Richard Roxburgh: I Like Orcas, Let's Call Them That

Aussie actor Richard Roxburgh is the voice behind the new documentary Killer Whale – Australia's Megapod, which you can check out now on ABC iView. Killer whales are seriously smart and the ones off the coast of Bremer Bay, WA, are full of surprises. During a chat about the doco, Lisa asked if there were any random facts about killer whales and one really stood out: these orcas actually have their own accent! Just like people from different regions sound different, these whales each have their own unique way of communicating. Researchers reckon there’s a lot more going on in their calls than we realise, and with the help of AI, they’re hoping to one day crack the code and understand what these incredible creatures are really saying.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Killer Whale. Australia's megapod is available to stream on ABC
iView right now, and narrating this incredible documentary is Richard Roxburgh.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good morning, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Now. Killer whales are just next level spectacular, aren't they.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
They are really something. They are quite extraordinary animals. I
mean I learned I did. I actually learned so much
from from narrating the documentary. But I had always had
a sort of passing interest in them.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
But they're incredible, They're I mean, calling them killer whales
is a bit of a misnomer, isn't it. They're actually
part of the dolphin family.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, well, I guess the all whales are the But
it does sound kind of horribly reductive to call such
a beautiful animal by such a kind of you know,
a kind of dull name like killer whales. I like orcust,
I like Aucus. Yea, let's go with that. Let's call
them that.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Let's go with Orca. Have you seen them in the
wild yourself?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
We thought, because we're lucky enough to live in the
Northern Beaches in Sydney, and we thought we saw a
pod of them offshore here last year, and it was
because they were behaving in a completely different way to humpbacks.
Yeah so, and it was just astonishing. They're really something
to behold.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
So a lot of people don't know that not only
are their killer whales and way. I don't think it
was within the last ten years that I learned this.
But there are two distinct pods, one off Bremer Bay
and the other off Ningaloo Reef, and they are both
very individual and the Brema Bay pod is apparently the
healthiest in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah. So they've counted up to kind of two hundred
individuals in that pod, about sixty k's off Brema Bay.
But yeah, it's a huge and really thriving population. Isn't
it great to hear a good news story from our
aquatic friends? It is, you know what I mean? So great.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well that's why documentaries like this are important too, to
you know, to educate everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeahsolutely. And their science around them is mind boggling. I mean,
they've got their brains are thirty million years more advanced
than ours, and they're they're much much larger so in
terms of kind of literal surface area, so they're incredibly smart. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, I was looking at Facebook this morning. They didn't
have much to have to improve on. They are an
incredibly intelligent species. They work together, they have matriarchs. Different
pods around the world have different hunting methods. Did you
learn any fun random facts about them while you were
narrating this?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
The ones in the ones in bremer Bay I have
got an Australian accent. That's an interesting fact. So they're
doing all of this work in the world of sonics
obviously in recording them, and they do they speak with
a different accent. No, that's true, and they don't really know.

(03:02):
They're hoping that eventually, you know, with the advent of AI,
they might be able to actually understand what they're talking about.
But they've got quite advanced linguistics.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, well, my mind is blown that they have different accents.
So much to low.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Quick amazing fact that's in the documentary. And you see this,
and it's really not for the fainthearted. They're hunting down
a beaked whale and there's a whole pack, there's about
sixty of them. They tie this poor animal out and
what they're after is the skin of the whale, and

(03:40):
so it sounds horrible and cruel, but what they actually
do is skin the animal before its consumption, and so
they've tried to figure this out and it's part of
the kind of law around these animals that seems needlessly cruel.
But what they've discovered, what they think it might be,
is a kind of they're after vitamins and omega threes

(04:04):
and so it's kind of like they're just after their
their vitamins and that are really necessary for the part
and in particularly young ones.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
We're just lucky because we can get our official tablets
in you know, tablets from the shop.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, we don't have to skin anything alive.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
I heard that that's where the term killer whale comes from.
It's because ancient sailors saw them, you know, going after
other whales. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
So anyway, well this is an amazing documentary and it
is available to stream anytime of the day you like
now on ABC I View. It's always a pleasure, Richard

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Roxborough, my absolute pleasure as well.