Posted on 09/18/2012 8:56:49 AM PDT by jwsea55
Extraordinary pictures of orca surfing the wake of a boat off the coast of Mexico show the marine mammals playing in jet bubbles and chasing down a yacht.
A fishing company from Loreto, Mexico, runs charters off the Baja Coast. Cast ‘n Reel owner Ashley Ross said it was “magical” to be able to snap the shots they did about a month ago.
“As far as we know this is the first time orcas have surfed the wake of a boat here in Loreto.
“They never played so closely to us. They usually keep their distance until we turn the engines off. Then they circle the boat and even swim underneath,” she said.
“The Orcas that we find here are magical. To see them so happy in their natural state is priceless.”
(Excerpt) Read more at redondobeachca.wordpress.com ...
Back in July, I was salmon fishing out of Juneau and we had a similar experience when an orca breached right next to our boat. Holy you know what. An amazing sight. They are the ocean’s apex predator and eat great white sharks for lunch.
I can only imagine. Do you have pics? If so, I hope you will post.
You mean to say these guys eat meat? I thought the prior posts were joking about that. I was hoping that these might make a good pet. I have a big bath tub. Say it isn't so. :-)
No photos. It happened so quickly and was such an amazing sight. I did manage to film his next breach which was about 250 hundred yards from our boat, but you can barely tell on my smartphone. You really have to be looking for it. There was a lot of nervous laughter, and I recall stealing the line from Jaws, “I think we are going to need a bigger boat.” Even the seasoned captain, said that what happened is very rare and she had been fishing these waters for two decades.
They live on meat. Primarily salmon, but they need a whole bunch daily to sustain themselves. They are extremely smart and hunt and live in pods. They teach each other and our truly incredible creatures. I learned a lot about them on my trip. You can google killer whale vs. great white and find some unreal footage by a marine biologist off of Northern California.
I know you’d like these.
Are you kidding?
Thanks. Would have been great to get those pics. I was talking to one of the guys in our building who used to do marine biology stuff that was hoping to see pics. You really got to see something quite rare.
Are you kidding?
I don't know, they look so cute and friendly. Hard to imagine them ever doing anything so violent as eating another living thing. Killer's Whale's toy seal per pervious post. :-\)
Thanks for the mention. Cool.
From UC Santa Cruz paper:
...calculated that an adult female, weighing approximately two tons, would need more than 190,000 kilocalories per day; a 4.5-ton male would need 290,000 kilocalories per day.
Now I would not get excited about eating the same meal three times in one week. Maybe an otter to a KW is like chicken tender to us. More from the CAL paper:
...Adult sea otters weigh between 50 and 75 pounds, which represents, on average, 50,000 kilocalories. Depending on its size and the size of its prey, an adult killer whale could satisfy its appetite by gobbling up between 3 and 7 sea otters a day--or 1,095 to 2,555 otters per year. Williams estimated that the decline of sea otter numbers in the 1990s in the Aleutian Islands corresponded to the loss of approximately 10,000 adults per year. An average pod of killer whales (one adult male and four to five adult females) with a single-minded appetite could easily eliminate that many otters.
Thanks for bring those things up.
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