Whale watchers caught a rare glimpse of orcas leaping from the waters while they hunted dolphins off the coast of California early this week. Video shared by Sanctuary Cruises marketing director Luke Kilpatrick showed the ocean’s top predators hunt as Kilpatrick and others watched the encounter on Monterey Bay from a boat on Monday. The whale-watching operation’s passengers had spotted the special sight on Sunday, as well. According to a Sanctuary Cruises blog post shared Sunday, whale watchers tracked the mammal-eating orcas, or killer whales, identified as members of the CA140B family group, with an adult male nicknamed “Jimmy,” as the animals captured long-beaked common dolphins. “On our mid-day departure aboard Ocean Spirit, we witnessed an extraordinary and intense predation event just over the rim of the Monterey Submarine Canyon,” according to Sanctuary Cruises’ blog post. It described a pod of seven killer whales pursuing 15 common dolphins, “executing high-speed ramming strikes that launched both predator and prey entirely out of the water.” “They rely on stealth and immense physical force to hunt, using their multi-ton bodies to ram and stun fast-moving dolphins at the surface,” read the blog post. The encounter demonstrated “classic, co-ordinated hunting behaviour,” according to a separate Sanctuary Cruises blog post on Monday. The whale-watching boat operator said the orcas “worked systematically to isolate a smaller group of common dolphins” from a larger group of around 1,500 animals. “Once separated from the safety of the dense pod, the dolphins were pursued in open water as the killer whales maintained continuous pressure,” Sanctuary Cruises wrote.
