We knew we were in for a good day from the get-go when we spotted two Australian sea lions happily porposing in the harbour as they chased down some fish for breakfast. Soon after getting underway, we were joined by a playful pod of common dolphins riding in our wake. We were then accompanied by hundreds of flesh-footed shearwaters and tens of Indian yellow-nosed albatrosses flying alongside us on the 24 nautical mile trip out to the hotspot.
Once we reached the hotpot, it wasn’t long before blows were spotted up ahead.
Members of Split Tip’s pod were spread across the hotspot, embarking on long foraging dives.
We were very pleased to see this pod as they are generally very social and interactive with us. Today however, they were busy searching for prey down below. Wonks did come over to check us out at one point though, passing closely off our bow, and Shredder and NoName caused a Mexican wave of cheers as they did a few laps around the boat.
The pod tracked east as they searched, alongside Nani’s pod, including little Maui, the 8–10-month-old calf.
They scoured the area, tracking out toward the Henry Canyon, before turning south and heading out into deeper water (>2000m). Then suddenly the energy changed as members of Nani’s pod began to pick up speed, breaking into a surge.
It looked like they had potentially tracked down some prey and were beginning the chase.
However, the energy died out almost as quickly as it had begun and the group immediately slowed and began embarking on long dives again, entirely focused and sparing us no thought. Given beaked whales, their main prey source, are deep divers and can reach depths far greater than the orcas, being out in these deeper waters possibly meant that if they had been pursuing a beaked whale, it may have evaded them and slipped away into the depths before they could catch it. With the orcas diving for long periods, they became difficult to track so we headed back toward the hotspot to see which other family groups were around and boy did we get lucky!
Sara and Cookie’s pods emerged ahead of us, surfacing synchronously in a line and approaching us beam on, on multiple occasions, and diving underneath our vessel. We kept our eyes peeled for young Comet, hopeful that she might be in the mood for a play, but she was nowhere to be seen. But not for long! Soon Halley, Comet, Sedna and Swirl joined in on the fun. Swirl was in an absolute pearla of a mood, approaching the bow and playfully rolling over belly-up. Comet couldn’t let her have all the fun though and quickly joined.
Just as we decided to get in one last look before heading home, the group began to surge. We followed on as they charged ahead, El Notcho quickly dropped back, his age and size getting the better of him. But not Echo! He kept up with matriarchs, Sara and Cookie, who led the charge. We raced along with the group for ~40 minutes, but having stayed out way past our home time, we couldn’t continue on with them as they charged out to the west and it was unfortunately time for us to head in. It was undetermined whether they were in pursuit of prey or if it was a more light-hearted run and they just had the zoomies. Either way though, it was quite the spectacle and you couldn’t have wiped the smiles off our faces if you tried!
Naturaliste Charters
This post was adapted from a blog, read more here.
Photographs captured by Erin Littlehill. Blog post written by Marine Biologist, Jennah Tucker.
Leave a Reply