Dear MARMAM community, We are excited to announce that the orcas near the harbor of Genoa, Italy, have been identified. This is the first ever record of orcas migrating between Iceland and Italy in killer whale research history, and with over 5.200 km one of the longest migration routes ever recorded in the world to date.
The individuals were identified as SN113, SN114, SN115, and SN116 from the West Iceland catalogue by Orca Guardians Iceland (www.orcaguardians.org ). The matching was done by Marie Mrusczok from Orca Guardians with high quality pictures received first from Biagio Violi and his team at Menkab / Artescienza and the University of Genoa, which yielded matches for 3 individuals. A 4th member was identified via pictures sent to Orca Guardians by Tethys Research (M. Colombo). Orca Survey Scotland was assisting in the matching and finding of good quality images. However, there were a lot of members of the public involved in making this match happen, and we received many images and videos that helped us in the process. We are very grateful for all the collaboration and the support we have received. It has been quite overwhelming! Remarkably, this finding was made through non-invasive research only, with data collected in West Iceland onboard Láki Tours, who receive a special thank you here for their constant support over the years in everything we do. You can find information and updates on our social media for the moment ( www.facebook.com/orcaguardians), but we are also working on a more detailed publication. We will now try to reconstruct the migration route of the orcas, to see if they have turned up/were photographed in other places before. If you recognize the individuals via your high quality photo-identification images, please do get in touch with us at: i...@orcaguardians.org Best wishes, Marie Mrusczok Founder of Orca Guardians Iceland Website: www.orcaguardians.org E-Mail: i...@orcaguardians.org
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