Refloating of Male Orca, Papamoa, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand

[ShamuTrainerG]

Nobbie is such a beautiful NZ orca!

[LauieChan]

Oh wow, he's huge.

[GoalHoops22]

woo! so they were letting him go?

[ianam1983]

@GoalHoops22 No, he was stranded and they managed to get him back into the water. He wasn't captive.

It's worth noting that thirty years is pretty old by wild male orca standards, and he may have been stranding because it's near his time anyway. Still, it was a nice gesture.

[clojap]

@ianam1983 I've always read that Wild Orcas can live to be 60 years old and it's only in captivity where 30 is considered old.

[ianam1983]

@clojap No, most male wild orcas die in their late 20s or 30s, going by the well-studied Resident populations. Very few live to forty or more. It's the females that live longer in the wild, generally into their forties, sometimes fifties or sixties. A couple of Southern Resident females are thought to be even older, but those are only estimates and we have no way of knowing. We've only been studying them since the 1970s.

[chi2capcorn]

@ianam1983 Female orcas reach maturity at 6-10 years old, and males at 12-16 years old. Male orcas have a life expectancy of 50-60 years. Females have a life expectancy of 90 years.

[ianam1983]

@chi2capcorn This is widely quoted, but there are no solid statistics to prove it. The higher ages of some of the wild animals studied are guesswork, but quoted as fact. Even if some of the animals in the study populations are said to be 80 or 90 years old, this does not make it an average lifespan. Most of the actual ages at time of death for wild males were in the late twenties and thirties. That's based on the official stats.

[chi2capcorn]

@ianam1983 That 100% inaccurate.

[ianam1983]

@chi2capcorn It is not. The statistics you are quoting, however, are guesswork at best and vastly miscalculated at worst. I wouldn't mind so much if they weren't thrown around like solid facts, but they are. Look at the numbers for yourself. The Southern Residents are particularly well-documented. You want to see the actual lifespan of male orcas in the wild? Do the math. It's not hard.

[chi2capcorn]

@ianam1983 I did thats how I know you were wrong, you're right though it wasn't that hard.

[davidsquall351]

thats cool!