Eyes on Orcas | Continent 7: Antarctica

[music playing] [splash] [shout]

NARRATOR: After a season of frustration--

BEN SHARP: Right there.

NARRATOR: --Regina and her team have a killer whale in sight.

BEN SHARP: He's coming towards the edge.

NARRATOR: Now, they just need it to be in range.

REGINA EISERT: Often the whales pop up out of nowhere. You've got half a second to take your aim. Because the thing's moving, and you need to shoot it while it's moving. And it's only above the water for a very short period.

BEN SHARP: It's coming this way, Rowan. Right there. [spouts water] [music playing] Got it. Got it. Got it. All right.

REGINA EISERT: Hey.

BEN SHARP: Awesome. Perfect.

REGINA EISERT: It's all right. You're good.

BEN SHARP: There's a little piece of blubber and skin. It'll take a little piece of skin, smaller than the end of my fingernail. But that's enough for us to do genetics and also stable isotope analysis. Stable isotopes allow us to position where the animal is eating in the food chain, and so it helps us to reconstruct what the diet of the whale is. Once we match those with the photo IDs, we start to understand family structure and population size.

NARRATOR: Information from a single whale helps the team learn about the individual. But multiple samples help them understand a section of the population, and that's the goal they've been working toward all season.

BEN SHARP: Regina! Regina!

REGINA EISERT: There's the other one. Success is if you get any samples. What we need-- as many killer whales as we can. Big male out over here.

BEN SHARP: [sighs] Here he is. [shot] Got him?

BEN SHARP: Yep. He reacted. So there's a group right out over there.

BEN SHARP: Then there's more out there.

REGINA EISERT: I hate to say it, but I told you there would be whales.

BEN SHARP: Saw another one coming. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go-- not the other guy.

REGINA EISERT: Where's the other rifle?

BEN SHARP: Go for the other gun, right there. [music playing] [spout] [shot]

BEN SHARP: You got her? I didn't even see it. Good shot.

REGINA EISERT: I'm very pleased with our samples because it was a lot of work getting them. As opposed to some days-- you've got 50 whales milling around. And they're just all over the place, and you don't know what to shoot first-- we had to run up and down the ice edge. And there was one or two animals at a time, and we had to chase them. [laughs]

BEN SHARP: Well, we finally saw some whales. We had to move fast to get to them. Here we go. Here we go. He's closer. He's right here.

BEN SHARP: He's right there. Nice shot. Regina just got a biopsy from that second big male in that group. Nice. Right there. [music playing]

BEN SHARP: We got six biopsies.

REGINA EISERT: Hey!

BEN SHARP: I think we did really good on the photo IDs. That first group was the same group over and over again. So we probably got that whole family group. Regina found a place where the whales are. Regina ended up getting biopsies. We got good data. As we work it up, we're going to be able to do a lot with it.

BEN SHARP: Good day. All right, we did good. [spouting] [music playing]