What Orca eat Beaked Whale? The question is an important one as not all Orca eat other marine mammals, some specialise in hunting shark while others love salmon. The Orca of the Bremer Canyon predominately feed on squid, but there are predation of Beaked Whales also sighted each season. Learning more about what Orca eat Beaked Whales will help us to better understand the families of Orca that visit the Bremer Canyon and each pods preferred diet. Joining with the much loved family pod of El Notcho, Cookie, Oreo Kalimna, Spock, Akama and Swirl we enjoyed observing their foraging behaviour. All was very normal until suddenly a large object was sent flying skywards and landed with a big splash, it was over in seconds but one of the females (Kalimna or Akama) had just rammed into something in a hunting tactic that could cause serious injury to the prey. Looking carefully we watched on trying to determine exactly what had just been sent flying and if it was ok, suddenly a good spot by one of our guests had us all gasp as a tiny Beaked Whale surfaced in front of us and was swimming directly towards our bow.
The poor little one appeared to be a juvenile and was swimming only 10 meters in front of our bow as he tried to hide in our sound footprint and away from the Orca. One last surfacing and he swam directly underneath us, seeming to be ok but very rattled and seeking somewhere to hide. We weren’t able to get a 100% id on the exact type of Beaked Whale species but thankfully for this juvenile it appears that El Notcho and his family do not have Beaked Whale on their menu. The situation that unfolded displayed a great opportunity to observe a slightly playful/practice hunting manoeuvre from the pod but it did not eventuate into an active hunt and successful meal, the energy was not sighted amongst the pod to show signs that they were focusing on hunting the juvenile Beaked Whale. Another fascinating day in the Bremer Canyon and a fantastic opportunity to continue learning more about what Orca eat Beaked Whale and thankfully for this beautiful juvenile Beaked Whale today he was not on this family pods menu, phew!
