Killer whales launch ‘orchestrated’ attacks on sailing boats

[Manateeman]

Buy cheap wood boat. Sail out somewhere remote. Sink boat or boat sinks cause it’s junk. Get in life raft. Write book that blames whales. Make money.
No one can contradict your statements. All evidence lost at sea.
Sounds like a plan to me.
Captain Mark and his offgassing manatee friends

[Greg K]

Originally Posted by Manateeman

Buy cheap wood boat. Sail out somewhere remote. Sink boat or boat sinks cause it’s junk. Get in life raft. Write book that blames whales. Make money.
No one can contradict your statements. All evidence lost at sea.
Sounds like a plan to me.
Captain Mark and his offgassing manatee friends

Yeah.....because whale attack stories is where the REAL publishing money is. Now that's funny. Hmmm.... worked for Melville in 1851.
The Butlers claim to fame was, of course, surviving 66 days in the liferaft, the longest to date at that time.

Arguably Bill might have made more money if the boat remained afloat. They were eventually headed for Osaka, Japan, and if they'd made it, there was a one million yen prize to any foreign flagged boat that arrived in time for the celebrations of the opening of the new offshore Kansai International Airport. Hawaii was one of the designated departure points.

[johnn33]

An older study on hearing damage

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2972210/
John

[Cadence]

Post 68 may have some credence to it. What about turn off the depth finder.
A thought on rudders. If they were trying to incapacitate another large sea creature what might be the most vulnerable appendage.

[Maka]

The book 'Survive the Savage Sea' is about a boat sunk by Orcas off the Galapagos Islands in 1972.

The boat sank quickly and the crew ended up in a life raft and the dingy.

The Orcas did not bother the people in those smaller vessels.
I recommend the book to all cruisers as it has wonderful ideas for dos and don'ts to survive a sinking.

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by Greg K

Yeah.....because whale attack stories is where the REAL publishing money is. Now that's funny. Hmmm.... worked for Melville in 1851.

I thought the reference was to the "two dingbats" story:

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...hs-192907.html

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ea-192918.html

Come to think of it, I wonder how the dingbats made out in the end.

[Kolanorton]

Originally Posted by boatman1

September of 1976 sailing south maybe 15 miles northeast of Provincetown on Cape Cod: 31’ sloop doing about 7 knots broad reaching with wind in the NE at 20-25. I believe the bluefin tuna were running, as there were sport fishing rigs out trying to catch something: I was trolling a couple of feathers. We’d been seeing whales of various descriptions for most of the day. A pod of orcas was cruising along maybe a quarter of a mile away, and I noticed one male (real tall dorsal fin) bear off from the group and haul ass towards the lures that I was trolling. He tore past those and swam up my wake, going real fast. The seas were big enough that as he approached the stern and passed by on my port side he and I were briefly about even vertically, eyeball to eyeball. What a beast! He was hardly moving his tail and had to be going 20 knots, maybe more? And folks, this wasn’t a bottle nose dolphin at 8-10 feet long and weighing 5-600 pounds: this boy was a brute. I’ve always assumed that he was a scout for the pod, and that this was somewhat normal behavior for them. The water was clear enough that he could see my boat (and I believe me, sitting in the cockpit) and determined that we were not a threat to the pod. Folks who don’t really like going to sea in small(ish) boats have asked me why I spend good money to be uncomfortable bouncing around on the ocean: that brief moment off Cape Cod is one of the reasons. It was magnificent.

Great story, well put together.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Telesail

I understand the desire to do good. However, given that the majority of the fish consumed by humans have never seen the ocean, let alone “the wild”, I am not sure that this is the answer. ...

I dont think thats the case. Just take a stroll thru any seafood market...most species you see are not farm raised. Seafood is one of the few food sources we humans still harvest from the wild in large quantities and many fisheries are heavily pressured now.

Do you have a reference for that statement?

[owly]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

I dont think thats the case. Just take a stroll thru any seafood market...most species you see are not farm raised. Seafood is one of the few food sources we humans still harvest from the wild in large quantities and many fisheries are heavily pressured now.

Do you have a reference for that statement?

Below is an 11 year old article from Live Science. The really alarming part is the fact that the feed is harvested from the sea... as much as 5 pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed salmon... of course salmon is far from the only farm raised fish, and I would imagine the term "wild fish" is probably more accurately translated to mean "sea life", knowing how fast and loose journalists often play with the facts, often unintentionally due to ignorance, sometimes for dramatic effect. But the fact remains that we are having a HUGE effect on fish populations. Fisheries have been shut down to allow recovery of fish stocks, and in some parts of the world the ocean has been stripped of fish by fleets of fishing vessels which are constantly moving farther afield. This is one of the main reasons for the piracy problem off Somalia. And then there are the massive "dead zones" where oxygen levels are so depleted that there is no sea life. These are increasing in size and number, and generally caused by fertilizer pollution resulting in explosions of algal growth. There is a huge one extending from the mouth of the Mississippi out into the Gulf, and numerous others including an unexplained one off the Oregon coast.
Human populations are so out of control that we are endangering all other life on earth in numerous ways.





Milestone: 50 Percent of Fish Are Now Farmed

By Live Science Staff September 08, 2009





More and more fish are being raised on farms before they end up on dinner plates around the world. Aquaculture, or the culturing of fish in a controlled environment, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, a fact that's putting tremendous strain on wild fish.
The big downside to fish farming: It requires large amounts of feed made from wild fish harvested from the sea.
"It can take up to five pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of salmon, and we eat a lot of salmon," said lead author Rosamond L. Naylor, a professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University.
There are also concerns about spreading disease from farmed to wild fish.

[barnakiel]

In Spain where we are - 99% non-fish seafood is farmed.


Also all Norwegian salmon available locally is farmed.


It is possible to buy wild living fish too here - but this is mostly done in local 'lonjas' where you buy directly from the fisherman. Only seaside towns have lonjas. Inland all food is bought from a supermarket.



There is simply not enough fish and seafood in Spanish Atlantic coastal waters to feed 45 million conusummers with natural food anymore.


barnakiel

[a64pilot]

A Friend’s family has a rather large shrimp farm in Ecuador, it’s not new either, it’s been the family business for a long time.

Several years ago in the SE US, catfish farms sprang up everywhere, but most have gone out of business, I assume there just wasn’t enough demand, because at least Catfish are easily farmed and they eat grain. A whole lot of rice farms were converted to Catfish farms.

It’s the free enterprise system, as soon as more money can be made from farming fish or shrimp etc than by fishing, farming takes over, and when they can’t make money, they close.

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthie...ts-regulations

A whole lot of “sea food” isn’t, a tremendous amount of it is actually not what it’s labeled to be. Fake fish, crab, whatever is extremely common
Food source wise for farmed fish it’s what’s cheapest and or what works best. A shed load of “fish meal” is I believe actually krill harvested in the Arctic, it’s not fish, but that doesn’t stop it from being over harvested.

[owly]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

A Friend’s family has a rather large shrimp farm in Ecuador, it’s not new either, it’s been the family business for a long time.

Several years ago in the SE US, catfish farms sprang up everywhere, but most have gone out of business, I assume there just wasn’t enough demand, because at least Catfish are easily farmed and they eat grain. A whole lot of rice farms were converted to Catfish farms.

It’s the free enterprise system, as soon as more money can be made from farming fish or shrimp etc than by fishing, farming takes over, and when they can’t make money, they close.

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthie...ts-regulations

A whole lot of “sea food” isn’t, a tremendous amount of it is actually not what it’s labeled to be. Fake fish, crab, whatever is extremely common
Food source wise for farmed fish it’s what’s cheapest and or what works best. A shed load of “fish meal” is I believe actually krill harvested in the Arctic, it’s not fish, but that doesn’t stop it from being over harvested.

I suspected as much (krill as a food source)....... Journalists are great for misstating things either out of ignorance or to increase dramatic impact. Having been involved in several instances that were covered by journalists, the difference between the reality I saw on the ground and the "story" was enough that I would on general principles refuse to talk to journalists under any circumstances as a result. Inaccurate reporting is a liability weather due to malice or ignorance. Krill are an extremely important food source for many ocean fish and mammals either directly or indirectly.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

I dont think thats the case. Just take a stroll thru any seafood market...most species you see are not farm raised. Seafood is one of the few food sources we humans still harvest from the wild in large quantities and many fisheries are heavily pressured now.

Do you have a reference for that statement?

I think the comment made about our consumption of fish from the wild may have been short sighted by locality of the poster. Looking world wide?

[Scorpius]

There are three groups (each consisting of several pods) off the British Columbia coast (Canada): Transients (who travel up and down the coast and into Alaska and Washington state), Northern Residents who hang out mostly north of Cape Caution and Queen Charlotte Sound (about half way up the BC coast) and Southern Residents who hang out mostly in the Salish Sea (Georgia Strait, Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca Strait). The "residents" seem to be a pretty easy going bunch. They hang around despite the harassment from whale watchers and give many a kayaker a thrill by coming close, rolling over and swimming just under kayaks, etc. Despite federal regulations saying maintain 400 metres away from Orcas, and despite my efforts to stay away, I've had them come over and swim right alongside Scorpius. They are incredibly intelligent and social animals - but I guess they haven't read the book on the do's and don't's of human - whale interaction!

The "residents" eat chinook (spring or king) salmon. The "Northerns" seem to be doing ok but the "Southerns" are starving to death as the availability of wild chinook salmon has declined dramatically due to over fishing (both commercial and recreational), pollution, spawning habitat and river destruction, etc. Their population has declined from 98 individuals in 1995 to 76 in 2019 - and is expected to continue to drop until extinction occurs. One mother made the headlines last year when she carried her dead calf for 17 days after it had died of starvation!

The Transients are a different story. They feed on marine mammals (seals, sea lions, porpoises, dolphins, etc.). There is spectacular film footage of whales going right up on rocky outcroppings to pull seals off the rocks. I'm surprised that there seems never to have been an incident of a whale going after a human swimmer or surfer.

They also seem to be bullies with a mean streak. Even when not hungry they have been known to attack, maim, and kill prey species - apparently just for the fun of it. A couple of years ago we had the carcass of a recently killed 1000 lb. sea lion wash up on our beach near Pender Harbour. The rear half metre or so, including the animal's propulsion system, had been chomped off. Only an orca is big and powerful enough to have done it. The body stank on the beach for a month until the eagles, turkey vultures, crows, sea gulls, and crabs cleaned the bones (which we eventually donated to the Vancouver Aquarium) of all flesh.

If an orca wants to attack something, for whatever reason, it's certainly capable of doing it.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

...
The Transients are a different story. They feed on marine mammals (seals, sea lions, porpoises, dolphins, etc.). There is spectacular film footage of whales going right up on rocky outcroppings to pull seals off the rocks. I'm surprised that there seems never to have been an incident of a whale going after a human swimmer or surfer.
...

Years ago, an American answered an advertisement to live on Fair Island in Scotland which only has 50 or so people on the island. He has some video of a seal on a rock of the coast of the island as well as the Orca's hunting seals in a different area off the island.

https://fair-isle.blogspot.com/search?q=orca

Later,
Dan