Whale watchers in Australia witnessed a uncommon sight final week: Two pods of orcas ganged up on and attacked a wholesome younger humpback whale.
The whale, a 2- to 3-year-old male, survived the onslaught, although he misplaced his dorsal fin, in line with the Sydney Morning Herald.
“We knew we had been witnessing one thing important,” Gemma Sharp, the co-owner of Whale Watcher Australia, who was current through the assault on Feb. 17, informed the newspaper. “The orca had been in full-on assault mode and the humpback was desperately attempting to guard itself.”
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Sharp and a ship filled with whale watchers had been in Bremer Bay in Western Australia after they noticed about 15 orcas splashing on the floor. They quickly realized the predators had been surrounding a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). Because the people watched, the orcas tried many times to seize the humpback’s dorsal fin to flip the whale over and drown it.
The flip-and-drown tactic typically works on whale calves and yearlings, Sharp mentioned, however the younger male was too robust and huge for the orcas to budge him. The whale made a beeline towards the boat, taking cowl beneath it for nearly an hour.
Because the orcas circled, hoping for an additional probability on the humpback, the commotion attracted a gaggle of fifty pilot whales and a gaggle of bull sharks. Ultimately, one of many orca pods left.
One other pod of six orcas waited about 980 toes (300 meters) away from the boat till the humpback determined to make a break for it. The most important orca, a 19,800-pound (8,980 kilograms) male nicknamed El Notcho by the world’s whale watchers, tried to ram the humpback and break his jaw. The assault did not faze the humpback, Sharp informed the Herald.
That is when the orcas gave up. The humpback sped towards the coast.
“They did take his [dorsal] fin, however his tail flukes and pectoral fins had been all tremendous, which is essential. In the event that they exhale blood … that’s all the time an actual concern however there was none of that,” Sharp mentioned.
The whale-watching crew captured the assault on video, which is the primary documentation of such an assault in Bermer Bay, she mentioned.
Orcas, additionally known as killer whales, are identified for his or her typically violent interactions with different marine animals. In 2018, a photographer captured first-of-its-kind footage of a pod of orcas tormenting (or enjoying with, relying in your perspective) sea turtles off the Galápagos Islands. The orcas had been basically treating the turtles as pool toys, spinning and dragging them round as a type of leisure, Reside Science beforehand reported. In one other occasion, this time in 2016, a pod of orcas close to the Antarctic peninsula circled a lone seal on an ice floe. Luckily, two humpback whales got here to the rescue, saving the Weddell seal from changing into orca dinner, Reside Science reported.
Initially revealed on Reside Science.