Newborn orca brings holiday cheer — and fear — to Seattle whale watchers

What might be the world’s most famous orca has given birth again.

Orca J35 made world headlines in 2018 when she carried her dead baby on her nose for 17 days. Her apparent 1,000-mile tour of grief threw a spotlight on the plight of the southern resident killer whales, endangered by pollution, ship noise, and a lack of salmon to eat.

RELATED: Mama orca drops her dead calf after 17 days, ending 'tour of grief'

On Friday, Seattle whale watcher and nurse Brittany Philbin took photos of a group of orcas including J35 while riding the Edmond-Kingston ferry on Washington’s Puget Sound.

At home, while looking through her photos on a large screen, she noticed something she hadn’t observed when looking through her camera.

“There’s this orange, very tiny whale you could tell was just days old,” Philbin said.

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The baby’s tiny dorsal fin was tucked along J35’s side, with five other family members swimming nearby.

On Saturday, near sunset on the shortest day of the year, Seattle wildlife biologist Kersti Muul spotted J35 nursing the newborn calf off West Seattle.

Muul was making Christmas cookies when she got word that the endangered orcas’ J Pod, including the new calf, was swimming past West Seattle. She rushed down to a nearby beach to see them.

Muul and Philbin run a WhatsApp group chat that notifies members of opportunities to see orcas and other wildlife in the central Puget Sound region.

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J Pod was scattered between West Seattle and Vashon Island, with one group of orcas swimming close enough to the Seattle shoreline for Muul to hear them breathing and see their dorsal fins wiggle.

“It was pouring all day, and then the sky parted,” Muul said. “The clouds moved. It was pink. The rain stopped, and there they were. And it was the solstice.”

Muul saw the baby surface as the whales traveled slowly to the north, then saw J35 turn on her side several times.

“Nursing is quick, so this seemed really slow in my mind. As you're watching, it was just so intimate and magical, and then I kind of realized, oh my gosh, she's nursing,” Muul said.

Muul said seeing the baby orca was intense, even overwhelming.

“It's a bunch of different emotions,” she said. “You're fearful because you don't want to have hope that the baby's going to survive and then, within a week or two, it's gone.”

Most young southern resident orcas die in the womb or shortly after birth. At least five southern resident orcas’ pregnancies appeared to end in miscarriages in 2023, according to orca researcher Deborah Giles with the nonprofit Wild Orca.

The last two calves born to the endangered orcas died before shortly after birth.

Researchers blame a shortage of Chinook salmon, as well as ship noise and toxic water pollution.

Starting in January, boaters in Washington state are required to stay 1,000 yards away from the southern residents, more than doubling the distance under previous state regulations.

As evening fell on the winter solstice, word of the orcas spread through Muul’s wildlife alerts, and more than 100 people gathered at West Seattle’s Lowman Beach Park in the twilight. Some screamed as they saw the whales. Others cried for joy.

“It's super emotional for these people because of what she did, what she endured,” Muul said.

It often takes multiple encounters for researchers to confidently determine the mother of a calf, according to the Friday Harbor-based Center for Whale Research, which keeps the official census of the southern residents.

Orcas and other whales are known to sometimes nurse babies other than their own.

On Tuesday afternoon, whale researchers confirmed the newborn calf is female and confirmed J35 as her mother.

They also gave the baby a name: J61.

"The team, including multiple experienced killer whale researchers, have expressed concern about the calf’s health based on the behavior of both J35 and J61," the Center for Whale Research said in a Facebook post. "J35 is an experienced mother, and we hope that she is able to keep J61 alive through these difficult early days."

J60, a newborn orca that died in January 2024, had been photographed swimming nuzzled up against four different female adults during his brief life, leaving researchers unsure who his mother was.

RELATED: Endangered baby orca J60 missing, presumed dead

West Seattle whale watchers got to see J35’s surviving offspring, a four-year-old male and a fourteen-year-old male, in addition to their newborn sister J61, on Saturday.