  Once a year, southern elephant seals head to the Falkland Islands to give birth. But a hunter is in their midst, displaying incredible daring and ingenuity as she pursues young elephant seal pups in a way never before caught on film. Follow the crew members from Life as they capture footage of this killer whale risking her life to reach her prey, providing yet another breathtaking example of the struggle between the hunter and the hunted.
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Watch an "Orca Hunt Elephant Seals"
ELEPHANT SEALS: SWIMMING IN DEADLY WATERS
Life in the frigid waters off the coast of the Falkland Islands is difficult, but the southern elephant seal (
Mirounga leonina) has adapted quite well to the harsh environment. Once hunted to the edge of extinction, elephant seals have since thrived under protected status in the wild and now number in the hundreds of thousands. Excellent divers, the elephant seals plunge hundreds, even thousands of feet in search of fish, squid and small sharks, protected from the cold by a thick layer of blubber. Very few predators have the size or skill to hunt mature elephant seals, the largest of which may reach 20 feet (6 meters) in length and weigh several tons.
Of course, many elephant seals will never reach maturity. From birth, danger surrounds them. Even before they leave their mothers' sides, the pups are sometimes crushed to death as the ferocious males fight one another for dominance. The little protection their mothers do afford them is short-lived. The pups nurse for less than a month before they must fend for themselves. As a crew member from the
Life documentary observed, it's then that the pups are at their most vulnerable — when they hide from the sea.
"The mother does nothing to teach them to get into the water," said producer Adam Chapman. "The seal pups come together in little groups since they feel more comfortable and tend to only go in the water early in the morning."
By staying near the rocky shore and venturing only into shallow pools, the defenseless pups can develop their swimming skills in relative safety.
But even the shallow waters along the coast pose very real threats to the seals. Large waves can pull the pups away from shore and into dangerous open waters, for instance, making them easy prey. And for the pups on the Falkland Islands coast, another threat has emerged. The narrow channel they inhabit has shielded the pups from danger for generations, but as one clever hunter illustrates, nature's best predators constantly adapt their hunting strategies in surprising and deadly ways.
And as the crew of
Life found out, some predators even put themselves directly in harm's way in the process.
Continue: The Lone Orca: Hunting Pups and Skirting Danger
