In a rare event captured in video, a pod of killer whales—as many as 30 individuals—attacked two adult gray whales as tourists watched aboard whale-watching boats in Monterey Bay off California.
It is unusual because killer whales typically go after the gray whale calves as mother and calf make their way in the annual migration from Baja to Alaska. Rarely do orcas attack adults.
Experts surmise that perhaps one of the adults was injured and more vulnerable to an attack, or the killer whales were starving and had no choice but try to attack.
Whatever the reason, it was a sight many whale lovers found hard to watch.
“I’m a nature lover, but sometimes nature is so harsh,” one commenter wrote on Facebook.
Evan Brodsky of Monterey Bay Whale Watch captured the incredible drone footage. His 22-minute video on YouTube shows what appears to be the initial rush of killer whales and the subsequent thrashing about. A shorter version was posted on Storyful (below).
“Our researchers and guests were able to watch this amazing event unfold for over 5 hours in Monterey Bay,” Monterey Bay Whale Watch stated Friday on Facebook, a day after the incident. “Multiple orca pods joined together to pursue these two full-grown adult Gray Whales. We were able to observe the unique hunting strategies of the pods and the rarely seen defensive strategies of the two grays.”
You can see the gray whale on the left getting most of the attention from the orcas, and eventually you see it shedding some blood, as shown in the video Brodsky shared with Storyful.
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Several times the gray whales can be seen turning upside down in an apparent move to protect their more vulnerable stomachs from the ramming orcas.
In the expanded video, the two gray whales eventually are separated, and the killer whales concentrate their energies on the weakest of the two. But Monterey Bay Whale Watch reported that “the badly wounded gray whales escaped to the shallow waters towards the beach and the Orcas backed down.”
“It’s so hard to watch. Circle of life and species survival,” one commenter on Facebook stated. “I’m still dumbfounded how those grays survived.”