Killer whales and humpback whales get aggressive with each other. Wild stuff!

Image: a mother killer whale with her calf, similar to the 2 mother/calf pairs that we encountered today.

2025 12–06 SB Channel 

Captain Dave says it was “a bluebird day.“ The skies were clear and sunny. There was no wind. On the other hand, a rather large 6ft bump was rolling through from the W, caused by strong winds offshore last night. Total sightings: 10 coastal bottlenose dolphins, 5 humpback whales and 4 killer whales.

Our mammal sightings got off to a quick start as we intercepted a rather large pod of coastal bottlenose dolphins at the harbor entrance buoy. We cruised with them into the East Beach Anchorage. There were plenty of young calves in this pod, and dolphins of all sizes were friendly with the Condor Express. At thi point captain Dave got a call about a group of humpback whales out in the lanes, so that’s where we went next.

We were N of the lanes when we encountered single, somewhat shy, humpback whale. It was very mobile and was feeding subsurface with lots of directional changes underwater to challenge our ability to stay with it. There were additional spouts that we could see in the separation zone to the S. We moved in that direction quickly.

Upon arriving at the scene, the spouts turned out to belong to 4 killer whales. Killers come to our channel on an irregular basis and so it is always a big deal when we encounter them. There were two cow/calf pairs, a very large mother with a very young calf, plus another mother with a much larger calf… making a total of 4 females in the group.

Soon 3 humpback whales swam into the area where we were watching the killer whales. Things got “interesting” very quickly.

The next 2 hours unfolded and revealed a pattern of fascinating interactions between the 4 humpback whales and the 4 killer whales. Essentially the killer whales made a series of fast rushes towards the humpbacks, only to back off and swim in a different direction at the very last minute. Meanwhile the humpback whales swam to the killer whales and, in the process, rolled around a lot, vocalized and did both tail-throws and tail-sweeps. I called this a “pattern“ because these behaviors went back-and-forth, uninterrupted, for most of the 2 hours. There were no apparent injuries to any of the whales. 

Sidenote #1: for a very brief period, one of the humpback pairs moved away about 50 yards during which time the calf played and rolled around right next to mom. (I wonder if it was nursing).

Sidenote number #2: with all the back-and-forth interactions between the two species, we had several close visits by humpback whales to the Condor Express. We saw close spy-hops and pirouettes.

You never know what mother nature has in store.

Bob Perry

condorexpressphotography.com

NOTE: noted whale photographer, Mark, was in contact with Alisa from the California Killer Whale Project. She identified our 4 whales as part of the CA 51-A pod. (Mark says he will post his photos in an hour or two on social media).