Behavior and Feeding Summaries for Killer Whales in Alaska: 2003 - 2012

Killer whales were monitored in Prince William Sound, Alaska with funding from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS) Trustee Council in 1989, 1990, and 1991 (damage assessment) and in 1993 (restoration monitoring). Monitoring was continued in 1995-2011 as part of the EVOS Trustee Council restoration program. The North Gulf Oceanic Society (NGOS) independently maintained a monitoring program in all other years since 1984. The goal of the photo monitoring has been to obtain identification photographs of all whales in all major resident pods and the AT1 transient group on an annual basis. Photo-identification techniques (after Bigg, et. al. 1990) were used to identify individual whales. The current photographic database includes tens of thousands of frames of film collected from 1984-2011 and is used to provide individual identifications for each encounter with whales. Vital rates for AB pod and all other frequently sighted resident pods have been calculated annually based on the photographic data.