The annual gathering ... sends ripples through the local ecosystem -- forcing gray whales to hug the coast, concentrating birds and scavengers, attracting enormous sleeper sharks from the abyss and drawing brown bears to beaches when hunks of reeking flesh wash up high and dry.
It shows, the scientists said, how the ocean's top predator might play a "central role" in the structure of the North Pacific's marine community.
These "killer whales have developed a unique set of culturally transmitted social and foraging behaviors that appear to be shaped by the behavior and distribution of their marine mammal prey," the scientists wrote.
The scientists also write of orcas' efforts to keep carcasses from sinking into too-deep water, including one incident in which they cooperated in transporting a dead gray whale toward shallower water before feeding on it.
Read more about the study at Alaska Dispatch and the Vancouver Sun.
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