Killer whales!!!

WHAT!!!???!!
At 5:30ish a pod of killer whales showed up and was right off the the bow.  They were harassing a young humpback whale, and hunting for something.  They came right up to the port side of the bow and you could see the distinctive markings of the Antarctic killer whales - sort of a grayish color above what would be the lateral line if they were fish. I got some cool pictures.  Interestingly the ships whale biologist Connor Ryan said that he believes killer whale is a better name than orca, and that he suspects that orca is a named pushed by Sea World in an attempt to separate them from a negative image (the whales that is).  These guys are known as 'little B's' - as opposed to, well, big B's.  They're a subspecies its believed, but in order to figure out if its a separate species they need a carcass to examine, and as of now, they have never found one.  The whales with the large fins are males, and the shooter ones female.  The pod is led by the grandmother and are completely matriarchal.  The females are teachers, and show them how to hunt.  This goes for the famous J-pod in Washington state and their bow wave hunting where they splash a bunch of water onto the area a seal is on and force them back into the water.  That sort of behavior is essentially using tools.  Often times if a mother dies, even if the calf is old enough to survive on its own it will probably die that following year.  Anyway, the bow of the ship was all a flutter with people and cameras while this was happening, and there were some really happy naturalists on deck - me being one of them.

I wish someone told them to sleep a little later.  Shesh.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homeward bound

The finer points of time travel

Island living is easy...if your a penguin.