Let's start this story out on the water.

I want you to imagine you're in Eden.

Yeah, no, not that Eden.

This one is a tiny town in the southeast corner of Australia and it's the

1860s which is right around the pinnacle of commercial whaling. From the shoreline

you see a 30-foot wooden rowboat loaded with our poons set out into the bay.

You look closer and out ahead you see a dorsal fin slicing through the water.

It belongs to an orca.

But that's not the whalers target. Instead, it's their teaming, helping them take down one of the ocean's largest creatures,

failing whales, which can weigh up to 10 times as much as

orcas. This relationship is no coincidence. For thousands of years, humans and orchas worked side by side to hunt

under an age-old agreement called the Law of the Tongun.

I'm Roxanne Horn and this is Atlas Obscera, a daily celebration of the world's strange,

incredible and wondrous places.

Today, Post Dylan Thoris and I talk about this extraordinary relationship between people and

killer whales.

And what we can learn about orcas, ourselves, and how to better cohabitate a species on this

planet. So Roxanne, we know each other a little bit, but maybe you could say your name and what you do.

My name is Roxanne Horn and I'm an editorial fellow at Atlas and Scarra.

Do people know what that is?

I should, like, is that what I should say?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's fine.

...