A terrifically Orca-strated show.

I’m not one to use superlatives easy, and cringe at TV shows featuring people yelling their excitement with screechy voices, but last Wednesday I actually was one of those people, because I witnessed the best wildlife viewing I’ve ever done.

Our galley area is blessed with a lot of windows which look out over our pier and the parts of the ocean close to station that are called Hero inlet and Arthur Harbor. With many eyeballs occasionally glancing at the water, interesting actions stand a good chance of being noticed. So when someone mentioned that there was a minke whale in the harbor, a lot of people were at the ready to see if they could spot it too. Quickly it became apparent that it wasn’t a minke, but that it was an orca (both have dorsal fins, but the orca fin is bigger) and then it turned out that that were several. There was at least one male in there with a very big dorsal fin and then some others. When they proceeded to do their spy hopping behavior (rising out of the water vertically to be able to take a look at the area above the water) it became clear that their number must have been 8 or 9. They spotted a young crab eater seal who was lying on an ice floe right across from our pier some 50 feet away. At that point the orcas started cooperating in earnest in their attempt to reach the seal. By now it had been announced twice over the station loudspeakers that there was wildlife viewing, so everyone in town was watching. It was even better than a documentary because the orcas were everywhere and we had a much broader vision than a camera lens would have had. The orcas were popping up on all sides of the ice floe with some of them being really close to the seal, who was brave (or stupid) enough to charge toward the killer whale who was closest to it and make a biting motion. At one point the big male made a big wave and reduced the floe to just a small part of its initial size, but the seal was still not caught. Then somehow the orcas seemed to loose interest a little bit and the seal disappeared in the water and lived to see another day. Afterwards the orcas still did a lot of patrolling around and further entering Hero inlet. Some came really close to the people standing on the pier thus making it even easier for all the folks to get their pictures.
I was filming from inside for the first bit, but did not get super good images, also because I was on radio watch and had to communicate with the bird researchers who were out on their mission to check in on penguins and giant petrels. I did tell them that a spectacular show was going on and they bee lined for station immediately.
This was really the best I will ever see. So many of them hunting and so nearby, what a great show. I hope the ice cover will hang around for a little bit longer and give us some more viewing pleasure. 
When the birders later came in at the end of the day, they'd had had an extra  bonus in the form of a leopard seal who was toying with a young elephant seal. It took its sweet time biting it and dragging it under and letting it go again, while the seal seemed to be immobile and in a state of shock.  They have some great GoPro images. A couple of days later they recognized the “little”
fellow between the elephant seals that like to come up on our boat ramp, so that seal as well had survived even though it had numerous scars on its body.







This video was shot by Susan McCarthy who is
here to write a book about sheathbills, but who
was just as thrilled as the rest of us to see this
spectacle.

This video here might be off a little less quality, but shows a better overview of what was happening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3PVUrU_u4c

These pictures are from some of my colleagues who were kind enough to share them with others.

One of the orcas swam really close to the boathouse.

The spy hopping in action, and the seal defending itself.
When you look at the video's it seems at times that it wasn't
all that concerned, but maybe that's because its very young
and hasn't learned about orcas yet..

The orcas were working together really well, surrounding
the seal on all sides. At this stage in the game, the ice floe
has broken up considerably already.

The bird researchers came back to station to watch all of this
from nearby. This image really shows the size of the orcas
(the fact that this person seems to not be looking at the animal
right next to him is because there was so many other orcas
to keep track of.

The bird researches did have front row seats though.