Killer whale breaches in the waters off Bremer Bay. Photo courtesy Naturaliste Charters.
Why do more than 100 gather off Western Australia every year?
A Flinders University researcher has finally fathomed why large numbers of killer whales gather at a single main location off the West Australian southern coastline every summer.
Physical oceanographer Associate Professor Jochen Kampf.
In a new paper published in Deep Sea Research, physical oceanographer Associate Professor Jochen Kampf describes the conditions which have produced this ecological natural wonder of orcas migrating to the continental slope near Bremer Bay in the western Great Australian Bight from late austral spring to early autumn (January-April).
Credit: photo courtesy Naturaliste Charters, WA
A Flinders University researcher has finally fathomed why large numbers of killer whales gather at a single main location off the Western Australian southern coastline every summer.
In a new paper published in Deep Sea Research, physical oceanographer Associate Professor Jochen Kampf describes the conditions which have produced this ecological natural wonder of orcas migrating to the continental slope near Bremer Bay in the western Great Australian Bight from late austral spring to early autumn (January-April). The aggregation is connected to the local marine food web that follows from the upwelling of benthic particulate organic matter (POM) in a confined region near the seafloor plateau near the head of the Hood Canyon, says Associate Professor Kampf, from the Flinders University College of Science and Engineering.
Clue to killer whale cluster
A Flinders University researcher has finally fathomed why large numbers of killer whales gather at a single main location off the Western Australian southern coastline every summer.
In a new paper published in Deep Sea Research, physical oceanographer Associate Professor Jochen Kampf describes the conditions which have produced this ecological natural wonder of orcas migrating to the continental slope near Bremer Bay in the western Great Australian Bight from late austral spring to early autumn (January-April).
“The aggregation is connected to the local marine food web that follows from the upwelling of benthic particulate organic matter (POM) in a confined region near the seafloor plateau near the head of the Hood Canyon,” says Associate Professor Kampf, from the Flinders University College of Science and Engineering.
(Photo : Elianne Dipp)
The orcas were biting the jaw of the blue whale, trying to get hold of its tongue. In a struggle for about an hour, as many as 70 killer whales tracked down and killed a blue whale off the southwestern coast of Australia, according to a marine biologist who witnessed the astonishing, a bit of disturbing and actually mind-blowing incident occur.
(Photo : Silvana Palacios)
Whale Watching
Initially, it appeared like a usual day of whale watching, Kristy Brown, a marine biologist with Naturaliste Charters, a company that owned whale-watching tours located in Western Australia revealed. Brown wrote in a blog post of March 16 that the vessel occurred upon two pods of orcas in Bremer Bay Canyon, around 45 kilometers (28 miles) away from the coast, that was playing and surfing the waves.
Marine biologist witnesses blue whale getting torn to shreds by 70 orcas
Nature can be super savage.
Credit: Naturaliste Charters.
It was a blue-skyed day with calm waters while marine biologist Kristy Brown was out on a whale-watching tour off the coast of Western Australia. Pretty uneventful until Brown caught sight of a beautiful blue whale, slapping its tail above the water but it wasn’t alone. What initially looked like a serene scene quickly turned into a horrific feeding frenzy as more than 70 orcas ganged up on the whale, chasing it for hours until they finally had their way.
Brown works for Naturaliste Charters, a company that operates whale-watching tours in Australia, so she has quite a bit of experience studying whales in their natural habitat. But she’s never seen anything like the “Orcas of Bremer Bay Canyon hunt” before March 16, which the marine biologist described in a blog post as something “that very few people have, or likely will, ever see in the