Whale Sounds
Orca vocalize while going about their various activities. The clicks you hear in some of the audio files are the sounds Orca use to echo locate food and other underwater objects. The other sounds are calls that the whales use to communicate with each other.
The forehead (or melon of an Orca) is used to generate the wide variety of sounds the whale is capable of producing. Sounds are generated when the whale forces air in and out of the complex network of passages and cavities in the melon. You can learn more about and hear samples of echo location and vocalizations on the Wild Killer Whale Adoption Program's website.
Resident, transient, and offshore Orca have very different vocabularies. Both the sound of the calls and the number of calls vary substantially from population to population.
Transient Orca vocalize significantly less than residents because they normally don't use sound while foraging for food. Residents will send out calls to other residents and use sonar clicks to locate their prey. Transients, on the other hand, usually hunt silently, listening and looking for their prey. It is speculated that the reason for this is that the dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions that constitute the transient's primary prey could recognize transient calls and thereby rob the transients of the advantage of surprise. Transients normally begin to vocalize during or after an attack.
As you listen to the sound files below, the differences between resident clans should become apparent. Note how very different the sounds made by transient Orca are from their offshore and resident cousins. The sound files are in RealAudio® format and require the latest version of RealPlayer™. If you don't have the latest version of RealPlayer installed, you can get if for free by clicking on the link below.
Most of the sounds below came from the Blackfish Sound: Underwater Communications of Killer Whales CD by John Ford, the researcher who discovered that there are different Orca dialects. You can get a free copy of the CD by making a very modest contribution to killer whale research at the Killer Whale Adoption Program homepage.
Residents
- A1, A4, and A5 subpods foraging. a-forage.ra [112K]
- A pod. as.ra [43K]
- A and D pods resting. a-d-rest.ra [72K]
- A and D pods socializing. a-d-soc.ra [118K]
- A5 and D1 pods. a5-d1.ra [112]
- G clan. g-clan.ra [51K]
- I31 and G1 pods. i31-g1-t.ra [118K
- J1 pod foraging. j1-f.ra [120K
- J clan. j-clan.ra [59K
- R clan. r-clan.ra [58K]
- R's and J's socializing. r1-js.ra [94K]
Offshores
- Offshores in Johnstone Strait. offshores.ra [86K]
Transients
- Transients in Johnstone Strait. transients.ra [98K]
- Transients possibly making a kill underwater in nearby Beaver Cove. The story and sound file are here.
- Transients making a sea lion kill in Hardy Bay, British Columbia in January of 1999. The story is here.
Dolphins
- Pacific whitesided dolphins in Johnstone Strait. dolphins.ra [88K]