The body of ''Old Tom'' was found washed ashore near Eden. The paper described him as ''the king of the far-famed pack of Twofold Bay killers'' and ''the last of his tribe''.
The story, ''King of the Killers'', said, ''For over 100 years he and others of the pack, at one time numbering as many as 30'' rendered an enormous service to the community by intercepting migrating whales and trapping them in the bay.
Old Tom and his killer whale cohorts would keep their prey ''corralled until local whalers could complete their capture. While the pack kept the whales cornered, 'Old Tom' would station himself at the river mouth, near the whaling station, and attract the whalers' attention by lashing the water with his tail''.
...
Since the 1840s, the whalers had abided by what locals call ''the law of the tongue''. When the killer whales had helped them with a kill, the whalers would tie the carcass to a buoy overnight allowing the orcas to take their feed.
Both benefited, Smith explains, because the killer whales only ate the lips and the tongue - the keenest meat on a baleen whale, leaving the whalers to harvest the profitable blubber and whalebone later.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale ... 15er7.html
The original "old sea dog"
