For Whale Watchers, It’s Been a Killer View

The sea lion found itself in some pretty scary company: alongside a small pod of killer whales, including two spry females that wanted to play.

Or such was the observation of Eric Martin, a researcher from El Segundo who witnessed the encounter two weeks ago while aboard his 18-foot boat, Okum, near the west end of Santa Catalina Island.

“They were looking to harass something,” recalled Martin, 37, founder and president of the Marine Mammal Study Center, a small South Bay educational facility. “They were even riding [the wake of] our bow, which is really unusual behavior. They definitely wanted to play.”

The way cats play with mice.

One of the killer whales spotted the sea lion, which in turn spotted its attacker. The sea lion dived. The orca followed.

Martin and his companion, Diana McIntyre, watched and waited . . . and waited and watched. Finally, the killer whale surfaced, with no blood or blubber in its teeth. There was no sign of death, but there was no sign of the sea lion, either, so who knows?

The killer whale rejoined the others--a male and two females--and the group resumed its northward journey. The male, Martin observed, had a severely curved dorsal fin, much like his cousin the movie star.

“We called him Willy Whale,” he said. “We think the fin got that way as a result of the animal either being hit by a boat or getting caught in a fishing net.”

It was doing well enough on this calm and sunny day, though, with three females by its side. They all headed for the horizon, while Martin and McIntyre headed home with several nice photographs that later would be used to determine that these were “transient” killer whales that had never been known to travel this far south.

Transient killer whales--unlike so-called resident pods that tend to remain off Alaska, Canada and the Pacific Northwest and eat mostly fish--feed largely on other marine mammals.

The sea lion was lucky to get away, if in fact it did.

GRAY MATTER

One of the female orcas in the group had been photographed and cataloged twice before--both times after sightings off Monterey.

Since she is a known transient, the killer whales she was swimming with also can be considered transients because transients have never been seen socializing with residents or with any of the two other distinct groups of killer whales: the mysterious offshore pod and what is often called the L.A. Pod.

The offshore pod is large in number and travels together in large sub-groups, feeding mostly on fishes. The L.A. Pod, so-named because the animals frequent waters off the Los Angeles-area coast, is believed to be small in number and prefer mammals over fish.

This is exciting stuff for scientists and others who care about such details.

But these have been pretty wild times for even casual whale watchers, what few of them there have been in these the early stages of the season.

Landing operators attribute the lack of passengers on their vessels to reports on television and in some newspapers--including this one--that the gray whale migration is off to a late start.

These reports were based on the absence of sightings off Oregon in early December, which is when gray whales usually start passing through the Pacific Northwest on their annual migration from the Bering Sea to the calving and nursing grounds in the warm-water lagoons of southern Baja California.

The whales must have either been in stealth mode or taken an offshore course because they did leave the Bering Sea--as they always do--and they have arrived in Southland waters, right on schedule.

Volunteer spotters from atop the bluff at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center on the Palos Verdes Peninsula already have counted more than 65 southbound grays, which is well above normal for this time of year.

L.A. Harbor Sportfishing began running daily trips on Christmas aboard the 93-foot First String, and though the vessel has been carrying light loads, its passengers have gone home happy, having seen gray whales every day but one.

“And on that day we saw a lot of dolphins,” landing spokesman Darren Wilson said. “We’ve also seen minke whales, and last Saturday we saw a pod of killer whales. That was a good show.”

The show took place about two miles off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. On the same morning, people on the bike path in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach rode alongside a southbound gray that was swimming just beyond the surf in water that couldn’t have been more than 20 feet deep.

The presence of killer whales in the area might have had something to do with that. Such activity has been observed before, especially with northbound grays accompanying calves.

“The transients are sneaky and do their hunting without making any noise,” said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a whale researcher who specializes in grays and orcas. “But the gray whale might have [sensed danger].”

Schulman-Janiger noted that last year off Monterey--where killer whales are known to lie in wait for northbound grays and prey on calves--four small pods of gray whales sensed the presence of orcas and, with no place to hide, they formed tight groups at the surface and turned over in a defensive posture.

More than 20 killer whales, all traveling south in small groups, passed the gray whales without incident.

“This behavior is extremely unusual,” Schulman-Janiger said of the grays’ going belly-up in unison. “But it has happened before.”

The grays making their way south have this to look forward to again in April and May, but first things first. The best time to witness their southbound journey is the third week of January, but with all that’s going on already, why wait?

MINKE BUSINESS

As director of the American Cetacean Society’s Gray Whale Census Project at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, Schulman-Janiger sees many different mammals pass the peninsula throughout the course of a season.

And almost all of them have already popped up within eyeshot of her binocular-toting volunteers.

“It’s been an extremely interesting season,” she said. “We’ve seen six sperm whales since December 1. We’ve seen at least two breeching humpbacks. We’ve had minkes on several days. We’ve had Dall’s porpoises and several dolphins--from Risso’s to common to white-sided. And of course we’ve had sea lions.”

The reason for all the activity probably has to do with the unseasonably cold water--in the low to mid-50s in many areas--and upwelling of nutrient- rich water brought about by strong currents, which has resulted in a slightly greater concentration of plankton than usual.

With more plankton, of course, come more members of the food chain--from small fishes and squid right on up to the great whales.

All this may have nothing to do with the showing of killer whales, however. They cruise in from time to time from who knows where and usually stay only a short while.

Schulman-Janiger, a San Pedro schoolteacher, and Nancy Black, a marine biologist in Monterey, are very interested in orcas and for several years have been gathering photographs for identification purposes in an attempt to learn more about their migration patterns and social habits.

After the recent sightings--first aboard Martin’s boat and later by passengers aboard the First String--Schulman-Janiger and Martin motored out into the San Pedro Channel in hopes of finding a few more to study.

They struck out, but the day wasn’t a total loss. They spotted a minke whale--the smallest of the baleen whales--eight miles offshore and put the boat in neutral.

The minke whale swam to the boat and rolled around for more than 40 minutes, at times poking its head out of the water only a few feet away, as if to get a better look at its admirers.

“This thing turned on its side and just sat there by the engine,” Schulman-Janiger said. “Then it came up with its head real high and kept doing that over and over . . . The minke was actually playing with our boat.”

Which is usually a lot safer than playing with killer whales.