Lone young blue whale falls in hunt by over 50 orcas
More than 50 orcas were seen taking down a lone yearling blue whale off the shores of Bremer Bay in an “incredibly rare” display of a successful orca hunt.
Whale Watch Western Australia tour operator Gemma Sharp said the blue whale set upon by the orcas on Monday was about 10m-12m in length.
“It was a very, very young blue whale, which is quite rare to see, because the blue whales we do observe off our coast are adults or young adults making their annual migration,” she said.
“To see such a youngster was very special in itself . . . we haven’t seen that before — the sightings of these blue whale hunts, they’re incredibly rare.
“The last one we had was back in 2021 where we had one blue whale they attempted to hunt but it got away . . . so this is our first successful hunt.”
Ms Sharp said the blue whale was likely separated from its mother, having been recently weaned.
“Unfortunately we think that this one is recently separated from mum and it has found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.
“These sorts of hunts, you never quite know how they’re going to pan out, usually the orca always do get the upper hand.
“We sort of had a feeling as soon as we came across it all and saw where the orca were surging towards that it wasn’t looking good, because when they’re that young they just don’t have the experience or the body strength to sort of fight back in that situation.”
Ms Sharp said the attack was chaotic but organised with the group working together to take the whale down.
“The main thing that the orca were doing was just smothering the poor blue whale — they were all over him and just not letting it run free from them,” she said.
“It was very chaotic, but organised chaos — they were very deliberate in what they were doing but they were deliberately making it frantic to stress the blue whale out.”
The hunt lasted for about 30 minutes and no other blue whale was sighted nearby as the orcas took advantage of the lone whale.
“That’s the thing with the youngsters, sometimes they make mistakes, as a lot of juvenile animals do, and that’s where the orca take that opportunity when it does arise,” Ms Sharp said.