Each summer, a zone of deep underwater canyons off the southern coast of Western Australia called Bremer Canyon becomes the favorite food ground for marine predators, including sharks, drivers, beak whales and very intelligent orcas. As such, Bremer Canyon has become a popular whale observation destination. This week, an Orcas pod presented a horrible show.
On Monday, tourists and researchers on a Bremer Canyon tour boat witnessed a pod of more than 60 orcas and killing a pygmy whale about 59 feet long (18 meters), as reported by the Australian ABC. The scene, taken from the camera, was bloody, heartbreaking … and normal, despite our painful human hearts. In fact, it was also special, ruthlessly: it was only the fourth time that the orcas hunting a blue whale have been filmed to Bremer Canyon.
“The intense test lasted less than 40 minutes from the moment we saw blue for the first time on the surface until the end of the battle. While the fate of the blue whale was sealed, Orcas celebrated with gaps and tail slaps”, reads an article on the social networks of Naturalist Charte Whale Watching, after a Stark Graphic Content. The event is “an extraordinary reminder of their role as apex predators in the ocean”.
Beyond the human instinct to root for the oppressed – it was 60 against one – and our delicate for bloody waters, another heartbreaking aspect of the situation is that the pygmy blue whales are threatened.
“We are all still quite shocked by Shell,” said Jennah Tucker, a marine biologist who works on naturalistic charters and has witnessed the ABC. “We certainly do as much as possible not to be involved and to have no interference, but it is a very difficult thing to look at; it can be very brutal,” she admitted, adding that at one point, nearly 30 orcas submerged the pygmy blue whale while he was trying to flee.
“It was very moving but it is nature, it was a whole privilege to attend the event,” she continued. Tucker added that the researchers aboard the tourist boat identified five different family groups and also noted the presence of many young orcas, including a one month’s calf.
While popular culture abuses our fear of sharks, orcas are in fact the best marine predators in the world and they roam each ocean. Although they are commonly called “whale killeines”, they are a member of the Dolphin family. In fact, the name “whale killer” comes, rather appropriately, from their whale hunting behavior.
Although it is naturally difficult to attend such a bloody scene, the orcas did not engage in insane violence– They were behave as nature wanted them.
