WESTERN CAPE. — A large bull orca and a cow have been spotted in False Bay after they were sighted along the South African coast over the past two weeks and reportedly made several attempts to catch whale calves.
The orcas were tracked on Friday morning by Simon's Town Boat Company's crew and guests, after which a team of scientists led by Dr Simon Elwen took biopsy samples for DNA analysis and attached a satellite tag to the cow orca. The boat operator described the encounter as particularly successful for both visitors and scientific research. A later image sent to the operator also suggests that at least one Cape fur seal was caught and eaten by the orcas.
According to Simon's Town Boat Company, the pair initially appeared at Kaysers Beach near East London, where they allegedly caught a southern right whale calf. They were subsequently spotted at Kids Beach and Plettenberg Bay. On 14 October, footage was recorded of an attempt to catch another southern right whale calf at Plettenberg Bay. The calf's mother reportedly tried to protect her young for about four hours before the orcas abandoned the attempt.
The pair were spotted the following day at Knysna and later near Jongensfontein on the South Cape coast. They subsequently reached Hermanus before visiting False Bay. In False Bay, the orcas also caused three Cape fur seals to suddenly bolt when they swam past them. The satellite tag will help researchers track the cow's movements and learn more about the pair's hunting behaviour and distribution along the coast.
Photo used with photographer's permission.
Sources: Simon's Town Boat Company, Sea Search Research and Conservation, Dyer Island Conservation Trust
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
