Postcard from Peninsula Valdés: Orcas That Beach to Hunt

Peninsula Valdés. The Thing I Came to See Was the Thing I Missed Recording.

The Destination

This edition returns to the Americas. Lobster Bob is at Peninsula Valdés, the wildlife reserve on the Atlantic coast of Argentine Patagonia. The track is Sea. The type is Wildlife. The vehicle is Nellie PZ 1953 N, the boat Lobster Bob co-owns with Cpt. JT Peg of Penzance.

She has been anchored off this beach before. She does not lose interest in what happens here.

This is the second Americas destination in the Postcards canon. It is also the first edition that anchors on a single piece of animal behaviour rather than a single place.

The behaviour is the destination. About thirty orcas in the world do it. They are all related. They have been teaching it to their calves for at least fifty years.

What follows is the postcard from the morning Lobster Bob set up the camera and did not press record.

‍

Hola Mijo! Lobster Bob here...

We anchored Nellie a hundred metres off the beach at Punta Norte. The water was cold. Cpt. JT Peg was at the wheel. He had logged the tide chart twice before we set out. He does this with the patience of a man who has not been caught out by a tide in forty years. He intends to keep that record.

The sand was empty. We waited.

Sea lions arrived first. They are the protagonists of the next part of this story even though they do not know it yet. They came down to the water in groups of four and five. They were doing what sea lions do. They were not watching the deeper water.

The first orca appeared as a black fin a hundred metres out. She was moving slowly along the line of the beach. JT pointed at her without speaking. She was a female. The Valdés researchers know her by a number. JT and I do not. She moved past us at a pace that did not draw attention to itself.

Then she stopped moving slowly.

She came up onto the sand at speed. She grabbed a sea lion pup in her jaw. She worked her way backwards into the water. The whole movement took less time to happen than it takes to describe. JT did not speak. I tried to speak and could not get a sentence out.

I had been planning to film it. I had set up the camera. I had not pressed record. I watched the recording later. I had recorded the sand for forty-three minutes. The seven seconds of the actual event were nowhere on the recording.

That was the failure. The thing I came to see was the thing I missed recording.

Peninsula Valdés sticks out into the Atlantic from the Argentine coast. The orcas here have learned that this specific stretch of beach has the right slope and the right tide for what they do. They do not do this anywhere else in the world. Every other orca population that has been studied catches its prey in deep water. These thirty have decided differently.

The orca had a calf with her. We did not see the calf in the water at the time. We saw the calf afterwards, a hundred metres back from the beach, learning. The female brought the calf to the same beach and showed her how to do it. They did this twice while we watched. The calf did not get the technique right either time. The mother did not look annoyed. The mother had been twice as long as the calf at learning it herself.

JT logged the morning. He logged the tide. He logged that I had failed to press record.

The school-yard fact is this. There are around thirty orcas in the world who hunt this way. They are all related. They have been teaching their calves this trick on this beach for at least fifty years. Every other orca population in the world has not figured it out. These thirty have, and they have kept the knowledge in the family.

A child can hold that on their fingers tonight.

We sailed Nellie back to Puerto Madryn in the afternoon. PZ 1953 N had crossed worse water than the Atlantic at the bottom of Argentina. She held the line. JT made tea on the way back. He did not mention the camera.

I have not since travelled with a camera I have not tested twice.

The World is Your Classroom. Humility is Your Compass. Passport ready, mijo? The world is not going to wait forever.

Lobster Bob, Founder & Scenic Tour Operator

Three Ways to Travel With Us

528 DESTINATIONS. ONE GUIDE.Your child is the missing passenger. Join the waitlist and travel with Lobster Bob before the first tour opens.scrubbingsquad.com