Who controls The Bremer Canyon? The Orca matriarchs do and are in charge of their family, today we had the special opportunity of meeting some of the special matriarchs of the Bremer Canyon. Our first leader was Noosa who was travelling a few hundred meters away from the rest of her family. Spending a little bit of time with her and her son, we moved over to see her daughters and cheeky calves. They were in a resting mood and carefully cruised through the outskirts of the Patch before beginning to swim towards another pod just up ahead of us and soon we could see why.
It was Cookie and her family who were feeding after a successful hunt and as the Shearwaters began to dive desperately to capture any scraps we could see Swirl carrying a large amount of squid in her mouth. Eventually Noosa and her pod dispersed, but it did appear that one of the calves in Noosa’s pod had managed to capture a bit of squid as his mum came back to collect him while sharing the food as they went. One Shearwater had us giggling as somehow he managed to get a small bit of squid wrapped around is foot and as he was flying the continual harassment of all the other Shearwaters around him had a whole ruckus of sound going on around the boat! Our final surprise for the afternoon was a visit from the much loved matriarch Queen aka Split Tip/Split Pin who we haven’t seen since early January. A fantastic observation today of important family behaviours and we now know exactly who controls the Bremer Canyon, the matriarchs!
