Government scientists monitoring the movements of Southern Resident Killer Whales in Pacific Northwest waters have lost one of their most important tools. On Feb. 17, the satellite tag attached to orca K33 apparently became detached as the orca and its pod swam just west of the Long Beach Peninsula. The NOAA research vessel Bell. M Shimada, currently cruising in the area, will make use of the orcas' past movement patterns in an effort to find them this year. NOAA's Brad Hansen provided this update on Feb. 22: “On our previous update on 16 February K33 and likely the rest of K pod were off the Columbia River, having just turned north. They traveled about half way up the the Long Beach Peninsula by that afternoon before turning south. On the morning of the 17th they were off the Columbia River again. Unfortunately, we received our last transmission about noon that day. We suspect that the tag detached as the battery levels were still good and this deployment of about 50 days was very similar to what we obtained for J27 last year. We are putting all the location data from K25, L84, and K33 to use as we attempt to locate the whales from the NOAA vessel Bell. M Shimada.”