Elephant Seals and Killer Whales
Warren Garst
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I think another one of the more astounding shots I ever got was the first day we were filming down in Argentina.
We went out on the beach [and] there were some elephant seals there and there was a pod of killer whales out in the ocean.
And these killer whales were coming right onto the beach and grabbing a seal from the beach and taking it back out. And they’d take it out about 200 yards and release it and follow it back.
The explanation was that they were teaching their young how to catch seals.
But the fact that these things would come out clear onto the beach, the full length of their body onto the beach and grab a seal was astounding.
But they knew this beach and they knew the tides and they knew that they weren’t going to be stranded because they knew they’d be there.
They would come in on one wave and the next wave would take them out. They were pretty smart about this, and they only used a certain low part of the beach to do this.
But the seals weren’t smart enough to figure out that they shouldn’t be there.