In the Company of Killers : Orcas Give Whale Watchers, the Adventurous a Rare Thrill

By now most of the thousands of gray whales that passed through Southland waters this winter are calving and cavorting in the warm-water lagoons of Baja California.

A few stragglers are still headed south, just as a few front-runners are probably leaving the lagoons early to begin their 6,000-mile journey back to their spring and summer home off Alaska.

In two weeks, they’ll all be northbound and back off our coast in full force.

But one question in the minds of many is whether the other whales will be back: The killer whales that dazzled hundreds of whale-watchers and a couple of fun-loving (read foolhardy) skin divers earlier this winter.

The sleek and powerful cousins of the larger whales, more closely related to dolphins, have stolen the spotlight from the grays on several occasions, breezing in and out of Southland waters by the dozens, in some instances riding the wakes of the boats pursuing them and sneaking peeks of the passengers gawking at them.

“They’ve been a bonus, that’s for sure,” said Adam Barry, who skippers the Voyager out of Redondo Sportfishing.

Bonus?

The killer whales have added an element of intrigue to this year’s whale-watch scene. Nobody knows if or when they will surface again. Nobody is absolutely sure where they come from and nobody has a clue where they are today.

Unlike the grays, they have played the role of the mysterious interloper, peaking the interest of scientists and spectators.

There are two distinct classifications for killer whale pods: resident and transient.

Resident pods are relatively small groups that rarely venture far from their respective regions, and they feed largely on fish and squid. Transient pods pass through specific areas from time to time and tend to prey upon other mammals, including gray whale calves and even full-grown whales.

Transient pods have made several “raids” locally over the years, and in some instances they have been quite dramatic.

In 1992, a group of schoolchildren, on a field trip aboard Santa Barbara-based Truth, watched in awe as an adult gray whale emerged just off the bow of the vessel.

They then watched in horror as a killer whale charged from the depths and sunk its teeth into the flesh of the larger mammal, not 30 feet away.

The crew aboard the nearby Condor had contacted the Truth earlier that afternoon, reporting a sighting of a small pod of killer whales moving swiftly across the water.

That same season passengers aboard the Truth witnessed another incident involving a transient pod of killer whales. The black and white mammals were tossing a small harbor seal across the water as if they were playing a game.

The frightened seal somehow managed to swim aboard the swim-step behind the stern of the vessel. But as the passengers leaned over, trying to figure a way to assist the animal, a killer whale bellied up onto the swim-step and grabbed the seal in its mouth and flung it again, splattering the passengers with water and blood.

David O. Brown of the Santa Barbara-based Passage Productions, who has traveled the world working on various projects, many as part of the Cousteau research and documentary team, filmed a pod of killer whales off New Guinea in 1988 that seemed to be toying with a group of large sharks.

“They’d show up with sharks sticking out of the sides of their mouths,” Brown said. “I saw one literally tear up an 11-foot shark.”

What’s interesting about the pod of killer whales making a splash locally this season is that it doesn’t appear to be resident or transient.

Experts believe this “super-pod,” as it has been called because of its size--it consists of between 60 and 100 mammals--is associated with a mysterious “offshore” pod of whales that has been seen only 25 times since 1979--22 times off the west coast of Canada and three times off California.

The first California sighting was in 1994 off the Farallon Islands outside the Golden Gate Bridge. Scientists identified some of the same whales belonging to the offshore group using a photo-catalogue of animals with distinct markings on their dorsal fins.

Last year, a pod of between 40 and 80 killer whales showed off Southern California periodically during a three-week period. A few of the killer whales matched up with the offshore group as well.

And this winter’s visitors seem to include some of the offshore group, and at least one killer whale from the pod that showed last season off Southern California too.

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, an official with the American Cetacean Society working on a project to learn more about the mysterious pod, matched some of the dorsal fins using pictures she received last weekend.

Schulman-Janiger said the pod, because of its size and feeding habits--it seems to have been gorging mostly on fish and an unusual abundance of squid in local waters--does not possess any of the characteristics of a transient pod.

“From the pictures I’ve seen and the people I’ve talked to, some of these are the same animals we had in that big group last year,” she said. “Some of them are also probably from that offshore population, which is not very well understood.

“It travels in fairly large numbers, it is very vocal and the animals have a lot of marked up fins. They go offshore somewhere or maybe even to another country, we don’t know. They were seen in June, 1992, off Vancouver Island and weren’t photographed again until September of ’94 off the Farallons, and then we had them last February.”

One thing is understood: The killer whales--this year and last--have been a boon to the whale-watching businesses up and down the coast, and they have provided at least two Southland skin-divers with the thrill of a lifetime.

In the first instance, Orange County’s Bill Odell, while on an excursion with his family, decided to dive in with the killer whales with his underwater video camera.

In the video, several killer whales could easily be seen moving gracefully about in the water off Santa Catalina Island, making occasional passes at Odell, some within only a few feet.

When word spread of his adventure, a dive instructor for Dive ‘N Surf in Redondo Beach decided he also wanted to swim with the killer whales.

Tony Vanore was as successful as Odell. His story, along with a photograph showing him waving to his friends on the boat while surrounded by killer whales, was displayed in the Hermosa Beach-based Easy Reader.

And it prompted a mini-outcry on the part of a concerned public (mostly for the animals sake, not the diver’s) and experts who pointed out that Vanore was probably in violation of the Marine Mammal Act, designed to protect the animals from harassment.

“The guy is out of his mind,” Brown said. “If people start jumping in with killer whales it’s only a matter of time before one of these orcas [as killer whales are also called] is going to take somebody apart, because they don’t know any predators, they know no fear. They don’t have anything in the ocean that can take them out.”

A National Marine Fisheries Service officer did visit Dive ‘N Surf and Vanore. But Ray Sautter, a special agent for the enforcement arm of the agency, said there are no plans to prosecute anyone.

“We define harassment as an active pursuit to torment or cause an annoyance which has the potential to injure or disturb a marine mammal or cause a disruption of its behavioral patterns,” Sautter said. “I doubt this diver did any of that--I mean these are killer whales. In this case I’d be more concerned about the diver. All we ask is that people give them a little room and use a little common sense.”

FISHING

Local: Time will tell whether the spring ocean salmon bite will equal last year’s record haul, but already there are reports of salmon being caught incidentally by commercial fishermen operating around the northern Channel Islands. The recreational season south of Point Arena near San Francisco begins March 2. Last year, sport fishermen landed an all-time high 397,000 king salmon statewide. The fish extended well south of their normal range, and anglers off the Santa Barbara-Ventura coast were among those experiencing a phenomenal bite.

Cabo San Lucas: Marlin fishermen wondering what happened to the bite off Cabo San Lucas may find the answer 200 miles up the coast. That’s where the stripers are, in mass according to radio reports from private boaters received by John Doughty of J.D.’s Big Game Tackle on Balboa Island. Some skippers have reported catching and releasing as many as 20 stripers a day.

MISCELLANY

Calendar: The annual Blake Jones Trout Derby, sponsored by the Bishop Chamber of Commerce, will be held in the Eastern Sierra Community on March 9. Cost is $5 for adults, $1 for children. Details: (619) 873-8405. . . . The annual Southern California Fly Fishing Show, sponsored by the Southwest Council Federation of Fly Fishers, will be held at the Orange County Fairgrounds March 16-17 from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. The show features about 100 exhibitor booths, guest speakers and demonstrations, and special women’s instructional programs. Registration is $7 for adults, $3 for children. Details: (818) 349-2649.