Orca Seamount is a seamount

Seamount

A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean seafloor that does not reach to the water's surface , and thus is not an island. These are typically formed from extinct volcanoes, that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from a seafloor of depth. They are defined by oceanographers as...

 (underwater volcano) near King George Island and Cape Sherriff Field Station in Antarctica, in the Bransfield Strait

Bransfield Strait

Bransfield Strait is a body of water about wide extending for in a general northeast-southwest direction between the South Shetland Islands and Antarctic Peninsula. It was named in about 1825 by James Weddell, Master, Royal Navy, for Edward Bransfield, Master, RN, who charted the South Shetland...

. It is presently inactive.

The crater rim is about 3 km wide and about 500 m above the ocean floor.

The seamount was first named by Professor O. González-Ferrán of Chile in 1987, after the orca

Orca

The killer whale , commonly referred to as the orca, and less commonly as the blackfish, is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family. Killer whales are found in all oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas...

(killer whale) often sighted in these waters. It was mapped and studied by the ship RV Polarstern during an Antarctic cruise (number ANT-XI/3) in 2005. The variant name of Viehoff Seamount (approved in 6/95 ACUF 263) was named for Dr. Thomas Viehoff, a remote sensing specialist in marine sciences. Name proposed by Dr. G.B. Udintsev, Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry (VIG).