By Stella Seifried
Edited by Liam Mason

It’s the circulating fear that calls me to write about them for Valentine’s Day. Their intelligence that we demine. Their likely enjoyment of the bubbles that propellers make. Their understanding of fashion (if you don’t know what I am talking about look up salmon hats). Orcinus orca. Named for a god of the underworld. Known for sinking yachts, pack hunting poor baby seals, and ramming great white sharks.
I had a dream last week where my father was driving me along the coast in BC and I was whale watching out the passenger side window. A once in a lifetime view, just for me. With each crash of the waves they were there. Throwing their bodies up and falling with each white cap. Over and over. Multiple in a row, all synchronized. Rising and falling. There was something in their sensitive rhythm and harmony that led me to write about them and love. This brought me to a silly, but vital question. Do orcas celebrate Valentine’s Day?

Off the coast of South Africa two orcas have been hunting sharks since 2017. They were named after the nautical terms for left and right, for the opposing sides that their dorsal fins fold towards. Their distinct fins have become a warning sign for white sharks. False Bay was known as the “Great White Shark Capital of the World” before their arrival. Since then, white sharks have migrated to the east, originally leaving scientists to believe that the population was dying off. Port and Starboard made world headlines after video of them killing a Great White surfaced in May of 2022. Before this video, orcas methods of shark mutilation could only be theorised. The video showed the orcas pulling the shark by the pectoral fin and flipping it onto its back, forcing it into a catatonic state called tonic immobility. From there the orcas could finish the job with ease—in a few thrashes between the two of them the shark could be ripped to pieces. But they don’t make it easy, they are too particular for that, so instead of thrashing and tearing they make one incision along the length of the shark’s abdomen.
When a shark washes up on the beach often no root cause for its death or deficit behaviour can be confirmed. But we know when Port and Starboard kill a shark. It’s their own intelligence that damns them, you can tell, when a shark washes up on the beach with a near perfect surgical incision, missing only their liver. You know who did it. Who has that precision. That hunger.
These fierce, playful and mildly sadistic predators share a strong bond. They are social creatures who live in pods amongst other related orcas. It has been said that Port and Starboard are brothers. Never straying too far from one another. Loving each other, past social utility. Yes, they provide for one another, but they also grieve the dead and taken. There is no social utility in that.

Orcas use echolocation to communicate, so if the brothers were apart they likely would still be able to “hear” one another through reflected sounds. Their language can be felt through tough blubbered skin. Orcas have been observed making long-distance pulsed calls to loved ones lost to captivity. Codas and whistles and songs for the rising and the falling. Male orcas have been recorded leading helicopters away from the females and juveniles of their pods to ensure they aren’t captured and taken. A metaphorical breadcrumb trail saves them from a life in a concrete bathtub. Mother orcas are known to pass on their best foraging locations and hunting techniques to their young. They sometimes bring fish for their child well into their adulthood.
Can we call what they have love? These mere vibratos. These meticulous organ removals. Does it transcend what we call love? Does a deep guttural bellow, a sacrificial migration and an intellectual grief of the living balance out the way their teeth have dulled because of the shark’s sandpaper-like skin. Is it more than love? Something we can’t even fathom? Something precise and skillful? Do they even need Valentine’s Day? When they can physically feel each other’s loving calls. When they kill together. When they know exactly where to bite.
Orcas brains have a more developed limbic area—the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions—than we do. It’s hypothesised that because of this they are more emotionally capable than us.
Can we even call what we have love in comparison? In size and volume and weight and length? What is it that we are missing? Why am I jealous of how closely orcas can love? How do I know that if we had the capacity to feel what they do, we would all be petrified to feel it?
We have to set aside time to love and be loved. We need Valentine’s Day. But orcas have something. It’s more than their brain complexity and predatory nature. Whatever it is. To get even close to what they feel, you have to know where to bite. Where the meat is most tender. Where the flesh tears just enough but not too far. I don’t know where you find the balance in that. The honor. The recognition of it. This nameless but bloody metabolite.

So I implore you. If you want to feel beyond human capability. Sink your teeth in. Tear at the flesh of another. Let the blood mix with the salt water. Find the liver.