Tahlequah

Tahlequah (born 1998), also known as J35, is a killer whale of the southern resident community in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. She has given birth to three known offspring, a male (Notch) in 2010, a female (Tali) in 2018, and another male (Phoenix) in 2020. Her second calf, Tali, died shortly after birth and J35 carried her body for 17 days in an apparent show of grief that attracted international attention. Name J35 was given the name Tahlequah by The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, Washington, as part of their Adopt-a-Whale outreach program. One of her adopters was Malia Obama, daughter of former United States President Barack Obama. Life J35 was born in 1998 to J17 (Princess Angeline), a member of the J pod of the Southern Resident community, and has two living siblings. J35's first calf, a male named J47 (Notch), was born in 2010, and researchers speculated that she miscarried another calf in the mid-2010s. After the death of her sister J28 (Polaris) in 2016, J35 cared for her two offspring, until one, that was still milk-dependent, starved to death. Her second calf (Tali), a female, was born on July 24, 2018, off Victoria, British Columbia; she was alive, but died within a half-hour of her birth. The infant population and health of the Southern Residents community had declined in the early 21st century, due in part to a smaller supply of Chinook salmon and the presence of polluting substances in the Salish Sea.