Killer Whale Orky Died of Old Age, Autopsy Indicates

Preliminary results of a necropsy of Orky, Sea World’s performing killer whale, indicate that it died of old age, the aquatic park announced Tuesday.

“The gross findings of the necropsy supported our original diagnosis of an advanced geriatric condition,” said a statement issued by Jim Antrim, general curator at the park. “Final confirmation of this diagnosis will have to await the results of microbiology and histopathology tests, which will take six to eight weeks to complete.”

Dan LeBlanc, chief spokesman for the park, said the autopsy revealed obvious signs of Orky’s age. The oldest killer whale in captivity, Orky, a male, was estimated to be 27 to 32 years old. Biologists say male killer whales live at least 30 years in the wild, although some contend that the average life span is at least one to two decades longer.

“As we looked at his organs it was obvious. You could see that many of the organs had degenerated,” LeBlanc said.

Orky sank to the bottom of his pool and died early Monday, just three days after the calf it fathered was born to one of the three adult females at Sea World here. A second calf that Orky sired is expected to be born soon at the Sea World in San Antonio, Tex.

But, even though Orky’s death ends his contribution to Sea World’s whale breeding program, the autopsy also yielded a legacy that will live on in cell cultures, DNA analyses and studies of his anatomy by scientists.

Used to controversy over the idea of keeping huge mammals in captivity, Sea World executives were reacting cautiously Tuesday to questions about what would happen to Orky’s body.

But LeBlanc acknowledged that samples of tissue from Orky are being given to whale researchers around the country to help answer questions about killer whales that cannot be addressed in any other way.

“From his death they can go in and investigate in more detail maybe some of the processes that contributed to his death and learn how to prolong life,” said Jim Lecky, protected species branch chief for the National Marine Fisheries Service’s regional office in San Pedro.

At UC Santa Cruz, marine biologists might be interested in studying the sound-producing structures in Orky’s head “to see if our ideas about sound production and its conduction out of the head would apply to killer whales, like it has to the dolphins we have been working on,” said Ken Marten, coordinator of the bioacoustics laboratory there.

Even Orky’s skeleton--cleaned of flesh and reconstructed in the same way that dinosaur bones are--could not only provide an awe-inspiring exhibit for visitors but also show how bone structure affects behavior.

“I’m so excited about the bones because they are so beautiful,” said Deborah Duffield, a Portland State University biology professor who specializes in anatomical and genetic analysis of marine mammals. She has helped reconstruct skeletons for Sea World in the past. “Bones have done so much to making people understand what these animals really are.”

On a more microscopic level, Duffield and others can be expected to use tissue samples from Orky’s corneas to grow cell cultures that can be preserved indefinitely for later genetic and other analyses. The hereditary chemical DNA in his tissues can be used to study genetic relationships among whales, perhaps relating it to what is known about whales in his native British Columbia.

Given the opposition to capturing whales, Orky’s status as a proven breeding male made him valuable to the future of Sea World’s popular killer whale shows in California, Texas, Florida and Ohio. Only one breeding male remains, and a second young male has yet to prove a successful breeder.

But the vagaries of chance and of killer whale society seem to be on Sea World’s side in pursuing the breeding program that could assure the parks’ supply of Shamu’s to amaze audiences.

The young male, who is about 12 years old, in the next five years will be reaching the stage at which he will likely become an effective breeder--at the same time the older male, which is 20 to 25 years old, can be expected to begin declining, Duffield said. Research on whale societies in the wild and the experience in captivity have shown that a single male can easily be used to breed with multiple females, biologists say.