{"id":509240,"date":"2026-04-02T16:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/509240\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:37:08","slug":"backshall-says-orca-sighting-off-cornwall-greatest-british-wildlife-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/509240\/","title":{"rendered":"Backshall says orca sighting off Cornwall &#8216;greatest British wildlife encounter&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the 1990s, the pod included 10 orcas and they were frequently spotted around the UK and Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since 2016, when a female nicknamed Lulu was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-35244417\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">found dead in the Inner Hebrides<\/a>, only John Cos and Aquarius have been spotted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-cornwall-57011389\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">brothers were last seen off the west coast of Cornwall<\/a> in May 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Backshall said he had spent half an hour watching them from his boat on Wednesday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;These two utterly majestic bull male orca were cruising around, super calm,&#8221; he explained.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There were a couple of moments when they appeared to be jumping and diving, we thought they could have been feeding on something relatively close to the surface.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was just the most overwhelming, emotional, beautiful experience and even more so because they are such well-known characters.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 1990s, the pod included 10 orcas and they were frequently spotted around the UK and Ireland.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-509240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}