Free Spirit Gallery Blog

Orcas In Frozen Planet

I have always loved killerwhales or orcas as they are often known.  I watch them when I go to aquariums like Seaworld, the Vancouver Aquarium or Marineland in Niagara Falls.  I like them so much that I even collect Northwest Indian art carvings of killerwhales.  As you know, orcas are also one of the most popular of all Northwest Indian art designs and they are steady sellers here at Free Spirit Gallery. Even the NHL hockey team Vancouver Canucks has their team logo based on an orca.

I was watching the BBC documentary entitled ‘Frozen Planet’ which is an absolutely incredible series showing nature and wildlife in the high Arctic as well as the Antarctic.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must-see as the series educates us about the far reaches of our planet with some awesome entertaining film footage.

Killerwhale Teamwork In Antarctic Waters

The first Frozen Planet episode showed a great scene in the ocean near Antarctica.  It captured a pod of killerwhales during a hunt as they were going after a seal lying on an ice floe.

The orcas used a unique strategy where they swam in a row in unison under the ice floe to create a massive wave in order to break it up and knock the seal into the water.

When the seal hit the water, the whales then used a sideswiping move to create turbulence in the ocean.  Some even blew air bubbles in the water to distract the seal.  The orcas were careful to avoid the possible snapping jaws of the seal.

The seal was able to climb onto another ice floe but was so exhausted that one of the orcas simply came up behind and dragged the seal by the tail and into the ocean to drown it.

Killerwhales are sometimes known as the ‘wolves of the seas’ because of their similar pack behaviour much like wolves exhibit on land during their hunts.  In fact, Frozen Planet also showed another scene where Arctic wolves did bring down a huge bison, again with great teamwork involved.

Animals From Inuit Art And Northwest Indian Art

Frozen Planet features many of the animals we see from both Inuit art and Northwest Indian art.  Not only were there orcas, seals and wolves, there were also many different birds, penguins, beluga whales, muskox, caribou, walrus and some great footage of polar bears.

I was also quite surprised that they even got video footage of narwhals which are not often seen in real life on any show.  These whales with their long tusks are popular in Inuit art but many people have never seen a real one either in a photo or on video.  The Frozen Planet team captured an entire pod of them up close.

At the end of each episode, we see a bit of how each Frozen Planet film crew worked on site at both Arctic and Antarctic locations to shoot their awesome scenes.

Frozen Planet DVD/Blu-ray

The Discovery Channel store has Frozen Planet available on both DVD and Blu-ray now.  I would highly recommend this series for its educational content presented with stunning, entertaining videography.  Just click on the little blue graphic below for more details at Discovery Channel.