Sardine Run Part 5, The Chase
By Jake Keeton
Tuesday, 27th April 2021Sardine Run, Part 5: The Chase
We stopped out boat a few hundred meters shy of the large pod of Long Beaked Common Dolphins that was slowly heading in our direction. All of a sudden, the pod raced towards and past us at a tremendous speed. The sheer number of dolphins combined with the speed that they were traveling threw so much water into the air it blocked our view of the land behind them.
From spending many days observing these animals we know that there is only two things that will cause them to race at such a speed, either they had detected a shoal of fish up ahead and attempting to chase it down, or they themselves were being chased. It turned out to be the latter. After looking out ahead of the dolphins for any sign of birds or a Bait ball I turned to look back in the direction from which the dolphins had come and there she was, a large female Killer Whale slipping through the waves. Seconds later the unmistakable tall and upright dorsal fin of a male Killer Whale broke the surface along side the female. I alerted my fellow crew members to the presence of the Killer Whales and as I did so I thought I saw a third dorsal fin although this one was much smaller. My immediate though was that the Killer Whales had a really young calf with them but as they moved closer to us we noticed that the smaller dorsal fin was in fact a Long Beaked Common Dolphin that the Killer Whales had managed to separate from the main pod. The lone dolphin made every attempt to escape but the female Killer Whale would quickly chase it down until eventually we saw the dolphin being hit high onto the air (shown in part 4 video post).
We feel so incredibly lucky to have witnessed these Apex Predators carry out a successful hunt right in front of us, this is a sighting that none of us that were on board that day will ever forget.
