Tracking Local Killers--for Sake of Research

By RENEE TAWA

Jan. 4, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Say you have tracked her forever, and 15 months ago, you see her on the TV news, this petite 18-foot killer whale. She is ripping apart a great white shark and swimming away with its liver in her mouth, like a sort of Hannibal Lecter by the sea, off the Farallon Islands near San Francisco.

If you’re marine biologist Alisa Schulman-Janiger, 43, you hop up and down, and then you get a VCR tape rolling, and then you call your friends to brag about the shark-killing whale. She’s so cool, she’s so buff! This killer whale, the one Schulman-Janiger knows better than anyone, is probably still in California waters with her L.A. pod, a tight group that sometimes hangs out at the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Now. Picture the first afternoon of the ‘98-99 whale-watching season, the day after Christmas. Schulman-Janiger was at home in San Pedro when a friend called. Turn on your scanner, you should hear this.

Two skippers: “Look at that big boy! . . . Look at him go! . . . They’re gonna race to Alaska!”

Ten killer whales, spotted by a whale-watch boat a few miles off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Could it be? Did the L.A. pod come home?

Schulman-Janiger had not seen the L.A. pod in Palos Verdes since, oh, Feb. 13, 1988; other spotters last saw the killer whales in March 1990. Every season, she wondered how the pod was, especially her favorite, a perky male with a high-pitched whistle--he’s best friends with the shark-killing whale, and snuggles up to boats and sea lions.

It wasn’t just that Schulman-Janiger missed her buddies. Every sighting tells her something about the species and migration patterns, and adds to her killer research, which is known throughout the country. How far the pods travel. Why the whales are on the move--maybe the salmon run is down somewhere, or they’re moving with the squid. Or maybe they are gulping so many mackerel that the scar on one orca’s fin could be a bullet wound courtesy of a fisherman.

“It gives us a hint,” she says, “of what’s going in in the ecosystem.”

Schulman-Janiger pursues the killer whales as an unpaid volunteer, when she’s not teaching marine science at the San Pedro High School Marine Science Magnet. How human the orcas are! They’re smart, with quirky personalities and long-term relationships. In the ocean, she can watch two of the whales she knows, gal pals, who have surfaced and swum together the same way for decades.

But first they must come.

An Absence of Gray Whales

This season began with news service reports so discouraging that tourists were asking if the whale-watching boats would be going out at all.

According to the early reports, 24,000 gray whales were missing--by mid-December, not one had been spotted along the Oregon coast on their annual migration from Alaska to the warm waters of Mexico. The whales had never been this late before.

Schulman-Janiger wondered how accurate the reports were. By Christmas, spotters for the American Cetacean Society’s Los Angeles chapter had counted more than 60 gray whales, on track with last year’s numbers. (She directs the group’s annual gray whale census at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center in Palos Verdes and studies killer whales on the side.)

Census volunteers also watch to see who else comes along for the cruise--maybe the huge, mottled blue whales or the sperm whales that look like they’re doing headstands in the water. But a killer-whale sighting beats all. Local whale-watch skippers and cliff-top observers never count on seeing orcas within a few miles of shore. The orcas turn up irregularly, sometimes dozens in a season, sometimes none.

Now this. Two breathless skippers on a scanner, and Schulman-Janiger was sitting at home.

Oh, how could she have missed this sighting! That morning, on a boat, Schulman-Janiger had spotted a bunch of gray whales and dolphins but no killer whales, her passion for 15 years.

She knows the L.A. pod as if they were old friends. She knows that the TV reporters in San Francisco got it wrong initially when they said that a momma killer whale had sliced open the great white shark as food for her baby. She knows that this killer whale, with its unmistakable markings, is a shark killer period and probably has never been a mother. (It’s not unusual for a killer whale to eat a shark, but for the first time, a naturalist had caught it on video.)

On that hazy afternoon, Schulman-Janiger jiggled her scanner, but the batteries were low. She couldn’t radio the skippers or hear the names of their boats. About 4:30 p.m., she jumped in her Ford Escort and raced a mile to the coast with her husband, David Janiger, a marine scientist.

Could they spot the whales from shore? Probably not. Best bet was to find the boats and buttonhole the passengers. Maybe someone with a telephoto lens caught close-up features of the whales--one old guy in the L.A. pod, for instance, is missing the top foot of his dorsal fin. Please, please, not just blurry ‘I saw Shamu frolicking in the ocean’ shots.

Seeking Identify of Big Visitors

Maybe the whales were not the 13 L.A. guys that Schulman-Janiger started following in 1984. The whales could be transients, the kind that swoop into Southern California occasionally and eat gray whale calves for dinner. They could be a splinter group of fish eaters from British Columbia.

Schulman-Janiger probably knows them, whoever they are.

With a Northern California researcher, she has compiled a catalog with 270 mug shots of killer whales in California or Mexico and notes on each orca’s diet, migration habits and pod mates. Published by the National Marine Fisheries Service in mid-1998, the book has pictures shot by 73 contributors, including tourists on whale-watch boats. The catalog is the first of its kind.

“Even if I could get one I.D., one I.D., off it!” Schulman-Janiger says of the Christmas weekend sightings. “I just gotta see the pictures. I’m getting all hyped up again.”

From the scanner, she had caught one skipper’s first name, and armed with other clues, she found one of the boats, the First String, at Ports O’Call in San Pedro; her husband caught the other boat at the same port. Both found passengers at the dock and took five phone numbers of people with cameras.

You never know. Sometimes observers will tell Schulman-Janiger that they took pictures of killer whales, and she has to say, uh, no, those are giant dolphins.

Killer whales are 20 to 30 feet long, with a white patch above each eye, and weigh up to 12,000 pounds. They have black markings, white bellies and a light gray area behind the big dorsal fin, which can extend 6 feet high. Killer whales got their name because they can eat anything in the ocean, and no predator preys upon them.

They do not attack humans or boats. Which is why the First String’s captain, Anthony Griego, could pull next to them. That Christmas weekend, he was steering his passengers home after a disappointing outing of only one minke whale spotting.

“All of a sudden,” he says, “these things popped up out of the middle of nowhere.” The killer whales swam 30 to 40 yards away and ignored the 93-foot fishing boat.

“Everybody goes to Sea World and sees them in a big fish tank,” Griego says, “but those people will probably never see them again, killer whales in the wild.” He hasn’t seen them in local waters since 1996.

Lucky captain! Schulman-Janiger would have to settle for the pictures. Maybe, just maybe . . .

Sightings of Elusive L.A. Pod

She doesn’t know why the L.A. pod likes to winter in Palos Verdes. The L.A. whales do get around, from La Paz, Mexico, to Monterey Bay. From 1984 to February 1992, spotters photographed the L.A. pod more than 60 times. Then zip, no sightings for almost four years.

The pod probably was breezing through Mexican waters, Schulman-Janiger speculates. In December 1995, the L.A. whales emerged again, off Santa Barbara, and then several other times in Southern California over the past three years--everywhere, it seemed, but Palos Verdes.

Until, maybe, Christmas weekend.

A few days later, she saw the first batch of pictures, taken by a tourist from Denmark.

“They were indeed killer whales,” Schulman-Janiger says, her voice upbeat, “but [the pictures] weren’t sharp enough to see who they were.”

In the best pictures, the whales appeared to have markings that she couldn’t immediately match in her catalog. One whale, for instance, had a tall dorsal fin with a rounded tip and left tilt.

But, from what she could see, she doesn’t think it’s the L.A. pod. One of the photographed males didn’t look like any of the pod’s three males, and none of the females jumped out at her. Certainly, the shark killer was not among them.

“It’s a hanging question,” she says. “Who are these animals?”

She does have photos from four more tourists to review. Even if the whales aren’t from her L.A. pod, she’s still happy to try to match them with the ones in her catalog.

Meanwhile, she hasn’t given up on the local whales.

Once the L.A. whales come home, they tend to skulk through the area for a few weeks. Of course Schulman-Janiger has been out on the waters, looking for them by boat.

The season has just begun.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Searching the Waters

Killer whales don’t always show up.

But every season, from now through March, the gray whales come through Southern California along with assorted friends. As a bonus, observers on whale-watch boats may often see gray whale calves and their mothers on migration from the Bering Sea to the Baja Peninsula.

You may also spot gray whales from shore at places including Point Vicente in Palos Verdes (information: [310] 377-5370).

Whale-watch tours range from one-hour to full-day trips, some with naturalists on board who give lectures. Among the local tour providers:

* American Cetacean Society, Los Angeles chapter: (562) 437-4376.

* American Cetacean Society, national headquarters, San Pedro: (310) 548-7821.

* Atlantis Charters, Huntington Harbor: (562) 592-1154.

* Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, San Pedro: (310) 548-7562.

* Catalina Cruises, Long Beach: (800) 538-4554.

* Cisco, Channel Islands Harbor, Ventura: (805) 985-8511.

* Davey’s Locker, Newport Beach: (949 )675-9881.

* Island Packers, Ventura Harbor: (805) 642-1393.

* Los Angeles Harbor Cruise, San Pedro: (310) 831-0996.

* Los Angeles Harbor Sport Fishing, San Pedro: (310) 547-9916.