[Desmond]

Mike (J26) performing a powerful punt - with his fun little fluke nick and interesting underside markings on full display.
What even is water and mountains and also more water. Baah.

We can determine the sexes of adult orcas easily. Bigger bodies, bigger pectoral fins and dorsal fins, that neat little curl in the tips of their flukes -- those are all signs of big adult bulls. But calves... calves are different. They lack that dimorphism and, without an image of just the right angle, they often don't get determined until they reach the age where bulls' dorsal fins really start to grow, in their early teens.
But sometimes, people get lucky.
When a calf is rolled onto their back - either on their own, by a family member, or just by the tossing water - the white mark between the twin flank "swoops" comes into view. A long, fairly thin one denotes a male (Mike's here is curiously chonky), and a shorter, squatter mark tags the females. This is how we know that Mike's youngest sibling, J50/Scarlet, was a female despite her having passed away at only three years old.

Mike himself is an interesting fellow with an interesting little family. He's easy to spot among the Southern Resident community, because his fin wobbles heavily when he surfaces at speed, like it's almost too heavy and too tall to bear its own weight. His saddle patch positively gapes on both sides like it, too, wants a share of salmon. I've had to look carefully to learn the differences between his dorsal fin shape and that of his yearmate's, my personal favorite J27/Blackberry - where Blackberry has a slight hump backward from the back of his fin, Mike's either goes down straight or even tips forward just a bit. Both boys seem to enjoy each others' company, as they're often near each other when their families are in the same area.

He was named after Mike Bigg, who pioneered studying orcas and devised the photo identification system that we use today to track individuals -- describing his markings as I just did, and taking photos of the eyepatches and saddles and dorsals, that's his legacy in action. Mike (the human) passed away in October of 1990, and Mike (the orca) was born in 1991.

Mike often stuck around his little sister, even while her health started to decline in a well-documented months-long ordeal in 2018. Her passing left him with their mother, J16/Slick, and sisters, J36/Alki, and J42/Echo, who is unfortunately inbred. Through genetic testing, he's found to have fathered at least three calves, one of which is deceased.
Slick was noted to be the oldest mother in the community after giving birth to Scarlet at the age of 43, and is currently believed to be the oldest whale in J Pod (L25 Ocean Sun is believed to be the oldest in the Southern Resident community as a whole). Scarlet was part of the "Baby Boom" in 2014 (Born late December) and was believed to have a difficult birth due to bright red rake marks on her back when she was first spotted. She was spunky and charming, springing herself up and out of the water and breaching multiple times in a row as if to announce to the whole world that she was there. Her decline, largely caused by parasites, happened right around the time J35/Tahlequah lost her newborn calf and carried its body for seventeen days, which brought attention to the population and its woes. NOAA attempted to feed her medicated salmon to treat infection and parasites, but she was last seen September 7, 2018. Her disappearance led to a search, but after multiple appearances of her family without her, she was presumed deceased.
Alki has had one son, Sonic, was also part of that "baby boom" of 2014. He was last spotted on September 15, 2017, "hours, if not minutes from death", being supported by Alki and another of Mike's yearmates, L85/Mystery. He was dreadfully skinny. After recovering from a period of apparent mourning where she was feared to be near death herself, Alki has since had two failed pregnancies.

[BlueEyedKite]

You got that scatter to do work for this masterpiece

[TheMamba]

What a playful boy! The Southern Residents are my favorites! Did you hear that J pod has a new calf? It was probably born on Christmas, or Christmas eve.