Lately, Bertie Gregory, a Nationwide Geographic Explorer and host of Animals Up Shut on Disney+, noticed a exceptional try by two humpback whales to guard a seal below assault by a pod of orcas in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea.
Nationwide Geographic stories that Gregory and his crew had traveled throughout the Drake Passage that separates South America from the southernmost continent to movie a uncommon orca inhabitants referred to as B1. Recognized for his or her distinctive technique of making waves that knock seals off items of ice, these genetically distinct Antarctic orcas, doubtless quantity solely round 100.
Gregory and his crew of filmmakers and scientists started following a small pod of B1s searching seals within the driving snow. Quickly, the pod zeroed in on their prey—a Weddell seal mendacity smack-dab in the course of a big piece of ice.
With an aerial drone, the crew watched because the orcas disintegrated the seal’s icy platform from under. It labored, forcing the seal into the water, the place the pod then spent a number of minutes tiring the animal out.
“Then, rapidly, two humpback whales simply flip up,” says Gregory. “They do that superb trumpeting noise [that’s] so loud, it reverberates within the hull of the boat, like an elephant trumpeting.”
On this occasion, the humpbacks had been too late to intervene on the seal’s behalf, however between their unmistakable trumpeting and determination to swim proper into the orca pod, Gregory believes the pair had been attempting to mess up the orca’s hunt and even defend the seal.
Leigh Hickmott, a whale biologist on the College of St. Andrews in Scotland and Gregory’s collaborator on a venture to review B1s, agrees.
“I believe it exhibits very clear indicators of altruism,” Hickmott says.
The actions of the “hero” humpbacks was uncommon however hardly unprecedented. 5 years in the past, we posted about an incident the place biologist Nan Hauser was protected by a humpback whale when approached by a big tiger shark, whereas snorkeling within the Cook dinner Islands within the South Pacific.
Likewise, Mom Nature Community stories of comparable intentional rescues: Marine ecologist Robert Pitman noticed a very dramatic instance of this habits again in 2009 whereas observing a pod of killer whales searching a Weddell seal trapped on an ice floe off Antarctica. The orcas had been capable of efficiently knock the seal off the ice, and simply as they had been closing in for the kill, an impressive humpback whale instantly rose up out of the water beneath the seal.
This was no mere accident. With the intention to higher defend the seal, the whale positioned it safely on its upturned stomach to maintain it out of the water. Because the seal slipped down the whale’s facet, the humpback appeared to make use of its flippers to rigorously assist the seal again aboard. Lastly, when the coast was clear, the seal was capable of safely swim off to a different, safer ice floe.
The BBC has additionally recorded video of humpback whales making an attempt to save lots of a child grey whale which had change into separated from its mom and was below assault by a pod of orcas.
Robert Pittman went on to review the phenomenon. His analysis analyzed 115 interactions that occurred between humpbacks and killer whales, noticed by greater than 54 people — scientists and non-scientists — in ocean places world wide and spanning 62 years, from 1951 by way of 2012.
The examine discovered that enormous and highly effective humpback whales, the one whales identified to assault orcas, will band collectively and generally journey nice distances to interrupt and terminate a killer whale assault, no matter what sort of animal the orca is attacking.
In uncommon footage, humpback whales try to disrupt a killer whale hunt in Antarctica
