Orca lives seem to be determined by their diet, for them you really are what you eat! That is why understanding their foraging ecology is of such paramount importance. Fish-eating orcas display different behaviours, communication patterns and social structure when compared to mammal-eating orcas elsewhere in the world. Our knowledge of how orcas in Iceland behave, associate and communicate is still in its infancy in comparison to other population worldwide, but we have started making some progress towards understanding some of these aspects. For example, we have catalogued calls produced by the population (see our call catalogue. To listen to examples of each call, please open the audible call catalogue in acrobat reader) and we are now trying to understand who produces each call, when they produce them and why. You can listen to some of the sounds that orcas in Iceland make on our Soundcloud  page.

When we find a group of whales we can identify every single whale and build a long-tem picture of who they choose to associate with, what they do, where they go and what they eat. Only through many years of collecting this type of data will we be able to build a clear picture of the lives of these long-lived top predators. Without that information we cannot fully understand the conservation status of the Icelandic orcas, or what they need to ensure a healthy population lives on for generations to come.