John K B Ford

Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Pacific Biological Station · Ecosystem Sciences Branch

For the 40 years after the end of commercial whaling in 1976, humpback whale populations in the North Pacific Ocean exhibited a prolonged period of recovery. Using mark–recapture methods on the largest individual photo-identification dataset ever assembled for a cetacean, we estimated annual ocean-basin-wide abundance for the species from 2002 thro...

Endangered Southern Resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) are fish-eaters that preferentially prey on adult Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Despite being salmon specialists, individuals from all three killer whale pods (J, K, L) have been observed harassing and killing porpoises (family Phocoenidae) without consuming them. Retrospectivel...

We present the current available knowledge about sexual behavior and mating systems in the killer whale, Orcinus orca , focusing primarily on the most well-studied ecotype, the Residents of the eastern North Pacific. Resident killer whales display lifetime natal philopatry of both sexes and thus form stable social groupings organized along maternal...

Understanding habitat use patterns of animal populations across space and time is fundamental to identifying ecological requirements, and informing threat mitigation and conservation strategies. Persistent data gaps tend to occur with cryptic species in difficult-to-access environments, where the use of appropriate monitoring tools is indispensable...

We present an ocean-basin-scale dataset that includes tail fluke photographic identification (photo-ID) and encounter data for most living individual humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the North Pacific Ocean. The dataset was built through a broad collaboration combining 39 separate curated photo-ID catalogs, supplemented with community sc...

Age-related changes in the patterns of local relatedness (kinship dynamics) can be a significant selective force shaping the evolution of life history and social behaviour. In humans and some species of toothed whales, average female relatedness increases with age, which can select for a prolonged post-reproductive lifespan in older females due to...

Current knowledge of the abundance, movements, and population structure of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) at the scale of the entire North Pacific Ocean is based primarily on data collected during and prior to 2004-06. In recent years, new technology and international collaboration among research groups across the North Pacific have enabl...

We present an ocean-basin-scale dataset that includes tail fluke photographic identification (photo-ID) and encounter data for the majority of living individual humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) in the North Pacific Ocean. The dataset was built through a broad collaboration combining 39 separate curated photo-ID catalogs supplemented with...

We present an ocean-basin-scale dataset that includes tail fluke photographic identification (photo-ID) and encounter data for most living individual humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) in the North Pacific Ocean. The dataset was built through a broad collaboration combining 39 separate curated photo-ID catalogs, supplemented with community...

Identifying mortality sources and mitigation solutions is crucial in species management and conservation. In killer whales (Orcinus orca), mortality events may pose a serious concern for the conservation of small discrete populations, especially if they involve entire groups. This study investigated 19 incidents involving 116 killer whales from a m...

Availability of preferred salmonid prey and a sufficiently quiet acoustic environment in which to forage are critical to the survival of resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) in the northeastern Pacific. Although piscivorous killer whales rely on echolocation to locate and track prey, the relationship between echolocation, movement, and prey captur...

A key goal of conservation is to protect biodiversity by supporting the long-term persistence of viable, natural populations of wild species. Conservation practice has long been guided by genetic, ecological and demographic indicators of risk. Emerging evidence of animal culture across diverse taxa and its role as a driver of evolutionary diversifi...

For animals that tend to remain with their natal group rather than individually disperse, group sizes may become too large to benefit individual fitness. In such cases, group splitting (or fission) allows philopatric animals to form more optimal group sizes without sacrificing all familiar social relationships. Although permanent group splitting is...

Understanding health and mortality in killer whales (Orcinus orca) is crucial for management and conservation actions. We reviewed pathology reports from 53 animals that stranded in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Hawaii between 2004 and 2013 and used data from 35 animals that stranded from 2001 to 2017 to assess association with morphometrics, blubb...

Censuses of the northern resident killer whale population using photo-identification have been conducted annually since 1973. These studies are based on photographic recapture of permanent natural markings on every individual within the population. In this report, we summarize northern resident killer whale population trends over the time series of...

Two populations of killer whales aggregate around Vancouver Island to feed primarily on Chinook salmon. Aerial photogrammetry of endangered southern residents has documented some adults growing to smaller lengths in recent decades, suggesting that early growth may have been constrained by low Chinook availability in the 1990s. We investigated wheth...

Understanding why females of some mammalian species cease ovulation prior to the end of life is a long-standing interdisciplinary and evolutionary challenge. In humans and some species of toothed whales, females can live for decades after stopping reproduction. This unusual life history trait is thought to have evolved, in part, due to the inclusiv...

The killer whale—the largest of the dolphins and the top marine predator––has a cosmopolitan distribution throughout the world’s oceans. Although globally it could be considered a generalist predator with a diverse diet, it is deeply divided into ecotypes, many of which have distinct foraging strategies involving only a narrow range of prey species...

In British Columbia, Bigg’s (transient) killer whales have been opportunistically photo-identified for several decades. This report uses a 61-year archive of photo-identification data from 1958-2018 to provide information on the abundance and distribution of Bigg’s killer whales known from BC. In total, 766 unique individuals were identified in a t...

Two sympatric populations of fish-eating Resident killer whales inhabit the coastal waters of British Columbia, Canada: Southern and Northern Resident killer whales. These populations are listed under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) as ‘endangered’ and ‘threatened’, respectively. Relatively little is known about their habitat use outside of the...

Two sympatric populations of fish-eating Resident killer whales inhabit the coastal waters of British Columbia, Canada: Southern and Northern Resident killer whales. These populations are listed under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) as ‘endangered’ and ‘threatened’, respectively. Relatively little is known about their habitat use outside of the...

It is a review chapter in a book and discusses how important maintaining long-term research studies is.

Understanding the rich social lives of animals benefits international conservation efforts

Call classifications by human observers are often subjective yet they are critical to studies of animal communication, because only the categories that are relevant for the animals themselves actually make sense in terms of correlation to the context. In this paper we test whether independent observers can correctly detect differences and similarit...

From 11 February to 31 March 2018, a lone male sperm whale visited coastal waters from the northeast to southern ends of Vancouver Island. This whale, named "Yukusam" after the Namgis First Nation word for Hanson Island, near where the whale was first observed and recorded, is the first sperm whale recorded acoustically in the area since 1984 and i...

During February and March, 2018, a lone sperm whale known as Yukusam was recorded first by Orcalab in Johnstone Strait and subsequently on multiple hydrophones within the Salish Sea [1]. We learn and denoise these multichannel clicks trains with AutoEncoders Convolutional Neural Net (CNN). Then, we build a map of the echolocations to elucidate vari...

Culturally-transmitted ecological specialization occurs in killer whales, as well as other species. We hypothesize that some of the remarkable demographic and ecological attributes of killer whales result from this process. We formalize and model (using agent-based stochastic models parametrized using killer whale life history) the cultural evoluti...

Fin Whale distribution and habitat use in northern waters of British Columbia (BC) were investigated using a multi-scale study approach based on data collected by Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Marine Mammal Research Section. Ship-based survey data were used to model Fin Whale distribution as a function of habitat features in Hecate Strait and Queen...

Background: Common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are distributed globally in tropical and warm-temperate waters with coastal and offshore ecotypes known. In the eastern North Pacific Ocean, common bottlenose dolphins are typically found in offshore waters as far as 41° N and in coastal waters as far as 38° N. Despite considerable survey...

Infanticide can be an extreme result of sexual conflict that drives selection in species in which it occurs. It is a rarely observed behaviour but some evidence for its occurrence in cetaceans exists in three species of dolphin. Here we describe observations of an adult male killer whale (Orcinus orca) and his postreproductive mother killing a neon...

Laterally bent dorsal fins are rarely observed in free-ranging populations of cetaceans, contrary to captivity, where most killer whale Orcinus orca adult males have laterally collapsed fins. This topic has been poorly explored, and data/information on its occurrence and possible causes are limited. The present study: (i) undertakes a review of the...

Two populations of fish-eating Killer Whales, Northern Resident and Southern Resident, inhabit waters off Canada’s west coast. The populations were listed under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) as Threatened and Endangered, respectively, in 2003. As required by the SARA, efforts have since been underway to identify critical habitat for these populati...

Three killer whale Orcinus orca ecotypes inhabit the northeastern Pacific: residents, transients, and offshores. To investigate intraspecific differences in spatial and temporal occur - rence off the outer coast of Washington State, USA, 2 long-term acoustic recorders were deployed from July 2004 to August 2013: one off the continental shelf in Qui...

Vessel strikes are a source of mortality and injury for baleen whales, which can have population-level impacts. Spatial analysis of whale and marine traffic distributions provides a valuable approach for identifying zones with high collision risk. We conducted 34 systematic aerial surveys to estimate humpback Megaptera novaeangliae and fin whale Ba...

Background We sought to quantitatively describe the fine-scale foraging behavior of northern resident killer whales (Orcinus orca), a population of fish-eating killer whales that feeds almost exclusively on Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). To reconstruct the underwater movements of these specialist predators, we deployed 34 biologging Dtags on 3...

Why females of some species cease ovulation prior to the end of their natural lifespan is a long-standing evolutionary puzzle [1, 2, 3, 4]. The fitness benefits of post-reproductive helping could in principle select for menopause [1, 2, 5], but the magnitude of these benefits appears insufficient to explain the timing of menopause [6, 7, 8]. Recent...

Background: The eastern North Pacific population of right whale (Eubalaena japonica) is considered to be one of the smallest whale populations in the world and is at serious risk of extirpation. During the past century, there have been only six records of North Pacific right whales off the west coast of Canada. All six were taken by whaling operati...

Odontocete sounds are produced by two pairs of phonic lips situated in soft nares below the blowhole; the right pair is larger and is more likely to produce clicks, while the left pair is more likely to produce whistles. This has important implications for the cultural evolution of delphinid sounds: the greater the physical constraints, the greater...

Underwater noise from anthropogenic sources has been increasing dramatically for the past few decades and little is known about its effects on fishes. The objective of this study is to describe the occurrence and characteristics of fish sounds in the SGaan Kinghlas-Bowie Seamount Marine Protected Area (SK-B MPA, British Columbia, Canada) and to cor...

The vast majority of social animals exhibit sex-biased dispersal as a strategy to reduce kin competition and avoid inbreeding. Piscivorous ‘resident’ killer whales, Orcinus orca, of the eastern North Pacific, however, are unusual in that both sexes remain philopatric throughout life, forming highly stable, multigeneration matrilines that are closed...

Robeck et al. (2015) claim that reproductive and actuarial senescence is common in mammalian species and therefore not an unexpected finding in killer whales. However, in most mammals, reproductive and somatic senescence are aligned, and reproduction gradually declines with age. In contrast, there is a substantial evidence that reproductive senesce...

There is increasing public interest in the overall health of the marine environment. Harbor porpoises Phocoena phocoena have a coastal distribution, and stranded animals function as sentinels for population and ecosystem health. The goal of this retrospective study was to join datasets from the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific coasts of Canada...

Vessel strikes are a source of mortality and injury for mysticete whales that can have population-level impacts. Spatially explicit assessments of whale distributions and marine traffic are key in determining relative collision risk. We conducted 34 systematic aerial surveys (2012-2015) to estimate humpback and fin whale densities off the west coas...

Field studies of the life history and ecology of killer whale populations off Canada’s west coast have been conducted annually since 1973. These studies are based on the identification of individual whales from photographs of permanent, natural markings. In this report, we summarize abundance trends in the northern resident killer whale population...

Cultural evolution is a powerful process shaping behavioural phenotypes of many species including our own. Killer whales are one of the species with relatively well-studied vocal culture. Pods have distinct dialects comprising a mix of unique and shared call types; calves adopt the call repertoire of their matriline through social learning. We revi...

Killer whale populations may differ in genetics, morphology, ecology, and behavior. In the North Pacific, two sympatric populations (“resident” and “transient”) specialize on different prey (fish and marine mammals) and retain reproductive isolation. In the eastern North Atlantic, whales from the same populations have been observed feeding on both...

Global climate change during the Late Pleistocene periodically encroached and then released habitat during the glacial cycles, causing range expansions and contractions in some species. These dynamics have played a major role in geographic radiations, diversification and speciation. We investigate these dynamics in the most widely distributed of ma...

In the eastern North Pacific Ocean, common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) are widespread but encountered relatively infrequently. It is generally believed that they make annual migrations between higher latitudes in the summer and lower latitudes in the winter; however, in some temperate coastal regions where common minke whales have bee...

The feeding ecology of predators can have a profound effect on their life history and behaviour. The killer whale—the apex marine predator—has a cosmopolitan distribution throughout the world’s oceans. Globally, it is a generalist predator with a diverse diet, but regionally, different socially and genetically isolated killer whale populations can...

Two distinct populations of resident killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) in the north‐eastern Pacific Ocean have been listed in Canada and the USA as being of conservation concern. One of the major threats recognized for these two populations is nutritional stress associated with prey abundance levels and availability. The predominance of chinook salmon...

Resident killer whales of the northeast Pacific Ocean are specialist predators that rely on salmon, particularly Chinook salmon, for their survival. However, little is currently known about how these whales pursue and capture their preferred prey. We used high-resolution 3D movement and acoustic data collected by digital archival tags (DTAGs) to ob...

We quantified the relative influence of maternal fidelity to feeding grounds and natal fidelity to breeding grounds on the population structure of humpback whales Megaptera novae -angliae based on an ocean-wide survey of mitochondrial (mt) DNA diversity in the North Pacific. For 2193 biopsy samples collected from whales in 10 feeding regions and 8...

Geographic differences in fin whale song that may be related to population structure have been documented in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. However, information on the songs and population structure of fin whales in the North Pacific is limited. We analyzed fin whale songs recorded over 9 months by an Autonomous Underwater Recorder for Acoustic...