3 November 2017
Europe's killer whales wowed in the BBC's Blue Planet II series but
these animals face extinction. Chris Gibson travelled to the small Norwegian
island of Kvaløya where the orcas retain a strong foothold. But for how much
longer?
It was one of those television moments. The
sight of killer whales herding shoals of herring into tighter and tighter balls
to trap the prey near the surface of the water.
The killer whales work as a pack of skilful
hunters before deploying their secret weapon - tail-slapping the fish
so hard they are either dazed or die.
The story behind those shots is even more
remarkable.
They were filmed in the majestic Norwegian
fjords. These long, narrow inlets are now among the few places in Europe you
can see a pod of killer whales.
Across Europe, these cetaceans are declining
rapidly.
In the Mediterranean and the North Sea, they
have vanished.
Elsewhere, there are now only eight killer
whales in the NW Scotland-Ireland population, and only 36 left in the Strait of
Gibraltar population.
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