Hey Rip,
Did you actually see them make a kill on a marine mammal? This is really important if you took photographic evidence of it.
Those look like a "resident" pod, and they are fish eaters
only[. They follow the salmon run in. If it was a transient pod, the dorsal fin on the one male would be much more pronounced and the females would have a more triangular side shot to them (would look more sharky). There is a push from many marine mammologists to change the phylogeny on the two, and make them distinct species. They do not interbreed and each has completely differing habitat, diet and dialect of calls.
If they made a kill on another marine mammal it could be indicative of predicted dietary shifts in residents, due to the depleting salmon runs.
Please PM me if you have documentation on a positive kill on a sea lion. Most of the shots I saw looked like "driving" behavior, where they use loud splashes to push fish into corners or ball up for defense. I have at least 3 colleagues that would really be interested in those shots. There would've been an incredible amount of blood had they made a kill there, and they would have played with it for the better part of an hour. You'd definitely know if they made a kill there.
EDIT: Found the last female (sideways breach slap) in the transient Orcinus orca ID book for British Columbia. (You live in Washington State, right?) Pretty sure that's T037A, a female born in 1994. Guidebook is on link.
http://www-sci.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/sa/cetacean/T%20Cat%202008%20Final%20lo_res.pdfYou may want to send your shots to the addy on the face of that ID. You've captured some pretty good behavioral shots. I didn't see any blood or body parts of marine mammals, so most of that was probably social following a kill made elsewhere. If you do have shots on a kill, send em to me.
