The first orca spotting was off the coast of Provincetown Sunday, the singular male the only killer whale regularly seen in North Atlantic waters. But later the same day a rare pod was spotted around Nantucket.
Whale, would you look at that!
An impressive sight was captured off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts, recently: orca whales in the waters around Cape Cod.
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Impressive video of the orca whales was captured by the SimonSez Sportfishing captain and crew, and shows the whale hanging out with some dolphins as it came up to the surface.
“To see an orca, it was an amazing experience. It's something I don't think that I'll forget anytime soon," said Pat Simon, who was fishing off the tip of Provincetown with his family Sunday afternoon.
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“It was moving very slow moving just at the same speed as the dolphins and it seemed to be would come up for some air and you'd hear it spout and then it would go back down.”
That whale is known as "Old Thom," and is one of the only orcas regularly seen in North Atlantic waters. But the same day, a rare pod was also spotted by a team of scientists from the New England Aquarium off the coast of Nantucket on Sunday.
“Seeing them swim in formation was just unreal,” associate research scientist Orla O’Brien said in a statement. “We believe the sighting to be two males and two females, but that hasn’t been confirmed. I think seeing killer whales is particularly special for us because it unlocks that childhood part of you that wanted to be a marine biologist.”
It’s the first rare sighting in more than a decade since they started doing aerial surveys several times a month, all year round.
“They're just a very charismatic species. They look really cool. And everyone knows what they are," O'Brien added in an interview with NBC10 Boston Tuesday.
There are very few orcas in the waters of the western North Atlantic Ocean, she said, noting it's "always unusual to see killer whales in New England waters."
Although they're nicknamed "killer whales," orcas are actually the largest of the dolphin family.
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Orcas are known as one of the world's most powerful predators, National Geographic writes, and are easy to recognize by their black and white coloring.
There was an orca whale sighting off the coast of Chatham last May, which was captured by a scallop fisherman. That whale, a large male, has been named Old Thom, and is the only killer whale regularly seen in the North Atlantic, according to the New England Aquarium.
Orcas have been in the news lately for attacking boats off the coast of southern Europe, puzzling scientists as the behavior appears coordinated.
