Bather’s encounter with dolphins fleeing orca marks rare sighting off Umdloti and Ballito [Watch]

An Umdloti body surfer had a radical experience with panicking dolphins fleeing a hungry juvenile orca last Wednesday.

Renowned underwater videographer Broderick Whittaker, known on YouTube as @RubberScales, was body surfing off Umdloti South Beach at around 8.45am when he noticed a massive pod of dolphins erratically charging towards him at an unusually fast pace.

A seasoned waterman, Whittaker immediately knew something was up.

“They were charging on the surface, torpedoing, and there was spray everywhere. I know dolphins have their ways of navigating, but the visibility was poor and it was the first time I ever worried about a dolphin flying into me. Two came very close and in a split second flicked their heads out of the water right in front of me to redirect and avoid me. I could feel one’s wake in my side! Then, 20 seconds later, I saw the orca,” said Whittaker.

He described seeing the orca’s whole back, a large dorsal fin – much bigger than that of a dolphin – and the hallmark grey saddle patch behind the dorsal fin.

Reaching lengths of up to eight metres with a six foot tall dorsal fin and having been documented hunting sharks, dolphins and whales, orcas are the true apex predators of the deep blue.

However, the extreme improbability of orcas coming that close to shore in KZN (they are seen from time to time in deeper KZN waters) and the small size of the animal had Whittaker second guessing himself.

It was not until Westbrook angler Kevin Tait posted a video on social media he had taken earlier that morning of what was later confirmed by marine scientists to be a juvenile orca off Ballito’s Thompson’s Bay, that Whittaker was certain of his sighting.

When Tait saw the orca, it had grabbed one of the KZN Sharks Board’s baited hooks and was dragging it around, trying to eat the bait.

“We were worried it had been hooked but the Sharks Board came out and confirmed that was not the case,” said Tait, who has always dreamt of seeing an orca.
Changing orca behaviour

This incredibly rare inshore orca sighting along the Dolphin Coast underscored recently observed changes in orca behavior, specifically in South Africa.

An orca solo hunting and killing a 2.5m juvenile great white shark within minutes off the coast of Mossel Bay in June last year made international headlines.

Although orcas have sporadically been reported to hunt solo, this appears to be a departure from their “normal” behaviour as group hunters with hunts commonly lasting about two hours – not minutes.

Now it seems more of these “predatory elephants” are shifting to the KZN coast.

“It is incredibly rare to see an orca inshore off the KZN coast,” said Sea Search director and Stellenbosch University BotZoo department research associate, Dr Simon Elwen.

He said the scientific community had noticed an increase in orca sightings in KZN since 2015 but believed the phenomenon was more likely driven by food resources changing than by a population increase.

Elwen suspects over fishing, natural climate shifts and plundering of tuna longlines – orcas learning to steal fish off tuna longlines – to be the main driving forces bringing orcas to KZN waters.

Although only the one juvenile orca was seen last week, Elwen said there were likely more of them in the surrounding waters.

“We don’t know but the dolphins could have been responding to their calls.”

He said orcas usually travelled in small groups and this juvenile could have drifted behind.

But should bathers be concerned?

The Oceanic Research Institute’s (ORI) Dr Ryan Daly does not believe orcas would target people.

“There is a massive tourism industry in Norway where hundreds of people swim with wild orcas every year without any problem. They are obviously just very intimidating,” he said.

The public is encouraged to assist Dr Elwen and his team with their research by reporting orca sightings to seasearch.co.za.

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