As the whale watching boat slowly approached, the passengers saw something strange in the water—an 80-foot cloud of red-brown liquid. Just minutes later, an orca hurled a small whale into the air. Dark red fluid gushed from its body. A member of the three-orca pod forced the whale under the water, holding the thrashing animal below the surface.
One of the orcas then approached the boat with its prey in its mouth, “and then I see her looking at us like, hey, look what I got?” says Camila Alejandra Dávila Pardo, a marine biologist at Blue Safari Madeira, a whale and dolphin watching tour group.