Orcas knocked a seal off an ice floe. A humpback whale surfaced beneath it and lifted the seal clear of the water on its chest. Not its calf. A stranger.
A researcher went looking and found 115 recorded encounters over 62 years, worldwide, of humpbacks interfering with hunting orcas. Only 11 of them involved rescuing humpback calves. The other 104 were strangers: grey whale calves, sea lions, harbour seals, porpoises, even an ocean sunfish.
They swim toward the attack, sometimes for miles, and break up the hunt.
Why remains open. Scientists are careful here — it may be instinct misfiring, a reflex to harass orcas that spills over onto whoever happens to be in the water. Those 104 strangers sit a little uneasily inside that explanation.
Or the biggest animals in the ocean simply hate a bully.