Killer Whale – Whale Tales

An Epic Day with Bigg’s and a Humpback – 24/6/26

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Easily one of the most epic days on the water. We arrived at one of the jolliest bunch of orcas. Calm waters, sunshine, and over 17 orcas. Already way too ideal. Bigg’s orcas are notoriously quiet animals; despite having complex vocalizations they barely make a peep. Typically if they do, their food (other marine mammals)…

A Big Leap from “Ember” – 25/6/26

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It’s rare enough to be in the right place at the right time to witness such a display of power from orcas, but even more difficult to capture it on camera as these high leaps are often rather unpredictable. This was the first of two leaps by T064B “Ember” early this morning as her family…

Risso’s Dolphins Chase Killer Whales

in Bigg’s (Transient), Californian, Dolphins, Killer Whale, Risso’s Dolphin

The local transient Killer Whales, the coastal ones, feed on Risso’s Dolphins. They’re kind of similar to a pilot whale. They’re up to 12ft long, they’re grayish white. They have a round shaped head, they don’t have the long beaks. Their head is similar to a pilot whale and they have a lot of scratch marks on them from the squid. So they are one of the most frequent dolphins we see here because of the deep water here and also because there’s lots of squid here. But there was one day and this was again about 20 years ago and it hasn’t happened since. But the killer whales here, like I said, have never been seen preying on the Risso’s dolphins. We have seen the Outer coast transients, the ones that feed on the sperm whales. And they’ve caught Risso’s dolphins twice. But the story was that the local transients we were watching and then all of a sudden this group of about 15 Risso’ dolphins came charging over and caused the group of transients to flee. It was like a reverse thing. So these Risso’s dolphins were chasing and pursuing this group of like 7 transient mammal hunting killer whales, which you wouldn’t expect because you would think the killer whales would be the aggressive mammal hunting whales. And the Risso’s chased them for about like 15, 20 minutes. And they were all porpoising, going at a very high rate, swimming out of the water. And eventually the Risso’s kind of caught up to them and surrounded them and then everybody stopped. It’s like the Risso’s caught them into almost like a net because the Rissos surrounded them and I felt, felt like they put a net around them. It was like that they had surrounded them. So the killer whales were stopped completely in the water. And they were going so fast it was hard for us to keep up on them on the boat. But they trapped these killer whales in the ocean, by surrounding for maybe 10 minutes or so. And then the killer whales broke loose and started fleeing again. And then a second time the Risso’s caught up and trapped them. And then eventually the killer whales, got away again and the Risso’s gave up. But it’s kind of reversed to what you would expect, dolphins to be chasing and attacking a killer whale and the killer whales to be so frightened by them. So that was a really interesting story that I really always remember and think it’s pretty cool. -Nancy This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 93 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here

Biggs take down Waterfowl – 2/26

in Bigg’s (Transient), Dolphins, Killer Whale, Marcie, Storytellers

The T109As took down at least 3 waterfowl during our encounter with them last week in Clayoquot Sound. Ducks are often used as a training tool for orcas learning to hunt, and this pod has no shortage of young hunters learning this skill! Notably, their neice known as Kʷiisaḥiʔis (T109A3A), had been seen catching ducks…

Breaches and Flick Feeding – 11/4/26

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T030C “Salix” launching from the water while approaching the T050s offshore of Tofino BC yesterday. Despite the saddle patch never being visible during this breach sequence, the eyepatch and it’s very convenient freckle helped make this ID. This 21 year old female is so big that several of us assumed it was her big brother…