A wildlife photographer has shared footage of the brutal moment that a pod of orcas took down a young humpback whale.
Marine biologist and underwater photographer Simon Hilbourne saw the astonishing spectacle in June 2024 during South Africa’s sardine run.
“I witnessed one of the most raw and brutal events to happen in the ocean,” says Hilbourne on Instagram. “It took a pod of orcas over an hour to kill this young humpback whale.”
The boat Hilbourne was on had spotted a pod of five orcas, or killer whales (Orcinus orca), about 10 miles off the coast of East London, South Africa, and tracked them as they swam north.
The orcas had already seen and passed a few humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) before they set their sights on this youngster “and started to surround and harass it,” he says, even though the individual whale was bigger than even the largest orca in the pod. Hilbourne estimates that it was around nine metres long.
What happened next was hard to watch. “The orcas would bite onto the humpback's pectoral fins,” he says. “It was unclear if the humpback was then rolling to get the orcas off or if the orcas were rolling the humpback to try and drown it. They also rammed it, delivered body blows, and tried to ride on its back to submerge it.”
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This epic battle took at least an hour. Then, the whale watchers noticed that the humpback was bleeding. After half an hour more, it was dead and the killer whales started to feed.
“At least one orca made a couple of entries into the humpback's mouth to remove the tongue,” says Hilbourne, and the young humpback’s body sank beneath the waves. “I can't say they didn't eat any more of the whale,” he adds, “but we only saw them eat the tongue.”
Image and video credit: Simon Hilbourne
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