Killer Whales: Beneath the Surface Natural World

The killer whale.

For thousands of years it was feared as a single-minded, ruthless hunter.

But in just half a century, killer whales have emerged

as the most popular and most studied marine mammals in the world.

Our understanding of what they can do,

and why they do it, has been transformed.

When it comes to killer whales, not everything is black and white.

A global investigation is producing a series of breakthroughs.

It's on!

-It's on, it's on.

-Got that one. It's a great sample!

Using a range of techniques, scientists can enter

the lives of these surprisingly complex creatures.

It's a very selfless behaviour.

OK. She's coming back around.

They're revealing sophisticated teamwork...

..incredible ingenuity...

..even an advanced form of communication.

I stumbled into the existence of a dialect system that

I really had no idea existed.

Now, the very latest research

challenges our fundamental assumptions

about what these animals are.

There's not just THE killer whale anymore.

Finally, the killer whale's true colours can be revealed.

The west coast of America.

Grey whales are migrating towards distant feeding grounds.

A mother escorts her calf, trying to keep a low profile.

But a pack of killers has spotted them.

Seven metres long, five tonnes in weight and travelling at over

30 miles an hour, a single killer whale is a formidable foe.

Working as a team, they're almost invincible.

The grey whale mother is six times the killer whales' weight.

But like wolves, the ocean's top predators

can take on creatures far larger than themselves.

They take it in turns to dunk the youngster.

They're trying to drown it.

Others fend off its mother.

She tries to push her baby to the surface.

But against this co-ordinated pack, the outcome is inevitable.

In 1874, a whaling captain

who witnessed these "whale killers" in action

described them as "spreading death and terror".

And so the name "killer whale" was born.

Bloody tales long haunted the human mind.

The Roman writer Pliny described them

as "loathsome, pig-eyed" assassins.

Even their scientific name, Orcinus orca,

means "whale from the realms of the dead".

But in 1964, a chance event

that would change this fearsome reputation forever.

One of these terrifying sea monsters was

brought into captivity for the first time.

For John Ford, today a leading killer whale scientist,

this would make a deep impression.

The intention of the Vancouver Aquarium was to collect

a specimen from which to make a realistic model of the animal.

But the animal wasn't killed by the harpoon

that they had used to capture it, and so they tried to keep it alive.

They dragged it 40 miles

to a specially constructed pen in Vancouver harbour,

where it attracted huge crowds.

My father took me down there, I guess I was nine years old at the time.

And it was extremely thrilling seeing this

large, scary killer whale in a captive setting.

The public quickly realised how placid this so-called killer

actually was.

It dispelled, I think,

a lot of the mythology, in that it wasn't a ferocious animal -

it didn't attack people, it responded well to trainers,

it took fish readily from their hands -

and so I think that was the very beginning

of the change of public attitude towards this species.

They christened it "Moby Doll".

And they noticed for the first time that this animal talked.

She's making various sounds, which you're recording.

-Could you give us a listen to these?

-Yes, certainly.

These were made with a hydrophone in the water.

WHISTLES AND SQUEAKS

Have you any idea just what these noises might be in response to?

Oh, they may be curiosity on the part of the whale, they might be

a sign of nervousness, or she may be calling for others of her kind.

I gather it will be some time before you classify these words

-and make this dictionary, which you hope to do eventually.

-Yes, it will.

This pioneering work was the first step on the road to revealing

the killer whale's true nature.

And by the time Moby Doll died of poor health after just 87 days,

this single killer whale had inspired a generation

to find out more.

The discovery of unique markings on the dorsal fin

and saddle patch meant individuals could be identified and followed.

Gradually, scientists began to unravel their private lives.

The largest of the dolphins, killer whales live in family pods,

led not by the big-finned males, but by a matriarch.

Females reach maturity at around 14 years

and have a calf around every three.

Both sexes usually remain with their families for life.

Determined to find out more, a young John Ford set out to sea.

In the early '70s, he got to know 16 pods living around Vancouver Island.

I was really interested in underwater acoustics,

the communication of these whales.

I realised this was an opportunity to actually go out

and record identified groups of killer whales.

Often they come under and investigate the hydrophone underwater.

Oh! Looks like A39.

Hoping to understand their language,

John started to analyse each family's calls.

Ah, there it is again, it's a really strong,

descending tone that... HE WHISTLES ..is classically H.

But he was in for a surprise.

Very early in this work,

by recording different groups I...stumbled into the existence

of a dialect system that I really had no idea existed.

These dialects aren't subtle, they're quite striking to the ear,

even the untrained ear.

With modern technology, John can analyse the calls more closely.

This is an example right here of a northern resident group.

Each individual shares the same repertoire

of very distinctive calls.

Now, we'll just switch to the southern residents,

here, you can see immediately that the voice print,

the spectrograms, are quite different between the two samples.

Each killer whale pod has its own dialect,

allowing individuals to recognise family members,

and stick with them for life.

Related families have similar dialects.

What surprised John was finding a totally different language

in the same Canadian waters.

Occasionally, we would run into a different kind of killer whale.

These little groups were very silent, but when they DID vocalise

they made sounds that were entirely different from the resident groups.

Because they only appeared from time to time,

these pods were nicknamed "transients".

Unlike the residents John knew so well, they had no interest in fish.

They were mammal eaters.

For a single killer whale,

a three-metre, one-tonne Steller sea lion makes a formidable target.

But against a pod of natural-born killers,

this lone male stands little chance.

The transients work together.

One catches the sea lion's attention.

The second attacks.

She bludgeons the sea lion into submission.

The sea lion looks beaten,

but the killer whales know to stick to their strategy.

There's no need to risk being bitten now.

A calf watches from the sidelines,

learning techniques passed down from generation to generation.

It may seem savage, but it's hugely effective.

The transients, it seems, have their own unique lifestyle,

comparable to a human culture.

We now realise that, even though the species is found globally,

in most parts of the world they seem to be highly specialised cultures

that are focused on different prey types.

New Zealand's killer whale culture specialises in stingrays.

The spines in their tails have been known to kill.

But the local killers have found a way round this thorny problem.

By inverting her victim, this female puts it in a trance

and its sting out of action.

In Patagonia, the most famous killer whale culture of them all.

It takes years to perfect this extraordinary beaching technique.

But behaviours like these mean this top predator

can exploit every corner of the ocean.

After man, killer whales are the most widespread mammal on Earth.

But this global population is divided into at least ten cultures.

Scientists began to wonder how different these cultures were.

Could there be multiple subspecies

or even separate species of killer whale?

Southern California, just north of San Diego.

The hub of a global investigation into killer whale genetics.

Phillip Morin is analysing DNA samples from around the world

with the very latest equipment, to build a killer whale family tree.

The new technologies have really changed the way we do genetics.

We can sequence 16 times more DNA than we were doing before

in a single experiment

from hundreds of individuals.

The key is to work out

when different populations stopped inter-breeding.

The genetics are showing us that the time of divergence of these

is much deeper than we had thought originally.

It's in the order of hundreds of thousands of years,

not tens of thousands of years.

We humans only split from our ancestors around 200,000 years ago.

Killer whales parted ways much earlier than that.

First to go, 700,000 years ago, were North America's mammal-eaters.

Next, the Antarctic population. That then split into several groups.

Other cultures have continued to diversify ever since.

Defining new species is a contentious issue.

But Phillip now thinks there could be four different species

of killer whale, and maybe more.

There's not just THE killer whale any more.

There are different species out there, and they're as different

as two species of dolphin or two species of other whales.

Look closely, and the physical differences are there.

Size...

..colour...

..fin shape...

..saddle pattern...

..eye spot.

This extraordinary discovery shatters our age-old perception

of one global killer whale.

Remarkably, there's a place

where THREE of these proposed species live alongside each other.

Antarctica. The killer whale capital of the world.

To find out how these different types coexist, John Durban

and Bob Pitman are heading deep into the ice floes,

with a very smart piece of kit.

This is one of the satellite tags that we hope to deploy

on the killer whales and it should give us

location hits maybe up to 30 or 40 times a day.

We hope at least every hour.

It's cutting-edge technology.

But it takes a centuries-old method to attach it.

OK, she's coming back around.

The 40 gram tag is barely registered by the massive predator.

Now, John and Bob can follow its every move.

It's big. There's lots here, there's probably eight here.

The tagged killer heads deep into the ice.

She's one of the pack-ice killer whales,

recognisable by ragged fins and a yellowish hue.

They specialise in hunting seals.

First, they "spy-hop" to pinpoint their targets.

Then, in perfect synchrony, they create a powerful wave.

The seals withstand the first assault.

A second orchestrated attack.

One makes a break for it.

It won't get far.

The titanic struggle is entering its final phase.

Only the iceberg can save the seal now.

Against lesser predators, the feisty seal would stand a chance.

But not against this team of specialist seal killers.

When the next species is tagged, striking differences are revealed.

Antarctic Type As.

Much darker in colour, and at nine metres long,

a third larger than most other killer whales.

Their huge size is an adaptation to hunting whales.

Minke whales.

Living along the ice edge,

the minkes retreat at the first sign of danger.

But one has ventured away from safety.

The killers cut it off.

This species uses stamina to wear down its fast-moving prey.

The minke's only hope is to exhaust its attackers.

But taking it in turns, the deadly entourage doesn't relent.

DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS

After two hours, the minke's powers of fight and flight are waning.

The whale killers close in to drown their victim.

They've earned their feast.

One by one, Bob and John are recording

more and more remarkable strategies.

PENGUIN SQUAWKS

A third pod, much smaller in size.

These more agile killers are built to catch penguins.

And there are others, which Bob and John believe hunt fish.

It seems that by specialising in different prey,

each of Antarctica's killer whale species avoids competition.

This enables them all to thrive.

At least 25,000, or half the killer whales on the planet,

inhabit these waters.

But how do these new species start out?

The answer lies at the other end of the earth...

..where scientists are investigating a split

in the North Atlantic killer whale population.

In Iceland, Filipa Samarra and her team need to get within

touching distance of a feeding killer whale...

..so they can attach their equivalent of an aircraft black box.

The D-tag has two hydrophones which

basically record the sounds underwater.

It records the movements of the whales

and the depth that the whales are at.

It has the suction cups, and that's how it goes on the whale,

and it has this antenna, which helps us track where the whale is

and get the tag back at the end.

Each killer whale needs a lot of fish

to satisfy its monster appetite.

This remarkable device should reveal how they do it.

Until now it's been thought that all North Atlantic killer whales

use the same technique originally observed in Norway.

First, the killers track down their prey

- shoals of herring hiding in the depths.

CLICKING

They use clicks and listen for the echo. A sophisticated sonar.

When one locates its target, it whistles its excitement.

Then the pod heads down together, sometimes over 200 metres.

KILLER WHALES WHISTLE

It takes several hours to corral the herring up to the surface...

..a natural barrier to escape.

Gradually, the killer whales panic their prey

into tighter and tighter balls.

Finally, they whack them.

They stun whole swathes of fish...

..then suck up the oil-rich pickings.

WHISTLING CONTINUES

But in Iceland, there's no sign of herring being pushed to the surface.

These hunters must have developed a new technique.

There's only one way to find out.

Oh, we know this one, so that's good.

But deploying the D-tag seems beyond Filipa's team.

A change of personnel brings a change in fortune.

First, a youngster.

-It's on!

-It's on, it's on!

-Oh, my God.

Then, a big male.

-It's on, it's on.

-He-he!

Nice tagging, Ivan! That was great.

To form a picture of what's happening in the dark depths,

the team employs an acoustic camera.

-OK, we have whales on sonar.

-OK.

Three whales.

Three whales?

This is a multi-beam sonar, which basically gives us

an image of what's going on underwater

so we can see the whales interacting with the fish.

This tells us what the fish is doing when the whales are feeding.

The team gathers data for the rest of the day.

Filipa can now put the evidence together.

First, the multi-beam sonar.

KILLER WHALES SQUEAK

The sonar really works as a giant ultrasound, and you see

that the whales are actually

encircling the school of herring, so they're moving around it,

and they do this to make the school tighter.

Then the D-tag reveals the killer information.

Here we can see what depth they are going to,

that the whales are moving quite straight,

they're not making any sounds.

But when they start moving in circles,

we see that they go much deeper and they also produce a lot of sounds.

One sound in particular catches Filipa's attention.

You can hear it now.

WHALE WHINES

So this is the herding call, which is a very low-frequency

and long call, and we think that it's really used to

basically scare the herring, so it

makes the swim bladder of the herring vibrate,

and it makes the whole herring school bunch even tighter,

which is a very effective hunting technique for these whales.

Most North Atlantic killer whales take hours to herd up their prey...

..but thanks to their unique "herding call",

Iceland's killers do the same thing in minutes.

This small innovation is hugely significant.

It shows that the North Atlantic's

fish-eating killer whales are growing apart.

As more differences develop and populations become isolated,

eventually a new species could emerge.

The discovery of different kinds of killer whale

has real implications for their conservation.

Each is precious.

None more so than the southern residents of Washington State.

50 years ago, the public's fascination with Moby Doll

lead to a huge demand for captive killer whales.

Trappers knew just where to look.

In places just like this, from the early '60s,

the resident killer whales were

rounded up and captured

for the aquarium industry.

For Sam Wasser, the memories are still fresh.

Trappers used boats, helicopters

and explosives to herd frightened animals into sheltered bays.

KILLER WHALES SQUEAK

It must have been horrific for these whales,

because for one thing, killer whales are a predator,

they're very, very intelligent and they're highly social organisms.

And putting all those animals together and then ripping

the young away from their mothers

must have just been enormously stressful.

MUSIC: "Goodbye Blue Sky" by Pink Floyd

One of the real telltale signs of that is that in Penn Cove where one

of the really big captures happened, those animals have not been back.

By 1976, following a backlash from conservationists,

the authorities called a halt to the round-ups.

But the damage had been done.

Four decades on, just 84 southern residents survive.

And this number is falling.

Sam wants to find out why.

His main research tool is a far cry from the modern technology

being used elsewhere.

Tucker, a rescue dog with a special talent.

He's known as "The Pooper Snooper".

OVER RADIO: We've got a super pod...

..about four-and-a-half southwest of...

Fantastic.

Sam has three theories for the killer whales' decline.

Lack of food, a build-up of man-made chemicals

and stress caused by whale-watching boats.

Sam needs to find the smoking gun.

But his methods are unconventional.

When we first started, people thought we were crazy, but now

they're taking it quite seriously, and they realise this is an

incredibly powerful method and there's nothing like it.

Tucker is an expert at sniffing out killer whale poo.

Dogs are easily five times more efficient than a human.

If you were just trying to do this without a dog,

you'd have to be right behind the whale.

Killer whale faeces float, but not for long.

TUCKER PANTS

Tucker must be fully focused.

When he senses his target,

Tucker makes it clear where the boat has to go.

-I see it, right there.

-Bringing you around, Amanda.

-Great. It's brown.

Like about the size of a dollar. A paper dollar.

Nice one over here. Oh, huge one, Giles, go straight.

Huge! Who, look at that. I got it there.

Got that one. Got it. Good, it's a great sample.

All in a day's work for The Pooper Snooper.

That's a good boy, buddy, good job!

The whole trick to this method is to find these dogs that are

so obsessed with their ball that he will just keep working

all day long, nonstop, for this ball reward.

Well done. Ooh, awesome.

Woo-hoo, that is a stinky!

Doesn't get better than that.

The stinky samples contain incredible information.

We can get a whole health profile from the animal.

We can get, you know, its psychological stress state,

its nutritional stress state, its reproductive condition,

if it's pregnant or not, what the toxin loads are -

and you can tie all of that to the

time of the year that we're collecting the samples and what the conditions are -

how much fish are around,

how many boats are around, so it's pretty remarkable really.

Sam has discovered that the southern residents are starving.

Over-fishing and the damming of breeding rivers

mean their salmon prey are in short supply.

As a result, their stress hormones soar,

and they break down their body fat.

This releases DDT and other toxins into the bloodstream.

It's enough to kill a whale.

But that's not all.

During the captures in the '60s and '70s, almost an entire generation

was removed, leaving few animals of breeding age today.

They haven't been breeding that well

and two of the three pods have been producing nothing but males -

the last 13 births, 11 of them have been male.

The reason that they're making more males could be chance,

but sometimes with inbreeding you tend to produce more males.

But killer whales are resilient animals.

These large mammals that have a long generation time,

they can recover.

We just have to make sure that they have the ability to recover

and that means having good food,

having a clean environment to live in

and reducing their stress loads.

The southern residents will need human help to survive.

But a recent finding suggests that killer whales

can learn to help themselves.

In the Falkland Islands,

the elephant seals are wise to the predators lurking just offshore.

They won't leave the safety of the beach

until it's absolutely necessary.

As a result, few killer whales patrol these shores.

But recently it was discovered that one female

has found a way to unlock this rich source of food.

Silently,

stealthily,

she risks it all to enter a tidal pool.

Her calf follows her every move, learning her unique technique.

If she gets the timing wrong,

she'll be stranded and die.

But if she can sneak in unnoticed,

the rewards will be worth the risk.

The female spots her target.

The tide is falling, she doesn't have long.

She edges further into the pool.

This is her chance.

Now, with a mouth full of floundering seal,

she must escape the shallow channel.

She's made it.

Amazingly, she won't keep her prize to herself.

It's the rest of her family that reaps the reward.

It's a brutal end for the young seal.

But this selfless behaviour is key to this family's survival.

And there's new evidence that this commitment to others

goes beyond what we've ever expected.

It's summer in the Norwegian Arctic.

German biologist Heike Vester has made a remarkable discovery.

She and her assistant Madita have found a family

that takes caring and sharing to a level rarely seen

in the animal kingdom.

And here is one.

Hello.

That's the female with the nick!

It's very easy to recognise.

And she has a calf, so she might be nursing the calf.

You can see that she's being pushed from below.

There is the calf! So she was nursing the calf.

Very nice.

Like all killer whale families, this one is led by a matriarch.

But one pod member sets this family apart.

It's a female. Stumpy...

Oh. Got Stumpy over here.

Right there, see?

Stumpy's severed fin means she's easily identified.

First spotted in 1996,

people assumed she'd been hit by a boat.

Six years later,

her mother had vanished

and Stumpy had taken up with another pod.

Since then she's been seen with four different families.

I'm so happy to see her again

because she's 17 years old now

and she's really handicapped

and she could not have survived by herself.

To find out how she does survive,

Heike wants to see Stumpy underwater.

-There she is.

-There she is, yeah.

With the camera crew here, this is her chance.

Oh, wow, I didn't expect that.

It's really twisted.

Now, from above, you only see

the dorsal fin that's cut, but then now I could really see the back,

and it really looks like it has problems swimming.

The tail is restricted in movement.

It doesn't really go all the way up and down.

When she's struggling harder than the others,

that means that she would use much more energy than the others would,

so probably would need to feed more than the others,

which she could not catch by herself.

This could explain why Stumpy's growth has been stunted.

To find out how she eats at all,

Heike must witness a hunt.

So we've stopped now because the killer whales are over there

and it looks like they're foraging.

What I'll do now, is put in the hydrophone

and listen so that I know they are foraging,

because if they do, they use echolocation clicks.

Nearly 50 years after the first attempts to interpret Moby Doll's calls,

Heike is still trying to unravel their language.

RAPID CLICKING

That means they are looking for fish,

they're scanning the fjord.

Their sophisticated sonar can determine the size

and even species of fish nearby.

Heike's found that this family targets mackerel and salmon.

Stumpy seems keen to join in.

And I listen out for any changes in their communication.

Because as soon as they get a fish,

especially a salmon,

I will hear it immediately.

Each species of fish provokes a different call.

Ah! They are calling.

Might be that they found a fish.

HIGH-PITCHED CALLS

Suddenly, action.

Yay-yay - action!

Whoa, next to us, on the left side.

It's every killer whale for itself,

chasing down the mackerel one by one.

But the real surprise is Stumpy.

Over there. It's the female and Stumpy, hunting together.

WHALES SQUEAK

She's right at the heart of it...

..chasing not the fish, but the other killer whales.

The six-metre female has caught a mackerel,

barely 30 centimetres long.

She could easily swallow it whole.

Instead, she slices it in half and drops a share.

Stumpy is there to grab it.

Whether she's being deliberately fed

or just scavenging scraps is hard to tell.

But this shred of evidence must explain Stumpy's survival.

But why would a family of killer whales adopt and care

for a handicapped animal?

The reason why the others would help Stumpy

is probably purely social -

that in such a community the whole group is important

and not just individuals,

so they wouldn't leave sick individuals behind.

They'd rather take care of them.

It's very selfless behaviour.

This could be one example of the killer whales to show

how social they are.

But there's more to it than we know, right now,

which makes it really, really exciting.

Perhaps this should come as no surprise.

Recent studies of killer whale brains have revealed

specialised cells for processing emotions - similar to our own.

Stumpy's story shows how far our understanding has come

since Moby Doll first captured people's hearts.

Captive killer whales still draw huge crowds.

SeaWorld has grown into a three billion dollar franchise.

But there's a price to pay for putting large, sociable predators

in small, artificial environments.

Since 1988, SeaWorld has recorded over a hundred incidents

of aggression towards trainers

and there have been four fatalities

in theme parks across the globe.

In contrast, no-one has ever been killed in the wild.

Trainers aren't allowed in the pool any more.

The capture of wild killer whales is now banned across the western world.

But recently, an exception.

A stranded calf rescued in Holland.

The courts had three options - release her,

put her down

or bring her into captivity.

The Dutch authorities decided the safest option was to move her

to Tenerife's Loro Parque

who agreed to look after her.

Heike has come to see this latest arrival.

Good morning. Heike?

'She believes it's related to her study animals in Norway,

'and like Stumpy could be taken up by a wild pod.'

Inside, I'm very nervous and quite upset

so I have to calm myself down.

Please, take your time. No problem.

Heike's never seen captive killer whales before.

KILLER WHALE SQUEAKS

SQUEAKING INTENSIFIES

Well, I would like to stay here and just get acquainted a little bit.

OK.

You know, I recognise the calls.

-It's hard for me to...

-OK.

-..to hear that. So...

The calls of the new arrival - Morgan -

at least partially match the dialect of a pod in Norway

that Heike thinks could be her family.

But despite a campaign to release her,

Loro Parque will continue to look after Morgan

as requested by the Dutch authorities.

In the meantime, its trainers work hard

to keep all their killer whales physically and mentally stimulated.

But Morgan's keepers soon reported

that she wasn't responding to their whistles.

So Javier arranged for a hearing test.

I have here the results.

They found that she has hearing loss that could be even total.

If Morgan is deaf, it could explain her stranding

and support her remaining in captivity.

This could mean a life in Loro Parque's Big Top.

It's show time!

The trainers do their best

to put on a performance.

Loro Parque believes the show makes a connection

between people and animals,

and every year they channel 100,000 euros

into whale and dolphin research and conservation.

For me, it doesn't match up.

To keep such animals in captivity, for this?

Sorry, it's not enough.

So what about Morgan?

Finding her suspected family again could be difficult

and her deafness has to be considered,

but Heike still feels there's hope.

Seeing Stumpy this summer

proved that even if we don't find Morgan's direct relatives

and her family group

that there's still a good chance

that she will be taken care by other groups that are not related to her.

Morgan's story reveals how our relationship with killer whales

is still evolving.

When we first had chimpanzees in captivity,

we also made them do tricks,

they had to wear clothes and so on -

and now we learned, and they are in more natural groups,

in a more natural environment.

And I think we have to go this way

because the captive animals that are there now,

some of them cannot be released,

so you have to find the best way possible

for these animals to retire

and make it as natural as possible.

Captive killer whales have raised the profile of their kind,

but their future is uncertain.

In the time since Moby Doll first went on public display,

our understanding of killer whales has changed beyond recognition.

It's amazing today to look back when this study began

and how little we knew about the species.

We didn't really know what they ate,

what their life cycle was like,

their natural history,

anything about their biology really. It was all mythology.

These were just the scary,

dangerous predators that were to be shot on sight.

But with evidence gathered from across the globe,

we now have a clear picture of the killer whale's true nature.

They can be brutal...

..intelligent...

..and can work as a deadly team.

The emergence of new species changes the way

we look at killer whale populations across the world.

While some are struggling to survive,

others are finding ways to adapt.

Interpreting their language is still a dream.

I gather it'll be some time, then,

before you can classify these words and make this dictionary

-which you hope to do eventually.

-Yes, it will.

But the discovery of close families and diverse cultures

means we can relate to killer whales more closely than to any other

animal in the ocean.

Maybe we're not the only ones that are social

and take care of each other but that animals are more similar to us

than we believed before.

After a 50-year journey from fear to fascination,

a new era of understanding

is just beginning.

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