Boat captain calls whale fight near Everett ‘spectacular’

It’s not every day you see a pod of killer whales take on two 40-ton gray whales. It’s even rarer to catch it on camera. But that’s what happened over the weekend near Everett.

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Captain Michael Colahan, with Island Adventures Whale Watching, told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that he witnessed the encounter between a small pod of four killer whales traveling north near Everett and a pair of passing adult gray whales.

“It was spectacular,” he said.

Colahan said the youngest of the traveling Orca calves appeared to start the altercation.

“Mom and her two younger calves were traveling to the north and her older son, who is 14, was traveling kind of on his own about a quarter-mile away,” Colahan said. “And as we continued to watch them we noticed in the background that there were two gray whales also along the shoreline of Camino Island. This is a pretty rare event to see both types of animals in the same frame. We were pretty excited to see it when her 14-year-old son actually went right in the middle of the two gray whales and started up a skirmish with them.

“The gray whales right away looked to go into kind of a defense mode where they spun around and you could see the pectoral flippers flying out of the water, their tails flying,” he continued. “They were not very interested in this Orca coming after them.”

Listen to Michael Harris, Executive Director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association, explain to Ron and Don” how transient Orcas are willing fighters.