Philip Hoare, in The Guardian, 29 March 2017, “An extraordinary battle between sperm whales and orcas – in pictures”
While observing sperm whales off the Sri Lankan coast, Philip Hoare came face to face with eight hunting orcas who had no fear of the 100-strong sperm whale pod.
I spent last week on a six-metre fishing boat in the Indian Ocean off Kalpitiya, on the west coast of Sri Lanka with the photographer Andrew Sutton and the marine biologist Ranil Nanayakkara. Andrew and I were diving in a marine conservation area under special licence from the Sri Lankan wildlife department. Here, I met a pair of young, sexually mature male sperm whales – cetacean teenagers. Photograph: Andrew Sutt
Sperm whales are supreme divers, jackknifing their muscular bodies down to spend up to two hours at depths of a mile or more, using their echo-locating clicks to find their favourite food – squid. …………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton 
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A male peers at us, curiously. The vast head of a sperm whale contains spermaceti, once believed to be the animal’s semen. In fact, this oil has bio-acoustical amplification properties, enabling the whale to produce the loudest sounds of any animal. They also emit morse-like “codas”, and can communicate over tens of miles……………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton
A sperm whale’s diet is 90% squid – hence the reddish faeces. The hunting of sperm whales in the 20th century removed huge amounts of this fertiliser from the oceans, exacerbating environmental depletion……………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton
Sperm whales are present in every ocean, and after humans and orca, are the most widely distributed mammal on earth. Here is a large sperm whale with a deep scar on its dorsal ridge, probably from a ship-strike after crossing a shipping lane. Despite their size – adult males can reach 18 metres in length and weigh 55 tons – these animals demonstrate great dexterity in the water, moving as if to some mysterious choreography………….Photograph: Andrew Sutton
Sperm whales gather off Sri Lanka in great number – at least 100, perhaps many more. Each spring, sperm whales gather in waters over canyons up to 1,000 metres deep to mate. It’s a cetacean spring break. Andrew recorded an even bigger aggregation of 350 sperm whales in the same area, exactly two years previously. Underwater, we could see the animals’ aroused genitals. As we watched, one pair of amorous whales swam belly to belly under our boat, loved-up leviathans apparently undisturbed by our presence…………………….Photograph: Andrew Sutton
Suddenly, the whales started to move north, at speed. We assumed this was for mating reasons. It was an exhilarating sight, reminiscent of Moby-Dick’s Grand Armada . But as we caught up with them, a cluster of whale drew together in a tight formation, lying side by side, like logs. It was amazing to see such a mass of whales, so close together. But they weren’t socialising. They had answered a distress call…… Photograph: Andrew Sutton
A cluster of 30 battle-scarred males had come together to protect females and their young, demonstrating the loyalty for which their species is famous. Their attackers were fellow whales: orca, or killer whales, so-called because they kill whales – even sperm whales, three times their size. Here, two more sperm whales arrive to bolster the defence. Hal Whitehead, a scientific expert on sperm whales, says such attacks are rarely witnessed by humans.
Photograph: Andrew Sutton
The sharp dorsal fin of an orca circles the sperm whales. The whales were showing signs of distress, continually blowing, and raising their heads in behaviour known as spy-hopping. Below the surface they were opening and closing their huge teeth-studded jaws: partly out of stress, partly in self-defence. They were also defecating, using the reddish clouds to confuse their attackers. In the water, Andrew and I could hear their deep clicks, counterpointed by the orcas’ high-pitched hunting whistles. ……………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton
As one orca zoomed in a couple of metres away, Andrew realised the situation was becoming too dangerous to be in the water. He ordered me out, and we both climbed back in the boat, fast…………………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton
For the next hour or more, the drama played out in front of us. Two of the planet’s most successful species had come head to head. Here 10 large adult male sperm whales present a united front against an orca attack; the lead whale raises its head to check out the position of the assailants. The whales’ metre-thick blubber constitute an armoured wall. Andrew suggested the whole group were offering themselves as decoys, enabling other whales in the larger aggregation to escape.
Photograph: Andrew Sutton
The eight-strong orca pod get ready to charge towards the sperm whales. These orca are transient, meat-eating cetaceans as opposed to fish-eating resident orca. They are culturally defined by what they eat. Transients are proactive hunters, the wolves of the sea. As Ranil Nanayakkara commented, scientifically, ‘They’re tricky buggers.’……………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton
The tight-knit orca family pod move in, their sharp dorsal fins riding high. Like sperm whales, these are matriarchal animals – male orcas stay with their mothers all their life. Post-menopausal orcas, the only animals other than humans and pilot whales to undergo the menopause, have high-ranking status within their pods. Both orcas and sperm whales have large brains and exhibit cultural behaviour……….Photograph: Andrew Sutton
Although the large male in the pod, with a dorsal two-metres high, appeared to be leading the group, evidence suggests such attacks are controlled by the dominant females who pass on their hunting skills learned from their mothers……………………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton
As the orca continued their attack, the sperm whales changed formation, bringing their heads into the middle, tails outwards, deploying their most fearsome weapon: whalers spoke of their prey’s tails as ‘the hand of God’ – dispatching sailors into eternity. This “marguerite” formation (named after the flower) appeared to be less successful, so the sperm whales lined up again, now apparently using our boat as another line of defence. My fears that we were abetting the imminent slaughter by inhibiting the sperm whales’ escape were reversed. We seemed to be helping them……………….Photograph: Andrew Sutton
- The orca peeled off, apparently frustrated. We saw them at a distance, very active at the surface, tail-slapping and back-flipping. We went to observe – only for the situation to be dramatically reversed.
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They began to circle our boat, closer and closer. It was terrifying, and wonderful, to see their graphic shapes through the water, surrounding us in the same way they had surrounded the sperm whales. One even appeared to hit the boat – something no orca does by accident. Now we knew what it was like to be prey. Then, abruptly, they seemed to disappear, and our adrenaline levels finally began to fall………….Photograph: Andrew Sutton
Suddenly I saw five orca in a row, charging directly at us. It was a pre-mediated attack. Kathryn Jeffs, director of the BBC’s Frozen Planet – in which orca were filmed creating compression waves precisely calibrated to flip a seal off an ice floe – told me her crew experienced the same assault after a pod of orca had been frustrated “after a particularly spectacular seal hunt”. At the last minute, the whales dove beneath us. It may have been a lesson for the whales, but for us it was an extremely scary moment………………………Photograph: Andrew Sutton
Concerned we were about to reenact the finale of Moby-Dick and be capsized into the sea, we left the area, at high speed. It was only then that Ranil pulled up his hydrophone, with which he had been recording the animals’ calls. It had been bitten off. !!!!
From left, writer Philip Hoare, first mate Manura Fonseka, captain Joseph Warnakulasooriya, and scientist Ranil Nanayakkara, holding the evidence. Philip Hoare’s new book, Rising Tide Falling Star, is published in July by Fourth Estate. With thanks to Little Adventures…………..Photograph: Andrew Sutton
