Orcas, or killer whales, are the largest of the dolphins and one of the world’s most powerful predators. They’re immediately recognizable by their distinctive black-and-white coloring. Smart and social, orcas make a wide variety of communicative sounds, and each pod has distinctive noises that its members will recognize even at a distance. They use echolocation to communicate and hunt, making sounds that travel underwater until they encounter objects, then bounce back, revealing their location, size, and shape.
With the setting sun just beginning to turn the sky pink, a killer whale ocra leaps out of the ocean and soars into the air, spray cascading down in its wake.
It is a magnificent image. Except the killer whale’s dive has a purpose the dolphin quivering 15 feet below.
These astonishing photographs record the final act of a killer whale ocra chasing that lasted two hours, and ended with the dolphin trapped in the jaws of the eight – ton killer whale orca.
The dolphin was originally part of a small group swimming off the Mexican coast but the others managed to get away, leaving it at the mercy of a whole pod of whales.
Photographer Christopher Swann, who captured the extraordinary scene, said: ‘The whales tore round at full speed for two hours.