While shooting orcas would obviously …not be a good outcome, might it put your mind at ease to know that there may be many reasons to think the comment you replied to might be correct?
- Bullets don't really work underwater. High-powered rounds get shredded on impact, and low-power rounds get slowed to non-lethal speeds. The bang might scare them though. [1]
- Guns are designed for humans, and whales are big. Just the blubber under their skin adds several inches. [2] The physics of avoiding heat loss further implies that more important organs and blood vessels should have proportionally more blubber over them. With enough armor, penetration isn't really "low probability" but more "physically not possible". [3]
- Vital orca organs seem to be, surprise, well-protected. Their abdominal/thoracic cavity looks like a small volume inside a very large body, with particularly a lot of space on their back. The brain is not only protected by lots of blubber but also thick bone. [4] Based on this diagram, only the melon and eyes really look vulnerable.
- Orcas take care of disabled orcas! [5] If a wound interferes with hunting/feeding, then someone stays back to keep them company/protect them until the rest of the pod can bring them food or call them over to eat. It might suck, but they shouldn't starve. Apparently they do this even for strangers from different pods too? If an orca still starves to death because nobody will do that for them, then I guess they were probably a bit of an asshole…
So guns won't even work on water. Then even if it hits them directly it probably won't/physically can't hurt them. They're protected by water, blubber, size, and thick bone plate, any one of which on its own would be enough to stop most bullets. And even if they do get seriously wounded they have support networks that won't let them starve.
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1: https://mythresults.com/episode34
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca#Characteristics
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth
4: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orca_internal_anatom...
5: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=orcas%20caring%20for%2...
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> All around I would like to very much avoid this outcome.
Cash in on hysteria by selling denatonium benzoate bath bombs. Win-win.
