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Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

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Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#141

Post by IvyMike »

gcanyon wrote: post #62

This is not the first time orcas have shown an awareness of us in boats: through the second half of the 1800s orcas in Australia actually helped whalers hunt baleen whales: herding the prey, and even grabbing ropes in their mouths to help haul, in exchange for the most valuable (to them) parts of the carcasses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou... Old Tom, one of the most helpful orcas, die…

If someone is out there secretly training and paying Orcas to sink yachts... that would be pretty neat.

Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#142

Post by elorant »

echelon wrote: post #66
elorant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they wanted to eat humans they had plenty of chances. Incidents where an orca attacked a human are rare, with the notable exception of orcas in captivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attacks

> If they wanted to eat humans they had plenty of chances. Have they, though? Captive orcas aren't opportunistically hunting with their pod, and they're constantly kept fed. Their behaviors are reinforced. Apart from captivity, human swimmers seldom interact in the wild. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Orcas eat land mammals, and we have plenty of evidence for that.

Orcas are dolphins. Humans are in pretty friendly terms with them. Here's an incident where a bunch of swimmers came in close proximity to orcas. They seem quite friendly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3mDXF3bcE

Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#143

Post by cwkoss »

echelon wrote: post #91
tempaccount420 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully no one tries to find out. There's only 50k orcas in the world, they're more valuable than us.

> There's only 50k orcas in the world, they're more valuable than us. Species diversity is unquestionably important. This small population of intelligent aquatic mammals is unique and beautiful and valuable. The eons of evolutionary hill climbing that led to them cannot be reproduced. They're a distillation of all that has happened to their lineage up to this point, and that's beautiful. That said, the only apparent…

Humans are also the only animal that may cause total extinction

Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#145

Post by codethief »

A friend recently reminded me that whales attacking boats is precisely how The Swarm[0] starts. I don't want to spoil the book here but it's among the best I've ever read, and might be of interest to anyone here who's into SciFi.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(Sch%C3%A4tzing_no...

Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#146

Post by altairprime »

epilys wrote: post #101
gcanyon wrote: post #62

This is not the first time orcas have shown an awareness of us in boats: through the second half of the 1800s orcas in Australia actually helped whalers hunt baleen whales: herding the prey, and even grabbing ropes in their mouths to help haul, in exchange for the most valuable (to them) parts of the carcasses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou... Old Tom, one of the most helpful orcas, die…

In the 6th century CE, a whale called Porphyrios terrorized and sank ships near Constantinople for nearly 50 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrios_(whale) Porphyrios harassed ships in the waters of Constantinople for over fifty years,[7] though not continuously since it at times disappeared for lengthy periods of time.[4] It most frequently appeared in the Bosporus Strait.[1] Porphyrios made no distinctio…

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Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#147

Post by cdelsolar »

altairprime wrote: post #146
epilys wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 6th century CE, a whale called Porphyrios terrorized and sank ships near Constantinople for nearly 50 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrios_(whale) Porphyrios harassed ships in the waters of Constantinople for over fifty years,[7] though not continuously since it at times disappeared for lengthy periods of time.[4] It most frequently appeared in the Bosporus Strait.[1] Porphyrios made no distinctio…

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Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#148

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

jml78 wrote: post #123
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #2

While I don't much care about the yachts and find the fact that the behaviour is spreading fascinating, my fear out of all this is people will start hurting the whales to try to get them to stop.

Yacht is a loaded term. A 30ft sailboat is a yacht. Given the crazy housing prices, a lot of people are buying sailboats and living in them because it is way cheaper than renting. Yacht does not mean wealthy. I am firmly middle class. My family is planning to move onto a sailboat next year.

Between boat upkeep, day to day expenses and mooring fees it's actually cheaper than renting? That's interesting. I would have assumed it would be death by a thousand cuts and not worth the unreliable services and tiny living space.

Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#149

Post by LesZedCB »

mythrwy wrote: post #130
mikeInAlaska wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen ball lightning here in Alaska. One time, at night. Distance maybe 120 feet away. I watching a glowing orb perhaps 3 feet in diameter drift from the front of my parents garage towards their house before disappearing. An absolutely crystal clear view. I was on the phone with my wife at the time and describing the event to her, it was absolutely chilling to see ! I have never seen anything like it before or…

I think I saw this once in Florida as a child. I had climbed a tree (at night) and looked down and there was a red glowing ball of light that drifted and bobbed along horizontally maybe 6 or 8 feet off the ground, and then disappeared. It was maybe a foot across or a little less. A friend was with me, we both watched in amazement. I never knew what it was and halfway thought maybe I imagined it (except my friend saw…

Cixin Liu has a pretty fun sci-fi book about Ball Lightning

Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading

#150

Post by someweirdperson »

ThisIsNowhere wrote: post #110
cowthulhu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The orcas are attacking small sailboats, which tend to have less of an environmental impact… less engine use, quiet, fewer people on board, very small scale fishing (if at all). It’s weird to be rooting against this sort of ship when cruise ships and trawlers are the real problem - and also pretty difficult to attack. Will you count it as a success if people favor larger powerboats over small sailboats?

I know I'm on HN when someone is explaining why the "woke" ideology of the orcas attacking yachts is ultimately futile.

Try to explain that to the Orcas. They are killing those baby boats before they grow into big evil loud adults.
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