Reality Check

By William Rossiter

Most of us working for cetaceans find it very easy to get abstract and remote with what's really happening out there. Besieged by overwhelming evidence of human impacts, fiddling with dire statistics, constrained by a dull language that describes without feeling, we all need a break, a dose of reality.

The American Cetacean Society's welcomed December conference in Monterey, California, included a whale watch for the lucky few fast enough to register, the whale watch that became legendary. The boat was stuffed with a broad spectrum of hardcore whale-nuts, all old friends or new ones. We never left sight of the wharf, yet drove over waters a mile deep. Of course the weather was perfect. Minutes out we were surrounded by over a thousand common dolphins. The many experts had them pegged as the long snouted form while still just dots. They swarmed around us until enough people eagerly ran out of film. Humpbacks blew in pairs in several directions, but remained far too aloof for me, used to the "friendly" humpbacks of Cape Cod.

Over the underwater canyon near Moss Landing the calm ocean boiled as hundreds of sea lions erupted together at the surface, sloshed around for a few seconds of breathing, and dived again to hunt something deep under them. In between the surges Monterey Bay became quiet again as our whale watch boat approached the spectacle. Still a mile away, someone cried "orca" and four dorsal fins appeared magically, casually approaching from the west. A lot faster than they looked, they got there well ahead of us, and vanished still hundreds of meters from the sea lions. The calm pause was palatable, quivering, and far longer than I could hold my breath. To the captain's credit, we were approaching within the guidelines, slow and impatient.

Predator became prey. Something cued the sea lions to the danger, but the orcas were already among them. Explosions of crammed, panicked sea lions lunged out of the water, streaking away towards shore until exhausted. The smallest orca breached a few times where the sea lions had been. There were some tail flicks and slaps. But where were the other orcas' fins? I'd swear they didn't breathe for many minutes. Their dorsal fins are giveaways. Again the calm sea, waiting.

The eerily quiet stalking continued for over an hour, rarely visible on the Bay's glazed surface. Widely scattered sea lions were lying desperately quiet at the surface. The enormous male that sinuously stayed close by our boat, directly below me, had to have been terrified but he stayed quiet and cool. His head was down, looking, until he absolutely needed air. A quick sideways lift to grab a breath and he was looking down again. No wonder. To a deep orca his body would be silhouetted at the surface. Like most others he knew any small splash was the real danger. Some sea lions were just too panicked to stay quiet enough. Many times a lone sea lion appeared at the surface, probably looking for the orcas' dorsal fins, saw them, and sloshed too much. Even from 300 meters away the orcas' fins turned slowly towards the small sound, and with casual control of the situation simply vanished. They surfaced equally slowly somewhere else some minutes later. What happened below the surface? One sea lion reportedly was killed deep beneath another boat, but the Bay's surface peace was never betrayed. There was no evidence that any other sea lion was killed. Nothing.

Apprehension and disbelief grew among us as groups of sea lions started back towards the site of their feeding frenzy. The orcas were still hunting just to the west. These orcas were sea lion specialists, regulars to Monterey Bay, known to the regulars on the boat. The idea spread that the orcas had come in already full, and were just playing. Why not? That was seized on by the seasoned whale nuts torn between the reality that this is the way these orcas live and sea lions die every day, and the very human hope that the lone and terrified sea lions we watched would survive.

I would give so much to know what those orcas did in those few hours; it would tell us much about the way they think about their world. Is it naïve to suspect they were constrained, even humane (there is no other word), although with a macabre sense of humor? They could have swept through, leaving many maimed sea lions to drown and sink a mile, wasted. They could have killed just what they wanted, and eaten their fill. They could have just trained the youngster without killing, or practiced a complex survival strategy for a time of real need. And best of all hopes, they could have just had a party scaring arrogant sea lions. One thing I doubt that they did do was kill sea lions because their politically motivated studies had declared that there were too many sea lions eating too many fish. Although we can expect such from Alaska's Senator Stevens (who held up the budget to squeeze $20 million to "control" orcas) and the Japanese, that's one human behavioral aberration that I hope to never see in non-humans.

We don't expect orcas and sea lions to be humane, but we often varnish them, and the rest of real world, with human expectations. We may see them as cartoons, always vaguely human. Instead we should know them and honor them all for what they really are. An occasional reality check is a good idea.