Watching orcas swimming in the wild on live cam is why we have internet
Orcas made a spectacular showing this summer near British Columbia in Canada. And, lucky for us land-dwellers, many of those underwater moments were caught on camera.
Explore.org's network of live cameras shows the killer whales swimming to and fro near Hanson Island, where salmon swim upriver from June to October and attract the hungry orcas.
As the salmon runs wind down in the next few weeks, the whales may soon slip out of the cameras' sight.
SEE ALSO: Dolphins have a 'highly advanced' spoken language, study finds
But galleries of photos and videos will remain on the website. Many of these files were captured by so-called citizen scientists as they watched the feeds in the hopes of glimpsing some blackfish glory, said Charlie Annenberg, a filmmaker and philanthropist who founded the multimedia organization Explore.org.
"They're observing animals in the wild like no other scientist has ever done, because you can observe it 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he told Mashable by phone from California.
A viewing of the live cam on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. PDT showed a flurry of black fins — albeit grainy and distant — slicing through the surface of the Queen Charlotte Strait.
The 10 camera set-up around Hanson Island captures more than just the sight of killer whales too.
In the full video posted below, the shrieking, echoey sounds of orcas burst through your earbuds. Paul Spong, a renowned whale expert, built an underwater recording system — called a hydrophone — to accompany the visuals.
Image: explore.org
What exactly are the orcas saying? Researchers aren't sure.
While a recent study found that dolphins can carry on conversations in an advanced spoken language, it's not known if orcas have words or languages.
"We think they have signature calls (names) and recognize each other," Carl Safina, a conservationist, previously explained in a National Geographic blog post. "We do know they can hear each other over tens of miles."
Explore.org's live cameras are also trained on brown bears, bison, bee hives and kelp forests, among other creatures.
A quick visit to the cameras in Alaska's Katmai National Park revealed three bears splashing around in the bubbling waters of Brooks Falls. They looked rather cuddly with thousands of miles and various screens in between them and the viewer.
Annenberg said the mix of wilderness and voyeurism can act as a "bridge" between observing animals in captivity — a controversial practice, particularly for orcas — and watching them first-hand in the wild.
He said he hopes that link can spur viewers to conservation.
"The mission is really simple: to allow the public to get up close and personal with nature, with the hope they develop a relationship with the outside world," he said. "You take care of that which you love."
