A group of anglers ventured offshore in search of tuna last Thursday, but instead encountered several large orcas and a rare white orca calf.
“No tuna for 160 miles but this was better,” Ryan Corum wrote beneath one of two Instagram videos that show the encounter near San Clemente Island in Southern California.
Viewers will note the close proximity of as many as 10 orcas that greeted the anglers and kept pace with their fast-moving boat.
“It lasted about 10 minutes,” Corum told For The Win Outdoors. “And on the way in about four hours later we spotted them again, 20 miles from the original spot. They were just relaxing on the surface.”
At the start of the top video, when the orcas first appeared, one angler begs repeatedly to kill the engine, prompting the response, “They’re not scared of the boat, bro.”
The white calf is visible briefly in the top video but plays a prominent role in the second (soundless) video, when it passes beneath the boat almost ghostlike.
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The calf, nicknamed Frosty, is part of a family unit of transient orcas cataloged as the CA216s.
Frosty is leucistic and sometimes appears gray, other times white, depending upon the angle of sight and position of the sun.
The calf is about 13 months old and was first documented, as a newborn, last August by Monterey Bay Whale Watch in Central California.
Frosty and the CA216s were encountered at Santa Catalina Island last September by a California Killer Whale Project researcher, so the calf is well traveled.
In fact, according to Alisa Schulman-Janiger, the project’s co-founder, the CA216s have been documented from Vancouver Island off British Columbia to San Diego.
Like other transient orcas, or killer whales, they prey almost exclusively on marine mammals, including dolphins and gray whale calves.
Corum, who was with two fishing companions on a voyage from Newport Beach, said there were at least 10 orcas in the pod. “It was amazing to say the least,” he added.
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