A sick young orca killer whale from a critically endangered population off the US coast has been declared dead after a lengthy search turned up nothing.
The death leaves just 74 whales in the pod that has failed to reproduce successfully in the past three years in waters off Washington state and Canada.
The orcas have struggled with pollution, boat noise and, most severely, a lack of their preferred prey, chinook salmon, because of dams, habitat loss and overfishing.
"We're watching a population marching toward extinction," Ken Balcomb of the Centre for Whale Research said on Thursday.
"Unless we do something about salmon recovery, we're just not going to have these whales in the future."
The whales were in such bad shape that experts prepared last-ditch efforts to save the emaciated four-year-old known as J50.
A sharpshooting veterinarian fired an antibiotic-filled dart into her, to no avail, and scientists even mulled capturing her so they could treat her for parasitic worms.
J50 had not been seen since last Friday. As teams scrambled to find her on Thursday, she failed to appear with her pod once again, despite favourable sighting conditions.
Balcomb, who tracks the whales for the US government, declared her dead late on Thursday afternoon.
Whale experts feared the orca was dead earlier this month when J50 lagged behind her family and went missing. But she later turned up and was seen with her family.
The distinctive black-and-white orcas, known as southern resident killer whales, have struggled since they were listed as an endangered species in the US and Canada well over a decade ago.
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