J2, aka "Granny," is on the right, in a photo taken by drone in September. She's about to catch that salmon and feed it to J45, whose mother had just died. Granny herself went missing in October. Credit: NOAA/VANCOUVER AQUARIUM

J2, aka Granny, is on the right, in a photo taken by drone in September. Shes about to catch that salmon and feed it to J45, whose mother had just died. Granny herself went missing in October.

J2, aka “Granny,” is on the right, in a photo taken by drone in September. She’s about to catch that salmon and feed it to J45, whose mother had just died. Granny herself went missing in October. NOAA/VANCOUVER AQUARIUM

In September of 2016, the oldest living orca known to science, J2, was photographed near San Juan Island from a drone. Matriarch of the southern residents, a population of killer whales that lives in Puget Sound and is unique on the planet, J2 got her name because she was the second orca to be positively identified by scientists at the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island during the first census of southern resident killer whales, conducted in 1976. The Center for Whale Research also assigns nicknames, and because J2 was so old when scientists first identified her, the nickname she got was “Granny.”

“We do not know her precise age because she was born long before our study began,” Ken Balcomb, the marine mammal biologist who founded the Center for Whale Research, explained. “In 1987, we estimated that she was at least 45 years old and was more likely to have been 76 years old.” By 2016, she was estimated to be somewhere from 74 to 105 years old.

Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer...