ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT SPECIAL: Orcas spend two months gorging on seals in Washington State

However the whales arrived, scientists say the spectacle was like nothing they'd ever seen. The whales first appeared in mid-February, when Hood Canal bridge supervisors saw a large group swim south and dive under a floating bridge that crosses Hood Canal. The whales then hung around south of that bridge for nearly eight weeks - swimming as far as 40 miles south to hunt for seals. The deep waters of Hood Canal, about 100 miles inland from the ocean, make it a perfect place for orcas chasing seals. Though Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay on Washington's Pacific Coast have plenty of seals, they also have a maze of shallow sandbars and channels that change seasonably and make them difficult places to hunt.

The orcas that found their way into Hood Canal engaged in typical orca feeding behaviors - literally tossing seals around from whale to whale before tearing off their flesh and eating them like peanuts. This bloody game of "playing" with food has been well-documented on National Geographic television specials over the years. Scientists believe that these behaviors are, in part, responsible for how the orca received the more common moniker, "killer" whale.

After killing scores of seals in this fashion, the transient whales milled about aimlessly for days. Finally, on a Saturday in late March, the whales swam north and dove back under the floating bridge. When they left, bridge Supervisor Dean Crawford told a Seattle newspaper that the whales swam right by about two dozen harbor seals, taking only one as they headed for the mouth of the canal. Crawford speculated that the whales were probably bound for the Strait of Juan de Fuca and out to the Pacific Ocean.

"They made a beeline for the [ocean]," Crawford said at the time. "Once they crossed under that bridge, they were swimming faster than they'd swam the whole time they were over here."

According to Crawford, the transient orca whales have not been seen since.

So-called transient orcas live along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and feed mostly on small marine mammals such as harbor seals or sea lions. The Pacific Northwest's resident orcas, which spend summers in the region's inland waters around the San Juan Islands and off of Canada's Vancouver Island, feed mostly on schooling fish. A third population, scientifically referred to as offshore orcas, is thought to live at least 10 miles offshore, and mix mammals and fish.

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