Eden's Orcas

In Australia in the early 20th century, shore whalers at Eden, on the coast of New South Wales, co-operated with a pod of orca led by a bull male named Old Tom. The killer whales—so-called by early hunters because they saw these whales killing their own kind—would herd humpbacks passing by on their migration south toward the Antarctic. The orca would corral the unsuspecting great whales into the cup of Two-fold Bay. There the human hunters would row out to harpoon them. The carcass sank to the shallow sea bed, the orca would be allowed to claim their part of the bargain: the humpback's tongue, the only part of the animal they relished. Twenty-four hours later, bloated with gas, the dead humpbacks would rise to the surface for collection by the whalers. Eden, whose bloody waters were so ill named, was a cynical exploitation of two species of cetacean.