Orcas

The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras. The nearly mythic white whale was real after all. "I had heard about this whale but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."

Seven killer whales from the endangered population in Washington's Puget Sound are missing and presumed dead in the most significant die-off of one of the icons of the Pacific Northwest in nearly a decade. Scientists tracking the black-and-white orcas off the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia said there were signs the whales may have starved to death, though whether that was because of insufficient food or disease that made them unable to eat is unknown.

SeaWorld officials Thursday hotly disputed a finding by state investigators that it is "only a matter of time" before a trainer is killed by one of the park's killer whales. "The trainers recognize this risk and train not for 'if' an attack will happen but 'when,' " said a report by the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The report, released Tuesday, follows an investigation into a Nov.

After a second day of discussions with SeaWorld officials, Cal/OSHA on Friday agreed to withdraw a report that predicted that a trainer at the park will someday be killed by a killer whale. The agency agreed to rewrite it's investigators' report to stick to only the facts of a Nov. 29 incident in which a whale dragged a trainer to the bottom of the pool at Shamu Stadium several times before he escaped.

A trainer at Sea World Adventure Park was slightly injured Tuesday when she was bumped by a killer whale and fell to the pavement, officials said. The trainer was sitting beside the whale's pool helping with a sonogram when the whale moved suddenly. The trainer hit her head and was taken to a hospital for an examination.

The dolphin didn't stand a chance once it had been separated from its pod. The killer whales overwhelmed the smaller mammal. They hurled their massive bodies out of the water and splashed down on top of it, grabbing it with their teeth and tossing it through the air. "They were playing with it just like a cat plays with a mouse," Tyler Elzig, captain of the fishing boat Sea Horse, said of what he witnessed Sunday. "It was the most intense thing I've seen in my entire life on the water."

Back in December, we wrote about Luna, a sociable young orca that had adopted the waters off this remote inlet town as its home almost five years ago. A dolphin-sized 2-year-old when he showed up alone in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the orca would often rub up against boats, spray people beside the dock and allow residents to pet him and rub his tongue.

Officials at SeaWorld Adventure Park ordered a "complete" investigation Thursday into why a 5,000-pound killer whale injured a veteran trainer and dragged him to the bottom of a 36-foot-deep pool at Shamu Stadium. Even as he was being held underwater Wednesday, the trainer, Ken Peters, 39, persuaded Kasatka to free his foot from her mouth by stroking her back. As several hundred horrified patrons watched, Peters swam to the top of the pool.

For a good time, follow the whales. The big boys of Planet Ocean vacation in some of the world's finest locations: the warm lagoons and bays of Hawaii and Mexico in winter, the clear waters of Canada and Alaska in summer. In some ways, they're like the seriously wealthy, tracking the sun to the world's playgrounds. The phenomenon hasn't escaped the travel industry, which thrives when the humpback, gray and blue whales come to town.

The "slippery six," half a dozen killer whales whose home range is out on the Pacific Coast, are still feasting on harbor seals in the Puget Sound inlet of Hood Canal five months after their arrival -- an unprecedented stint, biologists say. They'd been reported gone on Wednesday, but were spotted again on Friday. "We're all calling back and forth," said volunteer observer Judy Dicksion, who lives near Seabeck on the 60-mile-long Hood Canal. "Everybody's like 'Oh, yeah!'