Encounter 35 - December 10, 2021

Last Friday, December 10th, we had a very exciting encounter with the CA140Bs! We spent the day with them, so we will break up this sighting into several posts.
We arrived that morning to discover that the orcas had recently hunted a juvenile elephant seal. We heard reports from another vessel that they had skinned the seal, which is a less commonly observed behavior; we’ve primarily seen this exhibited with a few other pinniped species (California sea lions and harbor seals). The killer whales were extremely active and repeatedly surfaced and swam right next to the boat, often with pieces of blubber in their mouths! They were also trying to drape the carcass over their bodies; this SAME group did this during a predation event in November with a California sea lion—so fascinating! Thanks to our research (supported by ⭐️you⭐️) we can trace the distinct behaviors of the various families that make up this population of orcas!
We will post more in the next few days, but check out this video by Isaak Haberman of @monterey_bay_whale_watch —you can see one of the younger orcas surfacing right next to the boat with a piece of blubber in it’s mouth! Here are some photos of CA140B2, “Bee,” exercising hunting techinques with a northern fulmar from our 12/10/21 encounter. You can see her upside down with her teeth exposed and the fulmar in her mouth. We commonly see younger whales practicing like this with birds, but rarely with northern fulmars. The younger whales use smaller prey to prepare and perfect their technique for predations on larger animals, like sea lions and gray whales. CA140B1 “Stinger” and CA140B2 “Bee” were the main whales who were pulling and tail slapping this northern fulmar. They exhibited this behavior for about thirty minutes, giving observers a great insight into this behavior. It was also reported that one of the whales even charged at a black-footed albatross! Very interesting behavior. We will post a video tomorrow showing a long clip of this behavior!
Photos by Scottie Schmidt @okilikewhalesandcookies Here is an incredible video showcasing some of that hunting/practicing behavior on a northern fulmar (seabird) from 12/10/21! Mostly the younger orcas were involved in this behavior. See our previous posts for more details. Video by Captain Scott of @monterey_bay_whale_watch Here is the last part of our encounter with the CA140Bs from 12/10/21! After they hunted an elephant seal and practiced with birds, they got very friendly and social! They spyhopped, rolled around, swam back and forth underneath the boat, and also did some breaching! It was amazing to see behaviors like this. Check out these photos by Daniel Bianchetta and Scottie Schmidt! Stay tuned over the next few days for more encounters we have gotten reports of in Southern California! It’s been a great month for orca sightings off California!