You could tell they were asleep because the procession—kooosh kooosh kooosh in succession as they broke the surface of the glasslike water, rhythmic and slow and majestic—was clustered together closely, in a line, and surfacing only every forty-five seconds or so, coming up and going down as a group. I sat on my log and watched them. The only other sounds were the keening of the gulls that occupied much of the rocky beach. Every breath that killer whales take is voluntary and conscious; unlike most land mammals, most cetaceans do not have an involuntary-breathing mode.
Sleeping orcas
Every breath is conscious
