{"id":420312,"date":"2026-01-18T02:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T02:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/420312\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T02:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T02:22:07","slug":"orca-whales-delight-seattle-onlookers-with-breaches-and-tail-slaps-in-rare-close-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/420312\/","title":{"rendered":"Orca whales delight Seattle onlookers with breaches and tail slaps in rare close encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SEATTLE \u2014 With breaches and tail slapping, a pod of orca whales put on a show near Seattle on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The close encounter attracted dozens of people to the shore of the West Seattle neighborhood. Whale watchers identified the pod as Bigg&#8217;s killer whales, a group that hunts sea mammals and lives in the Salish Sea. <\/p>\n<p>The pod was seemingly hunting.<\/p>\n<p>SEE ALSO | <a href=\"https:\/\/komonews.com\/news\/local\/new-orca-calf-reported-in-kpod-puget-sound-water-whales-endangered-animals-research-endangered-orca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Newborn whale calf brings hope and cautious joy to Puget Sound<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Among the people watching from Alki beach was Summer Staley. <\/p>\n<p>She drove from across the city to catch the whales after seeing a post on the Orca Network&#8217;s Facebook page alerting of the pod&#8217;s arrival. <\/p>\n<p>The group tracks whales using reports from people on land and in the water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just such a beautiful connection with nature and with the universe to be sharing the same space with these beautiful creatures,\u201d said Staley, who has seen the whales a few dozen times over the last year. \u201cHow lucky am I to be able to share this space with them?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The whales breached and tail slapped for about hour. <\/p>\n<p>Sea birds and a bald eagle trailed the pod, looking for scraps. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 With breaches and tail slapping, a pod of orca whales put on a show near Seattle&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-420312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}