TRANSIENT ORCA SIGHTINGS

April 8th, 2009 by tom

We experienced a rare sighting of a family of transient orca taking a harbor porpoise. We were out near Discovery Island yesterday when we came across them slowly moving east and south. At first the young orca whales in the family were chasing the porpoise, copying move for move. If the porpoise turned sharply the chasing whale would as well but never touching the porpoise, which any one of them could have done at any time during the chase. The young whales took turns doing these maneuvers. Even a very young two year old was joining in. All the while the mother orca was tailing the action until after maybe 30-45 minutes when she appeared to have enough and you see the result in the photo. We never saw the porpoise again after that. It was apparent to us the mom was teaching her young how to hunt and we, along with a few other boats were there to witness it.

 
On another note, if you can make it to Deer Harbor Marina while we have this warm weather, you will see an amazing amount of herring that showed up yesterday along with a huge bloom of kelp shrimp. Half of the marina is full of herring feeding and being fed upon. The shrimp are at the surface oblivious to the fact that there are thousands of little mouths looking to eat them. I’m amazed these shrimp as a species can survive except for the fact that the shear numbers of them are staggering. What an amazing showing of the food chain we experienced today.

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