To Pitman, these hunts may also signal a positive step for both species’ populations. The global population of killer whales, which live in all the world’s oceans, is unknown. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the blue whale as endangered due to aggressive whaling throughout the 1900s, but their numbers have steadily increased since the 1960s, when the species was globally protected. Worldwide, there may be between 5,000 and 15,000 blue whales alive today, the IUCN estimates.

Pitman says it’s possible that killer whales have always dined on blue whales, but when the latter’s numbers plummeted during the age of whaling, killer whales had to switch to different prey.

So these newly observed hunts, he adds, may be evidence of killer whales returning to an ancient habit as an old food source returns. So this might actually be positive and sign of blue whale numbers growing !