Big Game at Sea 



over the tail of one; but the big creature did not 

 come up, at least within a reasonable distance, but 

 for some seconds I looked down upon the animal as 

 the boat's bow cut through the boiling water occa- 

 sioned by the working of the screw-like tail just 

 beneath me. 



Once I observed the leap of a sixty- or seventy- 

 foot whale in these waters, possibly to avoid its 

 enemies, the orcas. The giant rose slowly and delib- 

 erately out of the water until it appeared to stand on 

 its tail on the surface an absorbing spectacle then 

 gradually sank into the sea. In attempts to photo- 

 graph a large whale I followed so closely that the 

 prow of the boat appeared to be almost directly over 

 the tail that was working like a large propeller 

 forcing the tons of flesh along. 



There are two orcas well known in the Pacific: 

 Orca ater, with its saddle of maroon, and Orca recti- 

 penna. The latter is the largest and cannot be mis- 

 taken, as its dorsal fin is as remarkable in its way as 

 the upper lobe of the tail of the thresher shark. It 

 is often six or seven feet in length, tall, slender, and 

 rigid except at the very top, which occasionally falls 

 over in the air. The long-finned orca claims the 

 northern regions as its hunting grounds, while the 

 maroon saddle variety is found in warmer latitudes 

 off Southern California, though this is by no means 

 a hard or fast rule. In the North Atlantic is found 

 the Orca gladiator, a fierce and relentless creature, 



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