Ocean Battle: Humpback Whale vs. Orcas (Full Episode) | OceanXplorers | Nat Geo Animals

The ocean, the last frontier on earth. So much is unexplored and unexplained. To change that, a kick-ass team of insanely talented specialists is setting out to push the frontiers of what we know about our oceans. Oh my gosh. Zolika Philander, deep sea scientist. Being a deep sea researcher means having front row tickets to the best movie that everybody wants to watch. Melissa Marquez. Straight ahead, 12 o'clock. Shark biologist. We just saw what no one has seen before. Eric Stackpole. Scan now. Ocean tech innovator. I love building tools that allow us to see things in ways we've never seen before. And Aldo Cain. This is insane. Former Royal Marine special ops. It doesn't get any more cutting edge exploration than this. Their secret weapon, the Ocean Explorer. The most technologically advanced research vessel ever built. There's never been a more urgent need to understand our ocean and the animals that call it home. Because their lives and ours depend on it. This time the team is among the giants of the ocean. I could not believe that we were watching this fight bubble. They face an unexpected encounter. Oh my God. I can't believe we're seeing this. The Ocean Explorer is in the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean. It's heading 50 miles off the island's north coast to an area of the Atlantic Ocean teeming with giants. Humpbacks are one of the largest whales on the planet. They're about 45 feet long. That's the size of a school bus. We almost hunted these whales to extinction, but thanks to the global efforts to bring them back from the brink just over 50 years ago, these whales are now thriving. Every winter, thousands of humpbacks migrate to these waters to mate and give birth. But as they spend the majority of their time beneath the waves, details of their lives remain a mystery. That's why the team is here, to uncover secrets of these whales in some of the most intimate moments of their lives. Okay, coming. For this mission, All set? Cool. The team will need to draw on the full capabilities of the ship. Zoom out a bit. The ship is incredible. We have a helicopter. We have a deep CRV. We have two submersibles. Any question that we would want to answer about the humpback whale seems to be answerable with the technology and resources we have available. We know that humpback whales travel up to 5,000 miles, from their feeding grounds in the North Atlantic to this small patch of ocean, and that they come here to breed. But how exactly does a female humpback choose her mate? To find out, Eric's job is to first spot the whales. Yeah, you can power up. Then guide in Aldo and the dive team to get a rare underwater perspective. All right, Captain, good to go. Not so easy. Green light, green deck. Copy, green light. Let's go find some whales. The conditions are perfect. You could not ask for a better day to be searching for whales. The water is extremely calm, so anything that comes up to the surface of the water, we should be able to see. Oh my God, there are whales everywhere. That is really cool. With eyes in the sky, it doesn't take long. Oh, look at this. To spot some courtship action. There's a single adult female surrounded by males. Peaceful gatherings like these can suddenly erupt, turning into a frenzied pursuit. Whoa, what was that move all about? The female is leading the pack. She has a suitor, and he's following right behind her. Female's speeding up. If he loses his position, the chance to mate with her will be up for grabs. Whoa, is it pushing that one out of the water? Yeah. It's pushing it out of the water. Oh my gosh. Whitewater everywhere. No wonder some scientists call this a fight club. I mean, there's just so much muscle and energy in that. I mean, each of these weigh more than a truck, you know, and they're pounding against each other, speeding through the water. I cannot believe that we are watching this fight club right below us. Mike Delta, Mike Delta. This is Eagle Ray. Eagle Ray, this is Mike Delta. We're watching. We've counted 11 whales in this group. They've generally been holding the same direction. Yeah, roger. That one's a young location. We'll try and get in the water if it's safe to do so. This is definitely a sprint, and it's gonna be survival of the fittest. Order out. If former special ops Aldo and cameraman David can get in the water with the whales, they may be able to record behavior that's invisible from the surface. Have you been in the water with 11 whales before? Only once before was I ever in a group this big. Yeah. So it's pretty violent, in fact, for the whales, and so we just gotta be careful where we are. Every time I get in the water with big animals, I am apprehensive, you know? Yeah. We are in their territory, in their environment, and we are tiny in comparison. If you get on the wrong side of one of those pet fin slaps or a tail slap, then it's gonna be game over. Yeah. Let's try and get in ahead of them. Yeah, absolutely. The whole group just turned 90 degrees. Like that. They're turning away. You missed it. Scanning around for anything else. There's a big group, three o'clock. Yeah, there's something. All right, go check these guys out. Double Ray, Double Ray, Mike, Delta, we're moving over to some British Sheet Whales. That's the direction we're going now. Copy that. There are more males around a female, but this group appears more relaxed. You may wanna try to get in the water here. With very little known about the whales' courtship rituals, Aldo is concerned that any bubbles could spook the animals. So they're diving without tanks. Free diving is the closest that you can become to being a mammal in that environment. On one breath, you can dive down and be in their world. Holding his breath, Aldo swims to a depth of 70 feet. These whales seem totally at ease with their visitors. There's a female surrounded by five males. The mood couldn't be more different from the fight club. She wants the fittest father for her calf. How will she choose him? One male moves closer. He gently blows a stream of bubbles onto her belly. An encounter this intimate has rarely been seen. We need to try and understand what's going on. That has to be one of the best experiences I've ever had. Like when they cruise underneath you, it's literally like having a small plane underneath you. We can take those shots back and show some of the scientists on board. They can look at behavior. They can maybe tell us what those whales were doing in that social circumstance. Hey, Eric, I've got some cool stuff for you to look at. The footage will be analyzed by whale scientist, Asha Devas. The more we observe and the more we document, we can start to actually understand it from the viewpoint of the whale. And I think that's what's really interesting and unique for us. Double ray, double ray, Mike Delta. For the next week, Asha joins the dive team. Their aim? Oh, three. To collect as much footage as possible of as many courtship groups as they can find. We just saw it split as it went down. Oh. Very little is known about a female's mate selection, but by going through every frame. I hope you're as excited as I am, about what we found. Yeah, I am too. Asha's made some observations about the female that Aldo dived with. We know this is a female, and you can see her tail is very characteristic. I call it asymmetrical because it's not a symmetrical pattern. She's clearly rolling around, displaying herself. We see this very intimate moment where they're hanging. They're not moving much. For about 15 minutes, they just stayed in one place, like this. You feel like a really strong bond. Then you're thinking, this can only lead to mating. We find another group of six. If you look carefully, see, that's her tail. Remember, asymmetrical. I don't recognize any of the other males in the group, so she's found a complete new group of guys. But I don't understand. She already found her mate. Oh, that's what we thought. She does similar things. She rotates. She does these really intimate movements. And then we find a group of 11 animals. It's an amazing moment. And then we start seeing this peck-slapping event going on. And this peck belongs to the same female we saw in the previous two encounters. She has slipped from one group to the other to the other. This is more like dating, and the relationships just aren't quite working out, but she's still trying to find the one. Yeah, she wants a nice, strong calf that can survive into the future. And she's gonna take her time. I have to look at this kind of like online dating, you know, swiping away and trying to find, you know, Mr. Right Swipe. Yeah, exactly. And in the short time we've been here, we now have a little intimate peek into the life of this little lady and how she's chosen to maximize her time here on the mating grounds. We don't know if this female mates with any of the males or carries on looking for the perfect match. But in this rare footage, the team has observed just how choosy a female humpback can be. And there's still so much more to learn. Off the Dominican Republic, the humpback breeding season is in full swing. But why do the whales come to this specific patch in the North Atlantic every year? To find an answer, the team is going to focus on another humpback behavior. We know that for adult males, it's important to sing during mating season. And they do this often and for hours at a time. The team wants to test a hypothesis that the unique underwater landscape here could provide an advantage for the singing males. Leading the mission is deep sea scientist Zuleka. Armed with detailed bathymetry. Hi Dave. Hi. She'll be diving to a depth of 250 feet. The ocean explorer has mapped the seafloor and it's revealing a hidden underwater world. There are these great mountains rising to up to 2000 feet. And these are topped with a plateau that stops just below the surface. So these plateaus have bowl shaped edges on the wall, which are around the size of a football stadium. And these are what we are interested in. Okay team, here we go. Zuleka is joined by Marine Mammal Scientist, Mithrielle Mackay. From her aerial surveys, Mithrielle has developed an intriguing hypothesis. We could see whales tucked into these half circles. They remind me of an amphitheater. Is it possible that they're using these to do something with the song, to make their song easier to hear or maybe farther to hear or louder for other whales? And so we started getting into this whole hypothesis of whales are using the amphitheaters, these features out here to sing in order to broadcast their sound better for other humpback whales. And that could be a way to improve their chances of finding a mate. I saw something right above us, just like a flash. It was really strange. I can hear whales, 100%, 100%. Oh my God. I'm really excited to see if Mithrielle's hypothesis is correct. In order to test it, our plan is to set up a series of microphones within the bowl, both deep and shallow to record sound waves. Okay, where do you want it? Try right there. Yeah, we're both looking right in that same patch right there. Using the sub's robotic arm, they carefully place the deeper microphones around the sides of the bowl. Very nice. Testing the amphitheater hypothesis. This is exciting, eh? It's very exciting. Directly above them. All right, I've turned four on in the bucket on my side. Eric and acoustic scientist, Carrie Sager, are setting the shallower mics. So this is the actual part. All of the work is being done by this little bit here. That's the hydrophone. This is going to be listening to that sound reverberating off the amphitheater. Right. All right, here's the hydrophone. All right, hydrophone in. Ready to mark? Ready to mark. Number 11 in water. Number 11, waypoint marked. A waterproof speaker will play humpback song. So the plan is that this is going to be about the same depth that a male humpback whale will sing at. Okay, and starting. All righty. Waypoint marked. And we're not gonna hear it. Oh, we do hear it. We can hear it, oh my gosh. All the microphones, both shallow and deep, will register the volume of the whale song recording. Then it's back to the ship to find out the results. The acoustic data has been processed. That's very exciting. And can now be visualized in the ship's state-of-the-art hololab. The hololens of all the different pieces of equipment on this ship is the most futuristic. It feels like living in a science fiction movie, where it's like you are interacting with an imaginary world, like something that's inside of your head, but you can show it to everyone else. This is a great tool for helping visualize and communicate with others. It looks like we've gotten some results. Carrie, what have you seen? The first thing we're gonna see is the very first sound signal coming from speaker A. Exactly what we would expect from a sound wave moving away from the wall. The orange is a little quieter, yellow is quieter than that, and then green is the quietest. Now we're gonna add in the echo from the wall and see if it amplifies these numbers. So here's our echo, yep, coming right off the wall. And boom, boom, boom. Look at the added intensity there. Everything's red, everything's in the 90 decibels. Like 10, 11 decibels, that's a huge amount of extra sound energy in the system. 11 decibels, that's like a multiple. So now we know the benefit is that they could get that sound to be louder and behind them and reach more whales. This is pretty cool to see that, you know, we've uncovered something that's going on here. Mithrielle and Carrie now have proof of concept that the bowl-like features really do amplify a whale's song. By as much as 11 decibels, this could be one reason why so many whales come here. Just absolutely groundbreaking and huge and a culmination of so many years of my work that it doesn't really get more satisfying than that. It seems that the underwater terrain is providing an advantage for humpback seeking a mate, but it's not just whales looking to breed that come here. Females that became pregnant here last year have returned to give birth and to rear their calves. The warm shallows which lie above the submerged mountaintops provide the perfect nursery. These waters are believed to be the main reason why a humpback mother travels up to 5,000 miles to raise her young. This is a very important place. It's not just that the calves are born, but they're taught life skills. This is a big schoolyard. This is where they also come to teach their young, how do you survive if there are predators around? So they don't have a lot of time to teach those life skills before they have to basically pack up their bags and take this long migration all the way back to the North Atlantic. If whale scientist Asha and cameraman David can get an underwater perspective, they may be able to capture a rare glimpse of the intimate bond between mother and calf. They approach the mother and calf slowly and the pair seem undisturbed. Only the females are involved in parenting. This is mom's time to pour all her energy into her single calf. Just a few weeks old, the calf bonds with its mother through touch. Only able to hold its breath for a few minutes, the calf stays with the mom near the surface. It's entirely dependent on her, guzzling 50 gallons of her rich milk every day. There's no food for mom here. She hasn't eaten for five months. But she must continue to nurse her calf until it's strong enough to survive the journey to their feeding grounds. The calf clearly got curious, came to see what this other little object in the water was. All kids are curious. All kids are like, what is that new thing? But then, you know, a mother's instinct is to make sure that she's protecting that calf. So mama was like, you know what, not right now. And she just, you know, she did a U-turn underwater and I guess the calf knew immediately it was time to leave. Yeah, it was a good protective mother for the survival of their calves. They need to be very protected. Life for these young whales is to survive, to make it through that first year. To get to be an adult humpback is not easy. In the nursery grounds, mothers and calves are relatively safe. But when they enter deeper waters, what dangers does a young humpback face? To find out, the team now plans to tag a mother and a calf as they start their migration north. It's down to Eric to find a mother and calf on the move and guide in Aldo and the tagging team. Okay, here we go again. Looks that straight ahead. Yeah, definitely a blow and some action. Oh yeah, I see that. This pair have left the nursery grounds. For the hungry mother, timing their departure is a life or death decision. Ocean Explorer, Ocean Explorer, this is Mike Delta. Mike Delta send. Hey guys, we're seeing what appears to be a mother and calf. You may want to take a look at them. I roger that, thank you, out. So we're going out to put these tags on. They have cameras, temperature, depth, acceleration sensors. So with these, we're definitely going to get some good scientific data. There's something else in the water, just forward of that. Orca. Oh, wow. Also known as killer whales, these are the ocean's apex predators. It's a family of adults and juveniles. They need to eat, and they're heading straight for the mother and calf. They're like wolves. They're surrounding the thing. Look at that. She's keeping the calf on her back to keep it from being attacked from underneath. Its belly is the most vulnerable spot. The baby just went off the side. It's trying to get back. Nobody's ever filmed this here. This is so tough to watch. I mean, these orcas are relentless, but we've got a chance here to understand how mom defends her calf. And these orcas are some of the most intelligent creatures on the planet. This is giving us a chance to see how they organize their attack. What a horrible situation to be in. I mean, it's just, I can just picture the emotions this mom has. Look at that. That gives it a terrifying. Mithriel changes the plan on the fly. Can you see flippers on the surface? Yeah, it had 400 meters. She now wants to tag an orca. It could give the team the first ever scientific insight of a hunt in these waters. Carrie is in charge of tag deployment. I see flippers. It's resting underwater, 100 meters, low. For everyone's safety, including the animals, timing is critical. Everyone set. All right, you guys, I'm ready to tag whenever you're comfortable. The tag's four suction cups will attach to the orca without hurting it. They'll release after 12 hours. Yeah, okay, we're ready to tag. If they can get the tag on. Killer whale coming this way. Let's let it go under, let's let it go under. Whoa, look at the size of it. Killer whale underneath us. Yeah, killer whale underneath. I got it in front. Killer whale's coming up. Killer whale's under my tag. They've tagged the lead female, and she's with some pregnant females who need to eat for two, and juveniles who need to learn to hunt. This is a battle between two families. Oh, wow. These strikes aren't risk-free for the orca. To protect their vulnerable lower jaw, they hit with the top of their heads. To see it this close is brutal. Everybody's gotta eat, and that's been something that a lot of people forget. It's important to remember that there's a balance here. They're doing what they do best. The orca appear to be coordinating their attack. Their strategy, to separate the calf from its mother. Hold it down and drown it. Looks like this is a long fight. Mom's a formidable opponent. I mean, she's got pectoral fins that are 15 feet long, and those are covered in sharp barnacles. She's not giving up. Orcas hunting calls can travel up to nine miles through water. They've been heard. Another group arrives. I've heard about this happening, that sometimes two orca groups can come together for a kill. Oh, that's wild. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my God. Those are reinforcements. They are everywhere. All right, we've now got two hunt backs against 18 orca. Poor mom has gotta be exhausted, and this is all happening. How long can she go? They're just really, they're just wearing the calf and the mother down, aren't they? Just like a battle of attrition, isn't it? It seems to be reaching a breaking point. The orca finally succeed in isolating the calf, and they drown it. This calf will feed the orca family. Studies suggest that other whale species grieve at the death of a calf. Maybe hunt backs do too. What we saw today has never been seen, not with the kind of view that we just had. I'm still taking it in, honestly. I feel emotionally exhausted. All the footage from the hunt has been studied in fine detail, and the team is gathering in the ship's hololab where Mithrielle can share their findings. When I started to look at the still photos I took from the boat and the video footage from the helicopter, it looked from the surface that the orca had a simple strategy, and that's to pursue the mother and the calf until the point of exhaustion. But once I looked beneath the waves, with the tag video, it became clear just how complex and how coordinated their strategies actually are. Mithrielle, you've been able to sort of decipher what was really going on here. What I realized is we have something really organized. The alpha male was part of the group on the outside. Their main job was to keep mom moving and tire her out. So the alpha male moves into position, so he did what we're calling a fluke clap. It's actually cupping that tail, slapping it against the water. That appears to initiate some kind of signal communication within the group. Mithrielle believes the fluke clap is a signal to two of the orca to swim in front of the mother humpback, forcing her to slow down. The next play comes from the lead female. She does a hit. She comes up over mom's back, hits the calf, knocks the calf off mom's back. Mom comes down. She takes a swift dive down and puts her flippers way out and picks up that calf back in the water again, recovers the calf. Mithrielle's analysis is that by working together, the orca can maintain a relentless attack, constantly forcing the mother to recover her calf. The way she did this over and over and over again really made me think, this has to be a mother humpback whale that's had experience. We got a picture underneath her tail. We submitted that to the catalog. This mom was sighted 1992 and 1993. She's at least 30 years old. This was not the first time she's had to deal with this, and she did a great job of recovering that calf over and over. At this age, the mother may have had nine or 10 calves. Some will have become mothers themselves, returning here to raise their own calves. Here in the Dominican Republic, with the tools of the Ocean Explorer, the team have made breakthroughs. That's very exciting. In understanding the secret lives of these humpbacks. Oh my gosh. I could not believe that we were watching this fight club like right below us. They may even have figured out why the whales come here. Boom, boom. There's absolutely nothing more rewarding than doing new science and finding answers. They've captured new details in the mating rituals of these giants. That was free diving with the six big whales, and you're in their world. They're doing courtship maneuvers. From my point of view, it's been amazing. Tag on! But their greatest revelation comes from their surprise encounter, shining new light on the battle tactics between humpbacks and orca. For me, every single day has been a revelation. It's overwhelming, to be frank. The team's discoveries will be shared with scientists around the world. This is just a gold mine. Increasing our understanding of humpback whales. The better we know these incredible creatures, the more we can ensure they continue to thrive.