A Southern Resident female’s exultant breach.
Orcas are somewhere in between these behemoths and land mammals. Like the larger whales, they are big enough to be extremely powerful, capable of overwhelming nearly everything in the ocean if they choose. However, since they are a smaller whale, they have retained much of the grace, agility, and speed of their fellow dolphins. Orcas can zoom through the water at speeds up to 34 miles an hour and then frolic and play like their bottlenosed cousins.
Besides the relative weightlessness it imparts to air-breathers, one of the important qualities of water, since it is so much denser than air, is that sound travels extremely well in it. Whales in water bathe in sound, and the sounds they themselves make bathe everyone else in it. Loud enough and with enough intensity at a deep frequency, underwater whale songs are known to travel for thousands of miles. Up close and over short distances, water is an even more effective carrier of sound waves—about four and a half times faster than when sound travels through air—and the big-brained dolphin family takes full advantage. It is the medium through which all dolphins not only communicate with one another, but in which they also use sound in a way that lets them see underwater.
Strikingly, orcas (and whales in general) do not hear primarily with external ears like land mammals, though they have small vestigial ear structures on the sides of their heads and highly evolved hearing mechanisms beneath that. Their chief conduit for hearing is their lower jaw. The lower jaws of cetaceans are not only fairly large, but they are also hollow, filled with a fatty material that collects sound and transmits it through the middle and inner ears and on to the auditory nerve. This structure means that not only are the most distant and subtle sounds detected, but all these sounds are processed by those big brains at lightning speed, which is especially critical for orcas and their fellow dolphins.
That is because they not only are hearing sounds; they are making them at an extremely high rate, and this is not just for communicating but more importantly, as noted previously, for seeing.
Orcas have very good vision with their eyes, located on each side of the head. They are able to see with about the same acuity and for the same distances as humans. However, for any seagoing creature, there is an inherent limit to how far the water itself will allow it to see. Under the clearest conditions, the farthest even a sharp-eyed orca can see underwater is several hundred feet. In the turbid waters of places such as the North Pacific, this visibility can drop to as few as ten feet.
To overcome this, odontocetes—that is, toothed whales—evolved a sixth sense we call echolocation. It is a kind of sonar, although comparing it to the comparatively crude system of sound detection that humans have devised through technology does little justice to how sophisticated a sense it really is. The sounds that orcas and dolphins emit sound to our ears, through a hydrophone, like dense clicks that seem like rapid-fire bullets made out of sound. They make these sounds with a vocal structure inside their blowhole and then emit them in a focused beam through the front of their skulls.
The large melon on the front of orcas’ heads is not, as many initially assume, where their brain is located; that is actually farther back in their skull, safely encased behind the eyes. The round melon is actually a large capsule of extremely fine oil, very similar to the sperm whale’s coveted oil that came from the so-called spermaceti organ, similarly located above the front jaw. As those gigantic relatives do, orcas use this oil sac for focusing and transmitting those sound bullets into the water. The melon is actually a lens for seeing with sound.
The sound bullets that come out of the melon are very dense packets of sound, not entirely dissimilar from the packets that transmit computer information electronically, and so when these sounds bounce back to the killer whales, they carry a broad spectrum of information. This apparently means that when this information is processed by that highly evolved and complicated brain, it renders the orcas capable of not merely detecting the presence of objects (as our sonar does) but rendering a clear and detailed vision of what is there in the water. Indeed, it goes beyond mere vision; orcas can see inside things. Because sound is actually capable of penetrating objects better than light, the bounceback from orca echolocation includes the more subtle variations that occur as the sound penetrates an object and then returns.
Experiments conducted with captive orcas, for instance, have established that they (and other dolphins) are able to detect the nature and shape of objects hidden inside opaque containers. There are a number of anecdotes from female dolphin and orca trainers whose subjects began acting differently (in one case, protectively) around them, leading the trainer to later discover that she was pregnant. These latter incidents, however, are purely anecdotal, as with so many things dolphin-related; there has never been a proper scientific study to determine if dolphins can detect human pregnancy.
“I think it’s extremely plausible that dolphins, including orcas, would be able to detect a fetus,” says Lori Marino. “We know from other studies that they are very good at going from a visual image to an acoustic image,” and vice versa.
The sophistication of dolphin-family echolocation is part of why the United States Navy employs dolphins to locate objects that can’t be found otherwise. In the summer of 2013, for instance, Navy dolphins were able to lead divers to an antique 19th-century torpedo that was then recovered from the ocean floor off the coast of California, not far from the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. It was a find, Navy officials explained, that they could never have made with their own multibillion-dollar sonar systems.
“Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to man,” boasted Braden Duryee of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific. The dolphins who found the torpedo were being trained in mine detection, and when they kept alerting their handlers to the presence of an object where none was supposed to be, they were asked to place a marker on the spot. When divers investigated, they found the old torpedo.
Orcas’ sonic capacities have also inspired human efforts to replicate them. Researchers at Stanford have developed an ultrasensitive hydrophone modeled after the design of killer whales’ middle ear, which employs a tympanic bone-and-plate complex to transmit sounds into the nervous system. The device the scientists constructed based on that model now allows researchers to capture a wide range of ocean sounds, from up to 160 decibels to the quietest whispers, and to do so accurately at any depth, something that was never possible with traditional hydrophone designs.
“Orcas had millions of years to optimize their sonar, and it shows,” explained Onur Killic, one of the researchers. “They can sense sounds over a tremendous range of frequencies, and that was what we wanted to do.”
Naturally, orcas are sophisticated not only at making sounds but at listening to them, too. As with everything killer whales do, it is shared, a social thing.
• • •
The female orca is not only drifting intently toward me with a water bubble on her head. She is also echolocating me. Like crazy.
The sounds that orcas emit when echolocating are striking. We call them clicks, but that’s not quite right. Unlike the calls and vocalizations we all know from various whale-sound recordings, these sound bullets go rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat through the water, and you know when the bullets are being directed at you, because they become intense and direct; you can practically feel them. At times, the bullets fly a second or so apart, and then, when an object gets their attention, they will let off whole strings of them: br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rt.
The female watching the calf is pounding my kayak with these sound bullets, but she is not the only one. In general, these orcas I am watching at Kaikash Creek are being very businesslike under the water. Listening on my hydrophone, I am struck by how few vocalizations they are making. Instead, the clicks and chains of clicks are everywhere. It would be reasonable to hypothesize that what I am hearing is the whales busily hunting, rather than socializing. Since we can’t really see what they are doin
g underwater, however, we can only guess. What is fairly obvious is that this female is echolocating me heavily because she wants to keep an eye on me. Or perhaps more importantly, she is trying to alert the calf to my presence, as well as my position, so that it can avoid coming into contact with me.
Then it strikes me. Echolocation is something that whales not only use for themselves, but something that they can share. The calf gets bounceback from the same sounds that its mother is emitting. It is almost as though she is shining a sound flashlight on me so that her young charge, preoccupied with chasing fish, is aware of my presence and doesn’t get too close.
Tests with captive dolphins, have found the same thing. Dolphins were found to have the ability to “eavesdrop” on another dolphin’s inspection of an object. This may also help explain their social behavior when hunting, since the more orcas or dolphins there are lighting up parts of the water with their echolocation sounds, the better they all can detect and snag their prey.
It suggests, moreover, that echolocation is more than a mere sense. In the hands of orcas, as it were, the sense becomes a social activity, even a kind of communication.
Males can intimidate with just their massive dorsal fins.
Eventually, the calf rejoins its overseer a good twenty yards away from my kayak. I am so focused on these two that I have not observed the large male coming up from behind. All six-foot black fin and spray, he bursts up near the female and her calf. My heart jumps. If there’s one thing these creatures are good at, it’s surprising people.
The other striking thing about these Northern Resident whales is how little vocalizing is going on. This is somewhat unusual in my experience, which is mostly with the rather gregarious Southern Residents. On this day with this pod, there are very few of the squeaks, squonks, cries, calls, and various odd noises that killer whales produce in the process of communicating with each other. These whales are all business, almost exclusively echolocating, seeking out the same Chinook salmon that are similarly the favored prey of their Southern counterparts.
I had often heard about Northern Residents that they were less playful than Southern Residents, less prone to the demonstrative behaviors such as spyhopping, tail-lobbing, and breaching that were the trademarks of their Southern relatives. I turned my attention briefly away from the big male and focused my camera on the female and calf, who were still relatively close to my kayak, musing to myself: It must be true—they certainly seem less demonstrative.
At that moment, no more than thirty feet away, the big male leapt fully out of the water in a high breach, looked at me, and came back down to the water in a massive splash. I gaped. The splash was the only thing my camera, far too late and too slow into action, captured.
Surprises. Orcas have a knack for them.
• • •
Even the way that orcas sleep is social, something shared.
I was still sipping my morning coffee one of the mornings at Kaikash Creek when a pod of orcas, sleeping, came past. You could tell they were asleep because the procession—kooosh kooosh kooosh in succession as they broke the surface of the glasslike water, rhythmic and slow and majestic—was clustered together closely, in a line, and surfacing only every forty-five seconds or so, coming up and going down as a group. I sat on my log and watched them. The only other sounds were the keening of the gulls that occupied much of the rocky beach.
Every breath that killer whales take is voluntary and conscious; unlike most land mammals, most cetaceans do not have an involuntary-breathing mode. Early human captors discovered that when they anesthetized dolphins and orcas in their care, it killed them, because they simply stopped breathing. Sleep, however, is a physiological requirement of every mammal on earth. So, when and how do they manage it?
In the case of killer whales (and most dolphins), the trick involves shutting down only half of their brain during a given sleeping session, remaining just awake enough to swim, surface, and breathe, all in a slow, rhythmic pattern. In the wild, where orcas swim almost constantly, this is done in large pods of up to twelve whales, who line up in a wide arc and draft off each other’s wake as they rise, breathe, and submerge together.
A closely clustered group of traveling Southern Residents.
This is something spectacular to see, even if the orcas are not at all playful when sleeping. There is nothing quite as moving as the sight and sound of a long row of killer whales surfacing one after another, the plumes hanging in the air, and then vanishing below the surface when the procession finally reaches the end of the row. The silence follows, hanging there, for somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds, and then as certain as a clock, the first in line resurfaces again, a little further along on the same line of travel, and the whole row rises behind them, like fingers rising and falling on an oceanic piano, playing a syncopated melody.
The one constant in orcas’ lives is their togetherness; sleeping and awake, eating and playing, traveling and exploring, everything is done together. Every ecotype of killer whale has been observed engaging in a form of prey sharing. Resident killer whales share salmon they have caught with other whales; transients and Antarctic whales share seal kills; North Atlantic orcas team up to herd herring into balls; and New Zealand whales who hunt rays on the seafloor often team up to hunt them and then share their meals with one another. Moreover, these are animals who mostly remain with their familial group for every day and moment of their lives.
Socializing is wired into orcas evolutionarily, at a level that dwarfs the comparatively loose social ties of humans. One of the logical consequences of this is that it requires an abundance of the quality that makes social life possible: empathy. By empathy, we mean not simply the ability to sense what other people and beings may be feeling, but to feel it ourselves, and then to act accordingly, perhaps contrary to one’s immediate self-interest or desires. It is empathy that not only makes orcas most like humans, but perhaps makes them more than human. For modern humans, empathy is not a universally desirable trait, since it reeks of vulnerability in an ever-competitive world. For killer whales, empathy is an evolutionary advantage.
• • •
These same whales hang about these waters for the next several days, evidently drawn by the chance to rub themselves on the smooth pebbles at Robson Bight, an area specially protected by the Canadian government for the orcas’ use. Every summer the unique qualities of these rocks draw Northern Residents to these waters, where they can be observed rubbing their tummies and bodies on the time-worn rocks that comprise the beach at the Bight. No one is quite certain why they do this, but it appears from observing them that they enjoy the massaging effect of the stones.
It wasn’t as if these whales wouldn’t vocalize. Two days after my initial encounter with this pod, I spent over an hour listening to them talk to each other. The strange and mysterious part of this was that I really couldn’t tell where they were at the time. It was late in the afternoon, and I was hearing on my radio from several whale-watching operations that several pods were about to converge in the waters near Kaikash Creek. So I hopped in the kayak to see what I could see and hear what I could hear. Sure enough, just a little offshore, I picked up orca vocalizations through my hydrophone.
They were distant at first, and I certainly could not see any orcas on my immediate horizon. One of the reports indicated that whales might be approaching from the north, and the current that afternoon was headed strongly northward. So, I just drifted with it to see what came along. All this time, I kept hearing orca vocalizations, distant, but increasingly clear. I thought perhaps they were coming closer, but no black fins ever showed themselves on my northern horizon.
I also knew that the pod of whales I had encountered was supposed to be lurking in the area of Blackney Pass, a passage between Hanson and West Cracroft islands directly across Johnstone Strait (about two miles) from my camp. I peered over that direction with my binoculars. It seemed I caught a glimpse or two of a black fin, but it was hard to be certain, since
they were obscured by the reflective mirage that the water was throwing up along the distant shores of the islands. I looked southward, just in case—orcas do love to surprise us—but there was nothing there, either. Strangely, the sounds became increasingly clearer. Perhaps this was because there were very few motorboats out in the Strait or perhaps it was because the whales began vocalizing more and more loudly.
Whatever the cause, I wound up with nearly two hours’ worth of recorded orca sounds from that afternoon. It was lovely on the water, although after a time I had to begin paddling back southward before the current carried me all the way to Telegraph Cove. The whole time, I was listening to a cacophonic chorus of orcas chattering away, or whatever it was they were doing—singing, perhaps? Or perhaps something more mundane, such as talking about the currents? Or, more likely, communicating in a conceptual way that we cannot comprehend.
Even though I could hear them with great clarity, there was always a distant, echoing quality to the sounds that told me they were coming across at some distance from Blackney Pass, like songs heard from across the deep canyon that lay under the waters of Johnstone Strait. That same quality gave the calls a strangely haunted beauty, as though they were coming out of the past or some other way through time.
The whales never moved for all that time, remaining elusively out of view. So, I never did see the whales that day. After more than two hours, I paddled back to camp and made dinner, the haunted cries still ringing in my ears.
• • •
Whatever is going on among orcas and their vocalizations (and we don’t really have a clear understanding of this at all) the one thing that is self-evident is that this is their primary means of communicating with each other. What they are communicating and how remain grand mysteries. It is probably the most tantalizing aspect of what we know, and don’t know, about killer whales, because if orcas are actually conceptualizing abstract ideas at a high level, and perhaps even retaining long-term intergenerational memories, if these communications really are a language, then the possibility of interspecies communication becomes real, and all the speculation about their intelligence is substantiated. However, we simply don’t know whether this is the case or not, and the evidence to date suggests that the barrier may well be unbreachable.
Of Orcas and Men Page 5