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Vlogger Clay Tall Stories recently captured something with his drone that most people have never seen: a killer whale feeding on a stingray. Usually, you wouldn’t see this because the stingrays are tricky prey for the killer whales due to their lethal stingers. However, in New Zealand, where the video was captured, this phenomenon happens every year.
In the video you can see the whale surface with the stingray in its mouth, the waters nearby turning red with blood. Seagulls circled the scene hoping to get a bit to eat themselves. Later in the video, the whale swims away at great speed to search for more rays to eat.
Stories was able to capture the footage from Ruby Bay with the aid of his drone, avoiding getting too close to the animal. The drone was safely above with the camera zoomed all the way in to get the footage. It’s never a good idea to approach wild animals including the killer whale, so drones are opening up a new world of possibility for wildlife photography and videography.
The next day Stories went to see the aftermath of the orca’s hunting session. At low tide, he found rays washed up on the beach missing body parts where the whales had chomped down. The rays, some of them quite large, come to the bay each spring and the killer whales follow them. There are somewhere between 150 and 200 orcas off the coast of New Zealand.