Springer, the orphaned orca calf, is proving she is a survivor.

KOMO 4 News has obtained videotape of Springer as a newborn orca, showing her swimming with her mother in Johnstone Strait two years ago.

Springer's rescuers hope to return her to those pristine waters.

"This little bay here would have a net stretched across it," says Dr. Paul Spong, from the aerial vantage point of Air 4.

He's talking about a small inlet called Dongchong Bay on Hanson Island off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The plan is to put Springer in a small pen inside the bay, to wait for her orca family to arrive next month and then let her loose.

"The hope of course is that she would join up with the other whales pretty quickly," says Dr. Spong, "but I'm not personally expecting that necessarily to happen, it may take some time."

Time for both Springer and her orca pod to bond.

One of the curious things about the Springer mystery was trying to figure out where she belonged.

'It Just Triggered Something'

OrcaLab, a private research facility on Hanson Island, has been recording the sounds and the dialects of the northern resident orca community for decades. They were the ones that actually provided the piece of the puzzle to figure out just who she is.

"That's a very distinctive call right there," acoustics researcher Helena Symonds refers to a whale call displayed on a computer acoustics program. They are the sounds of Springer, recorded in Puget Sound last winter. When Symonds first heard the recorded calls, "It just triggered something."

Symonds began sifting through the thousands of recorded orca sounds to find one bit of tape -- a whale call recorded in 1988.

And Symonds knew right away. Played back to back, even an untrained ear can hear the similarity. It's Springer and her mother, each recorded 14 years apart.

Like a fingerprint or DNA, in the orca world the sounds are definitive evidence of a connection, "because the acoustic traditions are passed on from the mother to the offspring," adds Symonds.

In addition to solving the mystery of who she is, that acoustic tradition will also be key to Springer's reunion. The hope is that she and her extended orca family will each recognize their common calls, and they will accept the orphaned orca back home.

Springer is eating eight to 10 fish a day and adapting well to her temporary pen off the Kitsap Peninsula. She could be moved to Canada in as little as two to three weeks.