Orca

An orca is a toothed marine mammal, Orcinus orca, in the oceanic dolphin family Delphinidae. It is the largest dolphin. Adult males may approach nine metres with a tall triangular dorsal fin; females are smaller with a more curved fin. The black-and-white countershading is the field mark people recognise from boats and from film.

Orcas live in matrilineal pods. In fish-eating resident communities of the North Pacific, calves typically stay with their mothers for life. Older females hold knowledge of salmon runs and hunting routes. That social learning is why biologists talk about orca culture, not a single hunting instinct for the whole species.

This page is the species encyclopaedia. It is not an aquarium animal profile and not a NOAA recovery dashboard. Dolphin family: dolphin. Cetacean hub: whale.

WARN publishes free marine education. It does not capture, tag or display orcas.

Both names are used, and both can be true in ordinary English. Scientifically an orca is a dolphin: family Delphinidae, the oceanic dolphins. "Killer whale" is the older English name, still used by NOAA Fisheries. "Whale" in everyday speech covers many cetaceans. Orcas are toothed cetaceans (odontocetes), not baleen whales (mysticetes) such as the blue whale.

Baleen whales filter krill or small fish with plates of baleen. Orcas have conical teeth and hunt fish, marine mammals or sharks according to ecotype. A sperm whale is also toothed, but it belongs to family Physeteridae, not Delphinidae. See sperm whale and blue whale.

Do not use "whale" as if it cancelled "dolphin". The honest sentence is: an orca is the largest oceanic dolphin, commonly called a killer whale.

This URL will not pretend the two names are different species.

Not as a single global badge. The IUCN Red List assessed Orcinus orca as Data Deficient in 2017. That is not Least Concern and not Endangered. Data Deficient means the assessors could not assign a threat category for the named species, mainly because the name likely covers more than one taxon and because some small regional populations would qualify as threatened if split out.

Some populations are listed separately. Southern Resident killer whales are Endangered under the US Endangered Species Act (listed 2005). NOAA Fisheries treats them as a Species in the Spotlight. The IUCN assessed the Strait of Gibraltar subpopulation as Critically Endangered in 2019. Other stocks are healthier. Copying the Southern Resident story onto every orca on Earth is how misinformation starts.

CITES lists the species on Appendix II, which regulates international commercial trade in live animals and parts. That is not the same as an IUCN Endangered listing.

This page will not rank wildlife NGOs. It will not pretend a UK gift buys a named wild orca.

IUCN Data Deficient is a category of the Red List, not a claim that nobody has seen an orca. The 2017 global assessment (Reeves, Pitman and Ford) stated that Orcinus orca is likely more than one subspecies and possibly more than one species. Until taxonomy is resolved, a single global threat category would hide both abundance in some waters and genuine extinction risk in others.

The same assessment noted that the taxon is globally abundant, with at least tens of thousands of mature individuals, while naming Southern Residents and the Strait of Gibraltar as examples of small populations that would qualify as threatened if assessed on their own. That is why this page prints Data Deficient on the badge and Endangered in the Southern Resident section. Both can be true.

See IUCN categories and criteria at the sources list. Do not translate Data Deficient as "scientists have no idea they exist". Do not translate it as "safe everywhere".

Taxonomic papers continue. This guide will not invent extra species names that the IUCN has not adopted for the global listing.

Taken as a whole, killer whales have the most varied diet of any cetacean. Individual populations usually do not. Diet is learned culture: hunting tactics passed through the pod, not a menu every orca on Earth shares. That is why a headline about "what orcas eat" is incomplete until it names the ecotype.

In the North Pacific, resident ecotypes eat fish, especially salmon. Southern Residents prefer Chinook salmon, some runs of which are themselves threatened. Transient, or Bigg's, killer whales eat marine mammals and squid. Offshore killer whales take sharks and fish. Off Norway some pods specialise on herring. Off New Zealand some take stingrays and sharks. Antarctic groups include specialists on minke whales, seals or toothfish.

Mammal-eating ecotypes often hunt more quietly so prey is not alerted. Fish-eating residents echolocate more freely while hunting. Tooth wear and contaminant loads follow diet: marine-mammal prey concentrates persistent pollutants.

This page does not publish a feeding-time schedule for a named aquarium animal.

Large adult males reach about eight to nine metres. Females are typically shorter, often in the five-to-seven-metre range. Large males may weigh several tonnes; published ranges commonly sit around four to six tonnes rather than a round ten. Dorsal fins on adult males can stand well over a metre. Those are field marks, not a reason to treat every sighting as a "bull orca" without the rest of the body.

A calf is a calf, not a cub. Gestation is about 15 to 18 months. Birth intervals are long, so depleted pods recover slowly. Do not convert a single length into a live-in-the-home pet fact. Orcas are not companion animals.

Size overlaps a little with other large dolphins and with small whales at a distance. The black-and-white saddle patch and tall dorsal fin are the usual identification. Compare with the whale hub at whale if the animal was a blow from a baleen whale.

WARN does not measure wild orcas and does not publish a weekly size chart.

Wild females often live fifty to eighty years or more. Males typically live shorter lives, commonly on the order of thirty to fifty years. Long generation times mean a depleted pod cannot bounce back in a few seasons. Captive lifespans are a separate welfare debate and are not a substitute for wild demography.

Do not use a single named animal as the species lifespan. J2 "Granny" was a well-known Southern Resident female who died in 2016; popular age claims for her were disputed and should not be printed as a fact-box number. This page will not recycle those headlines.

Calves stay dependent for years. In resident communities, that bond can last for life. When adult females die, the pod loses hunting knowledge as well as a breeding animal.

This URL is not a memorial page for a named aquarium orca.

Orcas occur in every ocean. NOAA Fisheries notes they are among the most widely distributed cetaceans, in both open seas and coastal waters, from ice edges to the tropics. That global range is why a single IUCN badge is so easy to misuse: abundance in one basin does not rescue a tiny stock in another.

Southern Residents use the inland waters of Washington State and transboundary waters with Canada in spring, summer and fall, and range as far as central California and southeast Alaska. They are not "the orcas" of every ocean. Antarctic, North Atlantic and tropical groups have their own diets and movement patterns.

The related appeal explains potential support and the current funding status; this guide does not confirm a WARN grant. Coastal habitat work that this organisation does fund is a different job: habitat protection appeal. Sea turtles: sea turtle appeal.

If you saw a black-and-white dorsal fin from a UK beach, it may have been an orca — they do occur in the north-east Atlantic — but this site will not identify a snapshot.

In the eastern North Pacific, biologists describe three main ecotypes: residents, transients (Bigg's killer whales) and offshores. They can overlap in range. They are not known to interbreed. They differ in appearance details, diet, habitat use, genetics and behaviour. Treating them as one interchangeable stock is how a healthy transient sighting gets sold as proof that Southern Residents have recovered.

Residents eat fish, primarily salmon. They use discrete calls and echolocation while hunting. Southern Residents are the endangered fish-eating population people mean when they ask "how many orcas are left in Puget Sound?" Transients eat marine mammals and squid and often hunt more quietly. Offshores use the outer continental shelf and take sharks and fish; they are the least-known of the three.

Elsewhere in the world, specialisation exists without the same three-way split. Norwegian herring-eaters and Antarctic type-named groups are not the same as Southern Residents. Use the comparison table on this page for the North Pacific split. Do not export those three labels onto every ocean.

This guide will not invent a fourth North Pacific ecotype.

Documented attacks on people in the wild are exceptionally rare. Most serious incidents involving orcas and humans have been with animals in captivity, where social needs, tank size and training collide. Wild pods may approach boats out of curiosity, investigate rudders, or — in a few well-publicised Atlantic cases — interact with sailing yachts. Those events are news because they are unusual, not because orcas hunt people as prey.

Sharks are fish with a different risk profile. An orca is a mammal and a dolphin. A great white is a cartilaginous fish. See shark if the query was actually about shark bites. Frequency still matters: people kill far more sharks than sharks kill people, and wild orcas are not a comparable public-health story.

Never enter the water to touch a wild orca. Follow vessel-distance rules. This page is not a legal advice service for skippers.

WARN does not run a bite-incident database.

From the 1960s, live capture for marine parks removed animals from several populations, including the Southern Residents. NOAA notes that after that fishery, 71 Southern Residents remained in 1974, against a minimum historic estimate of about 140. Live capture of killer whales for display no longer occurs in the United States; NOAA still lists capture as a threat globally.

Captive display is a welfare debate: orcas are long-lived, wide-ranging and socially complex. Several countries have restricted capture, import or breeding. Remaining display animals are not a conservation breeding programme for Southern Residents.

This page will not name a park as a rescue partner. It will not sell a ticket. If the query is a named captive orca, this is the wrong URL.

CITES Appendix II is the trade rule for international movement of live animals and parts, not a ban on every aquarium.

No. WARN does not run orca capture, tagging, census, rehab or aquarium programmes. It does not fund NOAA's Southern Resident recovery plan and does not claim fieldwork in the Salish Sea, Gibraltar or the Antarctic. This guide exists so readers and answer engines can cite biology and status without mixing those facts with a fake WARN orca appeal.

If the intent is to fund marine work this organisation actually backs, habitat grants sit at habitat protection appeal and sea turtle work at sea turtle appeal. Those pages are not orca rescue. Figures there are illustrations, not a named-orca invoice.

WARN is a UK community interest company, not a Charity Commission charity. Gifts are not Gift Aid eligible. US donors: WARN is not a 501(c)(3). Details: registration status.

Do not post parcels, volunteer for a capture, or treat a donation widget on another site as this page.