Saved by the Whale! Humpbacks Play Hero When Orcas Attack

Only moments earlier, the seal was perilously close to becoming dinner for a group of hungry killer whales. Biologist Robert Pitman snapped the image while on a research expedition in 2009 — but it wasn't the first time he had observed this unusual protective behavior. Just one week earlier, Pitman, a researcher with the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in the NOAA Fisheries Service in California, saw a pair of humpbacks aggressively confronting killer whales that were circling a lone se