Ken Balcomb’s considerable scientific legacy outweighed by movement to save SRKWs he created

Everyone who knew Ken Balcomb—the great whale scientist who died this week at age 82 after a long struggle with cancer—has stories to tell about him, often many of them. My favorite is one that he liked to tell sometimes, but that other people I know witnessed on several different occasions.

Balcomb’s primary job for nearly 50 years was to keep a census of the endangered Southern Resident killer whales (SRKWs) who were the subject of his lifelong study, and he did so by taking their photographs. At times, he said, it seemed as though the orcas knew that he and his researchers were trying to gather information on them to help them and were eager to help them learn—especially when it came to the newest members of population.