A couple celebrating their anniversary in Mexico were startled to discover that a pack of killer whales was approaching them while they were scuba diving off the coast of La Paz.
After the couple, Rich and Laura, was called back to the boat by the dive instructor, they discovered that the killer whales continued the hunt by closely following the speeding boat.
The above video was recorded by Rich and shows the whales ‘playing’ in the boat’s wake.
Killer whales following a speeding motorboat, as gentle dolphins are known to do, is extremely rare and the couple feels lucky to have captured the video.
However, perhaps this never before seen act suggests a more sinister motive than the presumption that the whales were trying to play.
Last summer Jonathan Last wrote a review for the Wall Street Journal about a book that tries to explain the deadly killer whale attack at Sea World in February 2010. As the review points out, killer whales and humans do not get along in close quarters:
Sea World's first serious orca attack took place in 1971, when the original Shamu mauled a park employee during a publicity stunt. (The woman required 200 stitches to close her wounds.) Since then dozens of serious injuries have been reported. In 1987 alone, one trainer had her neck broken; another had his neck, back and pelvis crushed; a third suffered a ruptured kidney and lacerated liver.
If Rich and Laura had known what killer whales are capable of their squeals of delight that were recorded in the video would have been replaced with screams of fear.