying animals, is how we break down critters into species. It’s an intellectual exercise that has real-world consequences.
“We’re facing a global conservation crisis, losing species that we don’t even know exist,” said Phillip Morin, the new study’s lead author and a marine mammal geneticist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
If you think of killer whales as one species — a big pie — then killing some of them off here might not be a cause for concern, Morin said. But if you start parsing out species and subspecies — slices of the pie — then it’s suddenly possible to lose a unique, irreplaceable group.
A portion of the fish-eating resident killer whales — known as Southern Residents — is already listed as endangered in the U.S. and Canada. Salmon depletion from overfishing and habitat destruction has starved them, and only about 75 are left now. But if they’re designated as part of a species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature will assess them (and transients) separately.
Study co-author Thomas Jefferson, a marine mammal biologist, also with NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, believes the residents would probably be categorized on the conservation union’s Red List as threatened or endangered, possibly even critically endangered.
About 20 years ago, when Morin first began his foray into the world of marine mammal genetics, he said there was agreement that the taxonomy of cetaceans — which includes whales, dolphins and porpoises — was “really poor.”
Classification of land animals is often done by measuring bones, but water dwellers are hard to collect and store. Researchers don’t have extensive collections of whale skulls in museums from around the world, and it isn’t necessarily ethical to acquire them. They needed other tools — such as better genetics, drone recordings and satellite tagging — which didn’t exist yet.
“The genetics has now finally come to the point where we can do this on a broad scale and get the kind of resolution and information that we didn’t have,” Morin said.
Over two decades, researchers went from analyzing thousands to billions of base pairs of DNA from individual killer whales. The enhanced detail has allowed scientists to “look back through time,” Morin said, and answer questions about which killer whale populations are closely related — or not — and when differences emerged.
Based on their genetic analyses, Morin and his team estimate that transients diverged from other orcas between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, while residents began to split off about 100,000 years ago.
Only a small tissue sample is needed to analyze killer whale DNA to tell a big genetic story.
“We can actually go out with a crossbow and collect a little teeny bit of tissue from a living whale — just shoot a little dart at it and collect a little bit of skin,” Jefferson said.
Of course, scientists in the 19th century dedicated to describing and categorizing whales didn’t have access to this cutting-edge technology.
Virtually nothing was known about marine mammals of the West Coast of North America in the mid-1800s, when Charles Melville Scammon, the whaler, began meticulously documenting and measuring cetaceans, Jefferson said. (Scammon bears no relation to Herman Melville, author of whale-centric “Moby Dick.”)
When Scammon’s paper from 1869 describing a variety of cetaceans of the West Coast, including orcas, made it to the Smithsonian, he had “every reason to believe that his article would be well received,” according to “Beyond the Lagoon,” a biography of the seaman. He knew things no other zoologist did because of his proximity to the whales and keen eye.
In a paper penned three years later, Scammon paints a vivid picture of killer whales, from their “beautifully smooth and glossy skin” to their “somewhat military aspect,” even including drawings. He recounts a gruesome attack, seen in “Lower California,” by a trio of killer whales on a gray whale and her baby.
The orcas assaulted the pair for at least an hour, eventually killing the younger whale while exhausting the mother. “As soon as their prize had settled to the bottom, the trio band descended, bringing up large pieces of flesh in their mouths, which they devoured after coming to the surface,” Scammon wrote. “While gorging themselves in this wise, the old whale made her escape, leaving a track of gory water behind.”
What Scammon didn’t know was that his earlier manuscript would fall into the hands of Edward Drinker Cope, a naturalist who had a reputation for being overly ambitious and warring with colleagues for credit.
Cope, secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, slapped his own introduction on the paper with descriptions and Latin names of the orcas inhabiting the Northern Pacific.
Because of rules governing the scientific naming of animals, Cope would forever be credited with the names believed to have been chosen by Scammon. Nevermind that Cope probably never saw a living killer whale.
The paper also misidentified Scammon and gave him little credit. When the whaler saw it, he was furious, according to the biography.
“It‘s a really, really strange and very weird and dramatic episode in the history of marine mammal biology, how these names came about,” Jefferson said.
Many of Scammon’s observations turned out to be erroneous. Often he logged differences between male and female killer whales rather than differences between species, said Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for NOAA. But his inquiry set the stage for more rigorous research to come.
Morin and his research team propose using the same Latin names from more than a century ago for the species they identified in their recent study.
The researchers call transients Orcinus rectipinnus, noting that, in Latin, “recti means right or upright, and pinna means fin, feather, or wing, most likely referring to the tall erect dorsal fin of males.”
Residents, meanwhile, are labeled Orcinus ater. Ater means black or dark, according to the study, “which probably refers to the largely black color of this species.”
All killer whales are currently classified as Orcinus orca, a macabre nod to their vicious reputation. Some say Orcinus means “of the kingdom of the dead,” a reference to Orcus, a Roman god of the underworld.
There are also common, or informal names, to consider.
The researchers suggest sticking with “Bigg’s” for transients, honoring Michael Bigg, the father of modern-day orca research.
The team plans to consult tribes who have a connection to the resident whales, including the Lummi Nation and Tulalip tribes of the Northwest, before settling on a common name, according to Milstein.
“They decided not to try to rush it to match the paper, but to take the time to make sure it is done in a way that everyone understands and believes in,” Milstein said.
John Durban, an associate professor with Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute and co-author of the new study, said he supports using the name “Blackfish,” which is used by some tribes in the Pacific Northwest.
Complex rules govern the discipline of taxonomy, and typically a specimen must be designated as a reference point when it’s first named.
However, the original specimens studied by Scammon were destroyed or disappeared. According to Jefferson, one at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco was wiped out by the historic 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire. Another, believed to have been in Scammon’s personal possession, can’t be found.
So the researchers found stand-ins at the Smithsonian.
Whether the broader community of marine mammal biologists will accept the researchers’ findings — and adopt Scammon’s and Cope’s names — will soon be determined.
The proposal is slated to go before a committee from the Society for Marine Mammalogy, which will vote in a few months on whether to greenlight designation of the species. Jefferson and another author of the new study sit on the committee and will recuse themselves from the vote.
Even today, Scammon has to contend with detractors.
Robert Pitman, a marine ecologist with Oregon State University who was not involved in the study, isn’t “entirely happy” with the names put forth.
The names were conceived “before science, by and large, especially biological science, had any rigor,” Pitman said. “And then the descriptions that [Scammon] puts with those names are just so vague. I’m kind of doubtful that those names will stand.”
Names aside, he expects most marine mammalogists will be on board with the proposed species; many have suspected species-level differences among the well-studied whales of the Pacific Northwest. He said the case for splitting off the mammal-eating transients is particularly strong.
The newly identified species are believed to be harbingers of more to come.
Pitman, who has studied killer whales in Antarctica for over 10 years, said there’s a similar divide between mammal- and fish-eating killer whales in those waters.
There are five identified types, and Pitman thinks at least one will turn out to be a different species. Some look dramatically different.
“And it’ll probably be easier now that somebody’s already made the first step in saying, ‘There’s more than one species out there.’”
For the last few years, the Marine Mammal Center has been testing any patients with bird-flu-like symptoms, which include respiratory and neurological problems, for the virus.
California lawmakers are taking aim at proposed rules to implement a state law aimed at curbing plastic waste, saying the draft regulations proposed by CalRecycle undermine the letter and intent of the legislation.
In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and two of his top administrators, the lawmakers said CalRecycle exceeded its authority by drafting regulations that don’t abide by the terms set out by the law, Senate Bill 54.
“While we support many changes in the current draft regulations, we have identified several provisions that are inconsistent with the governing statute … and where CalRecycle has exceeded its authority under the law,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Newsom, California Environmental Protection agency chief Yana Garcia, and Zoe Heller, director of the state’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, or CalRecycle.
The letter, which was written by Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) and Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), was signed by 21 other lawmakers, including Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) and Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates) and Monique Limón (D-Goleta).
CalRecycle submitted informal draft regulations two weeks ago that are designed to implement the law, which was authored by Allen, and signed into law by Newsom in 2022.
The lawmakers’ concerns are directed at the draft regulations’ potential approval of polluting recycling technologies — which the language of the law expressly prohibits — as well as the document’s expansive exemption for products and packaging that fall under the purview of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
The inclusion of such blanket exemptions is “not only contrary to the statute but also risks significantly increasing the program’s costs,” the lawmakers wrote. They said the new regulations allow “producers to unilaterally determine which products are subject to the law, without a requirement or process to back up such a claim.”
Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesman for the governor, said in an email that Newsom “was clear when he asked CalRecycle to restart these regulations that they should work to minimize costs for small businesses and families, and these rules are a step in the right direction …”
At a workshop held at the agency’s headquarters in Sacramento this week, CalRecycle staff responded to similar criticisms, and underscored that these are informal draft regulations, which means they can be changed.
“I know from comments we’ve already been receiving that some of the provisions, as we have written them … don’t quite come across in the way that we intended,” said Karen Kayfetz, chief of CalRecycle’s Product Stewardship branch, adding that she was hopeful “a robust conversation” could help highlight areas where interpretations of the regulations’ language differs from the agency’s intent.
“It was not our intent, of course, to ever go outside of the statute, and so to the extent that it may be interpreted in the language that we’ve provided, that there are provisions that extend beyond … it’s our wish to narrow that back down,” she said.
These new draft regulations are the expedited result of the agency’s attempt to satisfy Newsom’s concerns about the law, which he said could increase costs to California households if not properly implemented.
Newsom rejected the agency’s first attempt at drafting regulations — the result of nearly three years of negotiations by scores of stakeholders, including plastic producers, package developers, agricultural interests, environmental groups, municipalities, recycling companies and waste haulers — and ordered the waste agency to start the process over.
Critics say the new draft regulations cater to industry and could result in even higher costs to both California households, which have seen large increases in their residential waste hauling fees, as well as to the state’s various jurisdictions, which are taxed with cleaning up plastic waste and debris clogging the state’s rivers, highways, beaches and parks.
The law is molded on a series of legislative efforts described as Extended Producer Responsibility laws, which are designed to shift the cost of waste removal and disposal from the state’s jurisdictions and taxpayers to the industries that produce the waste — theoretically incentivizing a circular economy, in which product and packaging producers develop materials that can be reused, recycled or composted.
As promised, federal health officials have dropped longstanding recommendations that healthy children and healthy pregnant women should get the COVID-19 vaccines.
“The COVID-19 vaccine schedule is very clear. The vaccine is not recommended for pregnant women. The vaccine is not recommended for healthy children,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a post on X on Friday.
In formal documents, health officials offer “no guidance” on whether pregnant women should get the vaccine, and ask that parents talk with a healthcare provider before getting the vaccine for their children.
The decision was done in a way that is still expected to require insurers to pay for COVID-19 vaccines for children should their parents still want the shots for them.
The new vaccine guidelines were posted to the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Thursday.
The insurance question
It wasn’t immediately clear whether insurers will still be required under federal law to pay for vaccinations for pregnant women.
The Trump administration’s decision came amid criticism from officials at the nation’s leading organizations for pediatricians and obstetricians. Some doctors said there is no new evidence to support removing the recommendation that healthy pregnant women and healthy children should get the COVID vaccine.
“This situation continues to make things unclear and creates confusion for patients, providers and payers,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a statement Friday.
Earlier in the week, the group’s president, Dr. Steven Fleischman, said the science hasn’t changed, and that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe during pregnancy, and protects both the mom-to-be and their infants after birth.
“It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic,” Fleischman said in a statement.
Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, criticized the recommendation change as being rolled out in a “conflicting, confusing” manner, with “no explanation of the evidence used to reach their conclusions.”
“For many families, the COVID vaccine will remain an important way they protect their child and family from this disease and its complications, including long COVID,” Kressly said in a statement.
Some experts said the Trump administration should have waited to hear recommendations from a committee of doctors and scientists that typically advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on immunization recommendations, which is set to meet in late June.
California’s view
The California Department of Public Health on Thursday said it supported the longstanding recommendation that “COVID-19 vaccines be available for all persons aged 6 months and older who wish to be vaccinated.”
The changes come as the CDC has faced an exodus of senior leaders and has lacked an acting director. Typically, as was the case during the first Trump administration and in the Biden administration, it is the CDC director who makes final decisions on vaccine recommendations. The CDC director has traditionally accepted the consensus viewpoint of the CDC’s panel of doctors and scientists serving on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Even with the longstanding recommendations, vaccination rates were relatively low for children and pregnant women. As of late April, 13% of children, and 14.4% of pregnant women, had received the latest updated COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC. About 23% of adults overall received the updated vaccine, as did 27.8% of seniors age 65 and over.
The CDC estimates that since October, there have been 31,000 to 50,000 COVID deaths and between 270,000 and 430,000 COVID hospitalizations.
Here are some key points about the CDC’s decision:
New vaccination guidance for healthy children
Previously, the CDC’s guidance was simple: everyone ages 6 months and up should get an updated COVID vaccination. The most recent version was unveiled in September, and is officially known as the 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccine.
As of Thursday, the CDC, on its pediatric immunization schedule page, says that for healthy children — those age 6 months to 17 years — decisions about COVID vaccination should come from “shared clinical decision-making,” which is “informed by a decision process between the healthcare provider and the patient or parent/guardian.”
“Where the parent presents with a desire for their child to be vaccinated, children 6 months and older may receive COVID-19 vaccination, informed by the clinical judgment of a healthcare provider and personal preference and circumstances,” the CDC says.
The vaccine-skeptic secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., contended in a video posted on Tuesday there was a “lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”
However, an earlier presentation by CDC staff said that, in general, getting an updated vaccine provides both children and adults additional protection from COVID-related emergency room and urgent care visits.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert, said he would have preferred the CDC retain its broader recommendation that everyone age 6 months and up get the updated vaccine.
“It’s simpler,” Chin-Hong said. He added there’s no new data out there that to him suggests children shouldn’t be getting the updated COVID vaccine.
A guideline that involves “shared decision-making,” Chin-Hong said, “is a very nebulous recommendation, and it doesn’t result in a lot of people getting vaccines.”
Kressly, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the shared clinical decision-making model is challenging to implement “because it lacks clear guidance for the conversations between a doctor and a family. Doctors and families need straightforward, evidence-based guidance, not vague, impractical frameworks.”
Some experts had been worried that the CDC would make a decision that would’ve ended the federal requirement that insurers cover the cost of COVID-19 vaccines for children. The out-of-pocket cost for a COVID-19 vaccine can reach around $200.
New vaccine guidance for pregnant women
In its adult immunization schedule for people who have medical conditions, the CDC now says it has “no guidance” on whether pregnant women should get the COVID-19 vaccine.
In his 58-second video on Tuesday, Kennedy did not explain why he thought pregnant women should not be recommended to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Chin-Hong, of UCSF, called the decision to drop the vaccination recommendation for pregnant women “100%” wrong.
Pregnancy brings with it a relatively compromised immune system. Pregnant women have “a high chance of getting infections, and they get more serious disease — including COVID,” Chin-Hong said.
A pregnant woman getting vaccinated also protects the newborn. “You really need the antibodies in the pregnant person to go across the placenta to protect the newborn,” Chin-Hong said.
It’s especially important, Chin-Hong and others say, because infants under 6 months of age can’t be vaccinated against COVID-19, and they have as high a risk of severe complications as do seniors age 65 and over.
Not the worst-case scenario for vaccine proponents
Earlier in the week, some experts worried the new rules would allow insurers to stop covering the cost of the COVID vaccine for healthy children.
Their worries were sparked by the video message on Tuesday, in which Kennedy said that “the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.”
By late Thursday, the CDC came out with its formal decision — the agency dropped the recommendation for healthy children, but still left the shot on the pediatric immunization schedule.
Leaving the COVID-19 vaccine on the immunization schedule “means the vaccine will be covered by insurance” for healthy children, the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement.
How pharmacies and insurers are responding
There are some questions that don’t have immediate answers. Will some vaccine providers start requiring doctor’s notes in order for healthy children and healthy pregnant women to get vaccinated? Will it be harder for children and pregnant women to get vaccinated at a pharmacy?
In a statement, CVS Pharmacy said it “follows federal guidance and state law regarding vaccine administration and are monitoring any changes that the government may make regarding vaccine eligibility.” The insurer Aetna, which is owned by CVS, is also monitoring any changes federal officials make to COVID-19 vaccine eligibility “and will evaluate whether coverage adjustments are needed.”
Blue Shield of California said it will not change its practices on covering COVID-19 vaccines.
“Despite the recent federal policy change on COVID-19 vaccinations for healthy children and pregnant women, Blue Shield of California will continue to cover COVID-19 vaccines for all eligible members,” the insurer said in a statement. “The decision on whether to receive a COVID-19 vaccine is between our member and their provider. Blue Shield does not require prior authorization for COVID-19 vaccines.”
Under California law, health plans regulated by the state Department of Managed Health Care must cover COVID-19 vaccines without requiring prior authorization, the agency said Friday. “If consumers access these services from a provider in their health plan’s network, they will not need to pay anything for these services,” the statement said.
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