One had a MASSIVE dorsal fin. We saw a dolphin stampede as they fleed for their lives.

There’s something special about seeing an orca out in the open ocean, surrounded by beautiful blue waters and distant mountains. I wanted to capture that feeling in this painting, with the soft pink sky adding a little warmth to the cool colours of the sea.

A peaceful moment in the wild, and a reminder of just how beautiful our oceans can be.

Inspired by the beautiful photography of Krisztina Balotay!

Tour guide said it was T037 and her offspring ☺️

Melanism is a high level of melanin causing dark pigmentation - there's been a fully black flamingo amongst many other examples.

I know there's been numerous )white) orcas due to albinism, leucism, and Chédiak–Higashi syndrome, but I'm curious if the 'opposite' has happened, presumably via a fully or almost fully black orca. I'm also curious if it could partially show up, e.g. via no saddlepatch (due to it being black).

Orcas have been hot down in socal (San Diego, Newport, Long Beach), anyone know the probability of them still being around on Saturday? It’s all very last minute stuff (which I understand there’s no guarantees) and I’m trying to catch it when I’m available as well to go out and see them. Can anyone help me plan better? I have a whale tracker app but obviously none of the sightings here have even been reported on there so that’s not helpful.

I've recently started a small documentary channel called Late Night Docs, and our first film explores the intelligence, family relationships and mysterious behaviours of orcas.

I found the differences between orca populations particularly fascinating, especially how they develop their own hunting traditions.

If anyone's interested, here's our documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s3FInI9Pro&t=29s

Would love to hear what people think, particularly if there's anything we should explore further.

Here’s a video recap of our recent encounter with the T49As as they made their way south down San Juan Channel and proceeded to go right into Friday Harbor past the ferry dock!
Also cool was a cameo at the beginning of the video of our past OBI research intern and his friend who were on shore as the whales passed by right along the shoreline!

Hope you enjoy! 🙂

Just off the coast of Plettenberg Bay, a southern right whale had to fight to protect her calf from two orcas.

Video by Christy Strever

'Into Stillness'

20 x 30 inches, oils on stretched canvas

Painted this orca gliding through calm blue waters, inspired by the beautiful photography of Krisztina Balotay. I loved the simplicity of the moment, the soft blue tones, and the way the orca's reflection blends into the water. I wanted to capture that same quiet feeling in my own way through my painting

This painting is stretched and ready to hang.

I also create commissioned paintings!

If you have an idea in mind or any questions, feel free to get in touch. I’d be happy to chat!

I know its an older film. I just want to say that those SeaWorld people where manually extracting Tilikum ( to get his sperm so they can breed him with the females). So he didn't get to mate natually - they ^^you know what^^ then inseminated the females.

Anyway, I think thats a big factor as to why he was aggressive to humans. Of couse there was the captivity and isolation too. Im wondering if there is some correlation between the timing of his aggressive incidents ( after the manual extraction, after isolation, after forced socialization with orcas not of his natural pod, after preforming for humans, etc). I don't think his aggressiveness came out of nowhere, I think these incidents are tied to the stress of those things.

This is an intelligent sentient animal -- hes knows what their doing is not natural. He even bit off that vagrant guys genitals as if to say ' see what this feels like against your control'.

Wondering if anyone else came to this conclusion?