Tropical orcas spotted off Redondo Beach Play

Orcas have appeared in Santa Monica Bay — and these are tropical orcas, not the northern orcas that usually hang out in the Pacific Ocean off Canada, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest. A whale watching boat in the Rancho Palos Verdes area spotted a pod of 10 orcas cruising up the coast near Redondo Beach.

Once called killer whales, these orcas usually don't appear in local waters, but sometimes they show up swimming down from the North Pacific. There are some orcas that live in warm tropical waters, and this pod of young orcas has been identified as Eastern Tropical Pacific orcas. They were spotted swimming up the coast and playing in an undersea canyon just off Redondo Beach about noon Monday.

This may be the same pod of orcas that was spotted moving up the Southern California coast from Newport Beach past Huntington Beach toward Palos Verdes a week ago.