READ MORE: Pacific Northwest orca carries dead calf for week during 'deep grieving'
Milstein says researchers with Fisheries and Ocean Canada also spotted another member of the same pod — the 3 ½-year-old whale J50 that is emaciated. The ailing orca was swimming with her mum on Wednesday.
A team of experts led by NOAA Fisheries have been searching for the young whale to assess her health and potentially give her medication.
"I am absolutely shocked and heartbroken,'' said Deborah Giles, research scientist for University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology and research director for nonprofit Wild Orca, quoted by The Seattle Times.
"I am sobbing. I can't believe she is still carrying her calf around. I am gravely concerned for the health and mental wellbeing of J35.
"Even if her family is foraging for and sharing fish with her, J35 cannot be getting the nutrition she needs to regain any body-mass loss that would have naturally occurred during the gestation of her foetus and also additional loss of nutrition during these weeks of mourning," she added.
The calf was the first in three years to be born to the dwindling population of endangered southern resident killer whales, with only 75 members. The crisis with J35 comes even as another member of J pod, J50, appears to be starving to death as the chinook salmon the animals depend on rapidly decline.
- With AP