Our oceans are constantly on the move, rising and falling in a twice daily rhythm that we know as the tides.
Everything that lives in the shallows must adapt to the highs and lows. Many even turn the tide to their advantage.
Off the coast of the Falkland Islands, turbulent waters create rich feeding grounds, attracting birds and marine mammals from miles around.
And it’s here that a remarkable mother orca has learned to hunt with the even flow of the south Atlantic Ocean.
She returns here every spring with her family, timing their arrival with a much needed source of food – young elephant seals.
For now, the newborn seals are out of the orca’s reach on the shore, gaining an incredible six kilograms a day on their mother’s energy-rich milk. But sooner or later, they must enter the water.
After weeks of fasting, the mothers would turn to the ocean to feed, never to see their pups again. Left to fend for themselves, the young seals must learn to swim.
Here they do so in the safety of a shallow tidal pool, protected from predators by a rocky barrier.
Also, it seems the rising tide breaches their nursery, creating a narrow inlet to the pool, and an opportunity for the intelligent orca.
She is thought to be the first of her kind in the world to hunt seals in this way.
Riding the tide, she carefully enters her young calf in tow. One false move and she risks stranding them both.
With no parents to teach them, the baby seals are unaware of the danger.
She is tantalizingly close, but the seals are too shallow to reach.
As the tide begins to turn, the mother orca’s time is running out.
Oblivious to the whale below, a pup swims into reach. She strikes.
The young seal puts up a fight, taking the orca and her calf into dangerously shallow waters.
Struggling off the rocks, she drags her prize back to her family in the safety of the deep.
The first orca in the world to master this high-risk feeding strategy, she is passing this vital knowledge onto her young so they too can ride the rise and fall of the oceans – a new generation of tidal hunters.
Source: BBC Earth
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