{"id":50,"date":"2015-01-30T21:16:03","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T21:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/abealfreader3\/?post_type=chapter&p=50"},"modified":"2022-07-22T20:09:07","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T20:09:07","slug":"spy-hopping-with-killer-whales","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/abealfreader3\/chapter\/spy-hopping-with-killer-whales\/","title":{"raw":"Spy-Hopping with Orca Whales","rendered":"Spy-Hopping with Orca Whales"},"content":{"raw":"

Click play on the following audio player to listen along as you read this section.<\/p>\r\nhttps:\/\/media.bccampus.ca\/id\/0_zlptew1i?width=608&height=70&playerId=23449753\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_97\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\"]\".\"<\/a> Orca whale[\/caption]\r\n\r\nDid you know that there are about 300 orca\u00a0whales living off the coast of British Columbia year-round? Orca\u00a0whales show up in many First Nations stories. In some tales, orca\u00a0whales take people from canoes and turn them into whales, too. An orca whale near the shore is sometimes seen as one of these people trying to talk to their family.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_251\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"360\"]\".\"<\/a> A pod of orca whales[\/caption]\r\n\r\nWhales live in family groups called pods. A pod has between 5 and 30 whales. Pods always stay together. A female orca\u00a0whale is called a cow<\/strong>. She is the head of the family. A male orca\u00a0whale is called a bull<\/strong>. Cows and bulls mate for life. Cows will have about five babies in their lifetime. When a baby is born, it comes out tail first. The mother brings it to the surface<\/strong> of the water. The baby takes its first breath of air. After a half an hour, the baby can swim on its own. By age two, it can hunt. A bull will live up to 50 years. A cow will live up to 90 years.\r\n\r\nThe orca\u00a0whales in the pod talk to each other. They talk using fast, high clicks. The sounds can be as loud as a jet. Each pod has its own sounds.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_253\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\".\"<\/a> Whale shooting water out of its blowhole[\/caption]\r\n\r\nDid you know that orca\u00a0whales cannot breathe underwater? They must breathe air through a blowhole on top of their head. They can hold their breath for up to 15 minutes as they dive deep into the ocean.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_270\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"531\"]\"Orca_anatomy\"<\/a> Parts of a whale[\/caption]\r\n\r\nOrca\u00a0whales are one of the fastest animals in the world. They have tails called flukes<\/strong>. Their flukes give them power when swimming. Their two flippers help them steer. Their fin keeps them stable<\/strong> when they go fast. Orca\u00a0whales usually swim close to shore and near the surface of the water. Sometimes they spy-hop<\/strong>. This means they stay upright<\/strong> in the water to look around. Sometimes they breach<\/strong>. This means they jump right out of the water and land with a big splash.\r\n\r\nIn British Columbia, orca\u00a0whales do something no one understands. They come onto some beaches and rub their bodies on the smooth, round pebbles<\/strong>. Sometimes they do this for hours. They do not do this in other parts of the world.\r\n\r\nOrca\u00a0whales are good hunters. To hunt, they send out sound waves. Then they listen as the sound waves come back. This tells them where to find food. They eat fish and small sea mammals. Salmon is their favourite. They eat about 50 kilograms of salmon a day. They work together to hunt. They slap the water with their tails to stun or kill the fish. They also herd fish into a small area and then gulp them down. Up north, they tip floating sea ice so that seals, walruses, and sea lions will slide into the mouth of another whale who has been waiting there.\r\n\r\nThe biggest threat<\/strong> to orca\u00a0whales is people. People build dams on rivers. The dams kill many salmon. With less salmon to eat, orca\u00a0whales die, too.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_254\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"600\"]\".\"<\/a> Oil tanker[\/caption]\r\n\r\nPeople move lots of oil across the sea in big ships. Sometimes oil leaks out of ships. The oil is soaked up by small animals. Then the orca\u00a0whales eat those small animals and get sick. Also, the loud noises from the engines of oil tankers make it hard for whales to use sound waves to find food.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_255\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"600\"]\".\"<\/a> Orca whale in an aquarium[\/caption]\r\n\r\nPeople take orca\u00a0whales out of the wild. About 150 orca\u00a0whales have been taken out of the wild. They are put in pools for shows. Often the fins of whales that are kept in pools flop to one side. This is a sign of stress. An orca\u00a0whale taken from the sea will only live about five more years.\r\n\r\nMany people want to help orca\u00a0whales. They say we should not build dams on rivers. They say we should not allow more oil tankers along the coast of British Columbia. They say we should not allow people to keep whales in pools. They can\u2019t imagine a British Columbia without orca\u00a0whales. Can you?\r\n

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Word Patterns<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n\r\nWhen we read, we sometimes come across words we cannot sound out or do not understand. Sometimes writers put a definition of a word in the text so that you don\u2019t have to look it up in a dictionary.\r\n\r\nHere are some examples\u00a0you\u00a0will see in the reading above:\r\n