We were attacked by Orcas!!!

[kmacdonald]

It's not natural behavior to attack something they aren't going to eat. It was a trained behavior.

[Manateeman]

The question is simple. When sail boats attack ORCA pods, is this a learned behavior? When will this silly thread correct the title to Yachts attack Innocent Orca Family. Police fail to drug or alcohol test crew.
Well they didn’t learn to keep a proper lookout. Nor to proceed at a prudent speed such that they could change course or stop to avoid collision. Nor, once they saw Orcas, did they take action like simply stopping. The interaction between vessels and marine mammals has be written about countless times since Melville wrote Moby Dick.
They see one Orca, or a pod...doesn’t matter, and no light bulbs go off in their head? Again, move fast, really fast toward a group containing moms and little ones and it doesn’t matter if the group is composed of musk oxen, elephants, or soccer moms.
You attack them, they will respond accordingly.
We only have one side of the story and it’s stories about whale attacks that creates valuable publicity. People get fame. Books, money.
Somebody will soon be selling Orca protection devices or harpoons.
I can tell you how to prevent manatee attacks.
Offer them pizza and beer.
Happy trails to you.
Captain Mark and his fussy faced gas bomber manatees

[snort]

I remember the story from the book The Brendan Voyage about an orca attack on their boat (leather-skinned Irish curragh) and they had a Faroe islander aboard who said something to the effect that orcas have the reputation of being crafty bastards and were despised by sailors from his country.

[Franziska]

"I mean... it will simply go away.."

ROFL, sorry could not resist this time.

Originally Posted by zstine

Speaking as an American, the obvious solution is to hunt all oras and kill them to near extinction. We can't allow animals to threaten our yachts or safety!

It really is an amazing behavior pattern. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Will it just stop? Will other pods of orcas learn and mimic this?

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Manateeman

The question is simple. When sail boats attack ORCA pods, is this a learned behavior? When will this silly thread correct the title to Yachts attack Innocent Orca Family. Police fail to drug or alcohol test crew.
Well they didn’t learn to keep a proper lookout. Nor to proceed at a prudent speed such that they could change course or stop to avoid collision. Nor, once they saw Orcas, did they take action like simply stopping. The interaction between vessels and marine mammals has be written about countless times since Melville wrote Moby Dick.
They see one Orca, or a pod...doesn’t matter, and no light bulbs go off in their head? Again, move fast, really fast toward a group containing moms and little ones and it doesn’t matter if the group is composed of musk oxen, elephants, or soccer moms.
You attack them, they will respond accordingly.
We only have one side of the story and it’s stories about whale attacks that creates valuable publicity. People get fame. Books, money.
Somebody will soon be selling Orca protection devices or harpoons.
I can tell you how to prevent manatee attacks.
Offer them pizza and beer.
Happy trails to you.
Captain Mark and his fussy faced gas bomber manatees

Responding to the PM...
My take is that humans are animals. Whatever a human does is by cold definition rational to that human.
There are ~7.5 billion humans and ~0.05 billion orcas.
It takes only a very small percentage of humans who rationalize killing of orcas as a prudent thing to do...to markedly reduce the orca population.

If the goal is fewer dead orcas at the hands of humans, I'd suggest that the most-successful approach does not include winning the hearts and minds of those who rationalize killing of orcas (in some attempt to get them to change their ways). This basically never works, and, if orcas continue to pester humans, we end up with more and more humans who rationalize that killing orcas is an acceptable thing to do (wherein the odds were already stacked against the orcas).

Without further getting into the weeds of babble-analysis, practically speaking in this case about Spain/Portugal I must assume that fisherman have already, to some degree, taken things into their own hands. Even if I don't eat fish I recognize that orcas compete with fishermen. And when the fishermen see orcas "interacting with the rudders of pleasure vessels rendering them un-navigable" then this only plays into the fishermen's calculus that the orcas need to go. So no matter what, I suspect that this orca phenomenon will go away, whether it's mother orcas settling down, juveniles growing up, the orcas finding other things to do, or fishermen taking things into their own hands.

Otherwise, isn't the politically correct term for manatee now personatee?

[Lake-Effect]

Has it been established that the orcas desist and go away once the boat stops and/or switches off the engine and depth sounders etc? Is there any advice from the whale-watching operators as to what orca's dislike or react to?

The near universal message to those encountering animals in the wild (their space), doing their thing, is to leave them alone, and to avoid aggravating them. Seems this could apply here too.

Anyway, go orcas! About time they organized to try to protect what little they have left. Maybe it's payback for Marineland...

[belizesailor]

You are not the first recent Orca attack in that region. There is another thread about it here on CF and news media reports.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-sailing-boats



MODS: Maybe merge these threads?

[barnakiel]

At times orcas show territorial behaviour. So a general rule of tour operators is to never approach them. And if approaching - then always at low speed and on a nearly parallel course. Never head-on. My friend has one such boat in the Azores.



The boats in question should have altered their course long before. But if you sail at night this may be impossible to do.


Another factor may be when an animal has a wound he or she may be trying to scratch against the boat. Now with the displacement differences involved such scratching may end up with the boat ... well - scratched.


barnakiel

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

At times orcas show territorial behaviour. So a general rule of tour operators is to never approach them. And if approaching - then always at low speed and on a nearly parallel course. Never head-on. My friend has one such boat in the Azores.



The boats in question should have altered their course long before. But if you sail at night this may be impossible to do.


Another factor may be when an animal has a wound he or she may be trying to scratch against the boat. Now with the displacement differences involved such scratching may end up with the boat ... well - scratched.


barnakiel

Yes, but why a rash of these encounters now? Is it mating season?

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

Yes, but why a rash of these encounters now? Is it mating season?

Maybe the amount of food where they used to dwell dropped rapidly? A pod will move on when the food is low.


Or else possibly the number of orcas grew recently and our too social a pod got competed out of their earlier area?


Or maybe where they used to be, somebody from Texas or Norway has placed a tall menacing oil rig?


etc.


There is also this possibility that just like with humans, one orca, or a group, went bonkers and will act in this most unpleasant manner. Animals fall mentally ill just like we do.


All the above are my wild guesses. I believe a marine biologist is called for. Do we have any at this forum?



b.

[Nicholson58]

I have read that the hunting technique of Orcas, great whites and evidence from Megladon Is that they remove the fins and flukes. You were being eaten.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

I have read that the hunting technique of Orcas, great whites and evidence from Megladon Is that they remove the fins and flukes. You were being eaten. [emoji3]

Hmmm, maybe. Im guessing after a taste of fiberglass and foam from the rudder they may have changed their mind about this prey item.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by kmacdonald

It's not natural behavior to attack something they aren't going to eat.

I can see you've never owned a cat.

[S/V Adeline]

Originally Posted by kmacdonald

It's not natural behavior to attack something they aren't going to eat. It was a trained behavior.

Wolves have been known to make sport of killing newborn deer/similar sized prey species without eating the kills. Scientists speculated since they only attacked the slowest in the herd, it was some natural form of culling the sickly or weaker calfs.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I can see you've never owned a cat.

...or a Killer Whale...there are videos of them killing for what appears to be just the sport of it and not eating the prey.