Orcas (killer whales) off Pico

The animal

The orca, Orcinus orca, also called the killer whale, is not a whale in the narrow sense. It is the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family, the same family as the common dolphin, which is why this site groups it with the dolphins. It is a toothed predator that hunts in family groups, and the tall black dorsal fin and white eye patch make it one of the easiest cetaceans to recognise at a distance.

What the records show

OBIS holds 67 orca records inside the box of sea around Pico that this site queries. That is the smallest count of the five species on these pages by a long way: the sperm whale has 11,027 in the same box, and even the blue whale, a spring visitor, has many times more.

The records fall in six months, March to August. April is the busiest, with 25 records, and June is close behind. May has fewer, and March, July and August hold only a few between them. With counts this small, the monthly pattern is fragile: one well-documented encounter can produce several records and move a month up or down the ranking on its own.

How to read that

These are records, not animals, and not a forecast. A record is one logged observation, so a single group followed by several boats can produce several. Records also depend on who is out looking, and far more boats go out in the warmer months, so the absence of winter records says little. What the data does support is that orcas have been logged in these waters, in spring and early summer, and that they are an uncommon entry in the record compared with the year-round sperm whale and the dolphins.

Conservation status

Wikidata, citing the IUCN Red List, gives the orca's status as Data Deficient: there is not enough information to assign it a threat category, which is a statement about the evidence, not a statement that the species is safe. It was described by Linnaeus in 1758.

Related

• All five species, and how the counts are built: whale and dolphin species off Pico.
• The other large spring record: the fin whale.
• Every species month by month: the season calendar.
• The approach rules and the licensed operators: whale watching on Pico.