Photos: Humpback whales save sea lion from killer whale attack

VICTORIA, B.C. (KOMO) - Operators of several whale-watching boats say they saw humpback whales save a Steller sea lion from an attack of killer whales.

They watched the action last week off Sooke, B.C., about 20 miles west of Victoria. Transient, or Bigg's killer whales, were attacking the sea lion.

“What we witnessed was pure aggression,” Russ Nicks of BC Whale Tours of Victoria said in a news release. “We had four humpbacks trumpeting, rolling on their sides, flukes up in the air multiple times. The killer whales split many times into two groups, with one that appeared to try to draw the humpbacks away from the sea lion. The other group would go in for the attack while the humpbacks were safely away – but then they’d get in the middle of it again, fighting the orcas off. It was amazing to watch.”

Alethea Leddy, a naturalist with the Port Angeles Whale Watch Co., also watched the activity.

“We got there in time to see some crazy surface activity, with humpback whales splashing in the distance along with orcas,” she said in a news release. “Then two humpbacks surfaced next to us trumpeting and the next thing we know there were four humpbacks, possibly six, all defending the sea lion. The water boiled all around as the orcas tried to separate the sea lion from the humpbacks."

Eventually the orcas swam off, and Leddy said the sea lion was next to the humpbacks to appeared to be escorted by them in the opposite direction.

The activity is not unusual, the Journal of Marine Mammal Science published a report in August from researchers who observed humpbacks often stopping attacks from killer whales on smaller marine mammals.

" ... there was no apparent benefit to humpbacks continuing to interfere when other species were being attacked. Interspecific altruism, even if unintentional, could not be ruled out," the researchers wrote.

Humpback whales have been attacked by transient orcas off the waters of Washington and British Columbia.

Humpback whale sightings in the Northwest have increased this year.

Most of the humpback whale populations have been removed from the endangered species list.