Granny the killer whale is believed to have died since she hasn't been spotted in months.
Granny, who swam in the seas near Washington state, hasn't been seen since Oct. 12 when she was leading her pod north through the Haro Strait. The Center for Whale Research said it's very likely the killer whale has passed away.
“Perhaps other dedicated whale-watchers have seen her since then, but by year’s end she is officially missing from the SRKW population, and with regret we now consider her deceased,” Ken Balcomb wrote on the Center for Whale Research's website.
“We knew this day would come, and each year that she returned with the rest of J pod brought us closer to this inevitable moment,” the Center for Whale Research said on its Facebook page. “With heavy hearts we have to say goodbye to yet another southern resident, perhaps the most loved and known to all and the oldest orca to date.”
According to the Center, Granny’s pod, the “J” group, includes two dozen orcas, and the killer whales spend a lot of their time swimming near the Pacific coast of Washington and British Columbia.
While the Granny's official age is unknown, she’s believed to have been between the ages of 80 and 105, and was known as one of the world’s longest-living orcas.
“She is one of only a few ‘resident’ whales for which we do not know the precise age, because she was born long before our study began,” Balcomb wrote. “In 1987, we estimated that she was at least 45 years old and was more likely to have been 76 years old.”
Granny’s passing comes just weeks after another orca in her group, member J34, died.
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