Whale watchers in California’s Monterey Bay on Wednesday encountered a pod of about 10 orcas, but what stood out was the unusual gray coloration of a newborn calf.
“The little calf stuck out like a sore thumb so right when we approached the pod we noticed it and got extremely excited,” Kate Cummings, captain of the High Spirits, told For The Win Outdoors.
Killer whale babies are typically black and white, like their parents, so Wednesday’s sighting of a gray-and-white orca was extremely rare.
However, a pale-gray orca calf made headlines in late May after multiple sightings were recorded off British Columbia, Canada. It has been photo-cataloged with the transient killer whale ID number T46B1B.
Neither calf is albino and genetic testing would be required to discover the precise cause of the unusual pigmentation.
Cummings, who operates Blue Ocean Whale Watch in Moss Landing, said her initial thought after Wednesday’s sighting was “that it had to be T46B1B.”
But it turned out that the calf belongs to a transient killer whale pod identified as the CA216 family group.
“What an amazing encounter today!” Cummings wrote on Facebook. “We spotted ~ 10 killer whales today including this very tiny calf with grayish pigment. The calf is so young it still has fetal folds (lines on its body from being folded up in the mother’s womb)!”
While the calf represented the most unusual aspect of this encounter, another young pod member stole the spotlight when it breached completely clear of the water.
The killer whale breached three times, Cummings said, and one of the sequences (shown above) was captured in photos.
–Images courtesy of Kate Cummings/Blue Ocean Whale Watch
