Ocean Pandas ~ so cute... unless you are their food...

Killer whales can be a terrible and inaccurate common name that people use to call orca. This is due to the fact that in reality there are only a few ecotypes from around the world that actually hunt and devour other whale species. So, as a result, I prefer to call them either orca or Ocean Pandas, which amply describes the majority of these populations.

However, Bigg's orca or Transient orca are marine mammal hunters and the name "killer whale" does in fact perfectly sum them up very eloquently. This is where their nickname “Wolves-of-the-sea” comes from, as their hunting technique is to behave as a pack & to share the spoils of the hunt within the pod or pods.

Orca spy hopping - searching for their lunch. The birds circling too - usually means that there is scraps in the water for them to scavenge or there will be scraps soon enough.

THIS. STORY. IS. SIMPLY. AWESOME!! Unless you really, really love juvenile Californian sea lions... then you aren't going to enjoy this story of a mind-blowing encounter.

After 2 hours of searching and coming up with nothing! I couldn't even find a seagull to talk about in order to save my life. For that reason I figured that I would give one more area a go.

It paid off!

The little one eager to learn the tactics of hunting.

Honestly, the mecca of orca encounters is when you not only locate orca BUT they are also on the hunt. This happened one day in October (back in 2015) when a pod of orca were circling a floating patch of kelp with a few juvenile wide-eyed California sea lions hiding within.

the prey - a Californian sea lion hiding within the floating kelp patch.

This encounter went for over an hour with two pods of Bigg's orca circling, spy hopping (a behaviour where the orca comes vertically out of the water to have a little look around at the surface) & slowly pulling the kelp apart to get to their lunch. There was even a very, very young calf in the pods that was next to their mum, following and being taught the basic hunting lessons from the other, older orca actively & cooperatively hunting.

Not blood! He is pulling kelp away from the floating patch so he can get to his lunch.

the big male spy hopping to see where his lunch went.

It wasn't hard to tell that at least one of the sea lions did not quite outsmart the hungry Ocean Pandas– especially when one of the female orca showed off the a chunk of food hanging out of her mouth. Just another day on the west coast.

lunch hanging from her mouth.