Swimming with dolphins sounds fun, but what about swimming with a dolphin that’s getting chased down by a pack of killer whales?
Most wildlife experts would advise avoiding that at all cost, though there wasn’t much these swimmers in San Diego, California could do. They were just out exercising in the ocean and trying to get the ol’ heart rate up, and I’d say their hearts were certainly pumping when they noticed the pod of orcas chasing down a nearby dolphin.
Luckily for the swimmers, the orcas weren’t diverted by those freestyling out in the ocean. They were going after a mammal without gills swimming in the water already, so the orcas would have had no problem shifting gears and going after the humans.
We must remember that there are no known instances of an orca whale attacking and killing a human being, despite all of the crazy killer whale stories that surfaced last year. And if there was ever a really good opportunity for orcas to take down a human, this situation that was videoed out west would have been it.
You can hear the people on shore nervously commentating the close call, saying:
“This guy is swimming. Look at the guy swimming! No way, you see him?”
Oh yeah, we see him alright. We were all holding our breath, waiting for the moment when we didn’t see him anymore (because of a “Jonah and the Whale” situation).
The whole sequence is unbelievable, including the fact that this was all visible from the California beach. Newscasters in the clip below mentioned that seeing orcas hunting this close to the shore was “unheard of” and “never happened 20 years ago.”
It’s possible that the swimmers never even knew that the orcas were there while they swam just off the coast. That to me is terrifying, but maybe it was better that they didn’t know? If they did find out, I’m sure they all beat their personal records swimming as fast as they could in the opposite direction.
The surfers that were on their boards out on the water could see it all unfolding from a distance and intelligently decided to standby (or float by) until the orcas had passed. If I were them, I would have said “that’s enough ocean for me today” and high-tailed it out of the water.
You can view the breathtaking footage below:
