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Transient Orcas are 'Real Killers' Along Oregon Coast in April

Photos by Tiffany Boothe, Seaside Aquarium

(Newport, Oregon) – It’s now the big buzz along the Oregon coast: the killer whales are coming.

It’s a tidbit about the coast that’s only emerged this year. And although it has been happening fairly regularly for a long time, it’s still a rare sight to see them along this coast. But it’s the reasons why they’re here that are tickling people’s fancy.

Each year, around April 15 or so, a run of killer whales approaches the area and patrols the central coast waters, looking for baby gray whales and maybe a few sea lions or seals to munch on. Usually, it’s in the Depoe Bay and Newport areas, but it’s often seen from Cascade Head all the way down to Florence.

The killer whales are what are known as “transient” whales, meaning officials don’t know where they come from. They’re also more predatory, living off seals and baby gray whales.

Morris Grover, with the Whale Watch Spoken Here program, says these are smaller and more shark-like in appearance than what are nicknamed the “friendly” whales, which visit here from the San Juan Islands and live on salmon.

“We see them in our waters every spring, usually arriving about April 15,” Grover said. “But some have already been spotted during the previous whale watch week. They are here to intercept the baby gray whales, as that is the time they usually arrive along the coast. They are usually here for a few weeks.”

Last year, the killer whales lingered until the middle of July.

“That is a very long time for them, but it was obviously supported by local food for them,” Grover said. “We watched a pod of five around Depoe Bay and actually filmed them taking what we believed to be a seal in the south end of the bay. Seals and sea lions are fast in the water and orcas have to burn up a lot of energy to catch them. After all that work, only one seal will feed one orca. When they kill a baby gray whale, the whole pod can eat for a week.”

Sea Lions barking without a care as orcas swim nearby

Grover said they can sometimes be seen coming into Yaquina Bay in Newport, when they can’t find baby whales, attracted by the proliferation of seals and sea lions in the bay. Some years, they have also been known to linger at the edges of the bay’s jetties. One sighting in recent years was of a killer whale chasing a seal all the way through Yaquina Bay, almost as far east as Toledo.

“It’s all food related,” Grover said. “They come up here all the time. Basically, they will take the easiest prey.”

Grover said they are sometimes seen apparently “playing” with their food by tossing it back and forth, or slapping it with their tails. This unique behavior has to do with teaching their young how to hunt.

To catch sight of these killer whales, just like spotting any whale, Grover suggests patience, and head to a high vantage point. The Newport area has many of these, such as the lighthouse at Yaquina Bay, the Yaquina Head area, Don Davis Memorial Park in Nye Beach, and nearby at Cape Foulweather. The headquarters for the Whale Watch Spoken Here program is in Depoe Bay, at the seawall, and another good spot for seeing them as well.

One theory about why the killer whales have been more frequent in these waters in recent decades is that the sardine population has recently begun to recover from over fishing in the 30’s.

Grover said sardines come up through this region in what are nicknamed “bait balls,” where their numbers are so condensed they form a wall of fish, partially out of an instinct to protect their young. It appears to employees of the Whale Watch Spoke Here center in Depoe Bay as a large, dark mass in the ocean.

Orcas here have been seen swimming around them with great frequency, forcing them to coalesce together even closer. Then, the whales will simply start to swim through them with their mouths open, sucking down this wall of fish in a kind of underwater all-you-can-eat buffet.

Grover emphasized that even though the Whale Watch Week is over, there are still gray whales aplenty to be spotted, along with the coveted killer whale sightings. Gray whales are still migrating through here in great numbers until June. Then, the “summer” whales begin to show up, which tend to loiter on the central coast in large numbers for the summer before migrating again, because of the great food supply here. These really put on a show by coming quite close to shore.

“If you sit there for only five minutes and you spot a whale, then you’ve won the lottery,” Grover said. “It’s not likely. If you sit there for a half hour, it’s possible you’ll see one. If you sit for an hour, you’ll probably see one.”

In May of last year, Tiffany Boothe of the Seaside Aquarium photographed a pod of killer whales near the Sea Lion Caves. That event was a few days after a much publicized sighting of the same pod by staff at Sea Lion Caves.

What staff there noted was that the orcas were swimming around the sea lions, but they weren’t disturbed by the presence of their usual predators. Grover thinks this was because either the whales were full and were not interested in the swimming sea lions, or they were trying to fool them into complacency so they could make a meal of them.

Boothe also noted the sea lions didn’t seem to be scared by the killer whales swimming around them.

For more information on whale watching, contact the Whale Watch Spoke Here program at (541) 765-3407.

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