When a research team motored down a predetermined transect line offshore from Monterey, California, they witnessed some commotion — many excited seabirds were hovering over some big splashing. They went to take a closer look, and saw orcas were involved.
“You could see the killer whales making lots of quick movements, both laterally on the water surface, and they were diving,” Paula Olson says, a visiting marine mammal biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In the midst of this, their prey would sometimes breach the surface before the orcas would slam it down under the water.
Within a few moments, Olson and her colleagues saw a lot of gore, as if the killer whales had opened an artery. “It was gruesome, but there was this geyser of blood that shot way high in the air,” Olson says, adding that it shot nearly 30 feet up. “[The orcas] ...
