A freediver off Kona, Hawaii, has captured brief but stunning video footage of a rarely seen type of killer whale.
With his charter business closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seth Conae and a couple of friends ventured out on April 22, hoping to spear a few fish for dinner.
Instead they watched two pods of killer whales, or orcas, for more than three hours. At one point, Conae jumped in and captured the accompanying footage.
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“It has been the No. 1 species that anyone in our industry has wanted to see,” Conae, owner of Manta Ray Dives of Hawaii and Kona Diving EcoAdventures,” told For The Win Outdoors. “Finally, after 10 years on the water, this dream finally came true.”
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Killer whales have never been known to attack humans in the wild, so Conae knew there was minimal risk, if any. Still, he said, “It was a little nerve-racking at first, not knowing what could happen.”
Orca sightings are extremely rare in Hawaiian waters. The mammals spotted by Conae and friends are part of a central tropical Pacific population that spends most of its time offshore, making only sporadic nearshore visits.
The Cascadia Research Collective, based in Washington State, keeps a photo-identification catalog of these killer whales and scientists matched one orca in Conae’s video to an individual spotted by researchers twice in 2016 and once in 2017 off Kona.
“The fact that we have multi-year matches even with a small catalog (57 individuals) suggests that this population is quite small,” Cascadia stated this week on Facebook. (The match was based on pigmentation patterns on the orca’s left eye patch.)
Conae, who said it’s legal for Kona residents to go boating in small groups, said the encounter occurred mid-morning about two miles offshore.
“We noticed some splashes and decided to investigate, and at first I thought they were false killer whales,” Conae recalled. “But then two of them lunged out of the water, exposing the white circles around their eyes. Then we knew. Orcas!”
There were two pods – eight in one group, five in the other. The ocean was rough and Conae said it took “a few attempts” before he was able to spot one of the pods while diving beneath his vessel with a mask and snorkel.
“Seeing the holy grail of cetaceans in clear Hawaiian waters was extremely fulfilling,” he said. “My team and I live for these moments; it’s what drives us to get out on the water.”
