‘Exceptional’: Monterey Bay captain captures airborne killer whales and dolphins

A family of orcas attacked a pod of dolphins in Monterey Bay on Sunday with noteworthy intensity. Five startled whale watchers witnessed the dramatic feeding event up close, while their captain captured it on video.

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These orcas, also known as killer whales, and the long-beaked common dolphins frequent the area. Typically, the whales — which eat other mammals like harbor seals, elephant seals, sea lions and gray whale calves — go after one animal together. But they may have eaten up to five on Sunday and with such force that both orcas and dolphins flew through the air multiple times.

“They jumped out 10 to 15 times,” Mike Sack, the owner of Sanctuary Cruises who took the photographs, told SFGATE.“What was uncommon was the frequency they were going after these dolphins. Normally, their strategy is to pick one off the pod. … They’re like wolves, working together cooperatively hunting these animals.”

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Long-beaked common dolphins, which range up to about 8 feet and 330 pounds, flock to Monterey Bay in the summer and fall to enjoy spoils like anchovies. They can travel in “super pods” of up to 5,000 dolphins, though only about 15 swam together on Sunday. Meanwhile, most of the seven witnessed orcas belong to a known family, dubbed CA140B, that follows a matriarch named Louise. These apex predators, which stretch up to 32 feet and can weigh 11 tons, are part of the “transient” ecotype with a massive range in the Pacific Ocean. 

Sack described a secondary, more gentle dynamic between the two groups that also played out on Sunday.

A young dolphin, which he guessed was born just days before, drifted from its mom and seemed to join the orcas by mistake. “This little tiny dolphin was just swimming right alongside a couple of killer whales, and the killer whales weren’t doing anything to it,” Sacks said. “It looked like they were adopting it to me, but that’s probably not the case.”

Ari Friedlaender, a professor in the ocean sciences department at UC Santa Cruz who was not involved in the whale watching, described to SFGATE that witnessing such an event was “exciting and exceptional.” Even though this was a typical dynamic between prey and predator, the fact that people were there at the right time and able to see it from start to finish was rare.

“These folks out on the water all the time are seeing so much more than a single scientist or a single researcher could, and with eyes on the water,they can really provide an interesting lens on the happenings out in the bay,” Friedlaender said.