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Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

I had a bad experience with a killer whale when I was returning to San Diego from Catalina Island in my rather small Columbia 22 sailboat (this was around 1977).

A killer whale jumped out of the water to the level of the top of my mast 4 times. Each time it landed horizontally right next to my boat, almost tipping the boat over with the splash/wave it created. I laid down in the bottom of the cockpit reaching up to steer my boat and I told my girlfriend to go below decks and lay on the floor to keep our weight as low in the boat as possible. At the top of the 4 jumps out of the water, I saw a black beady little eye staring down at me.

I was very relieved when it left the area.

EDIT: I bought a bigger sailboat

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On one of the Planet Earth's (IIRC) they showed a seal on a floating slab of ice and the orcas would slap their tails and bump the ice to get the seal to slide off, the seal wore itself out and they eventually drug it into the depths.

They're uncanny smart hunters. I wonder if it was curious about you being food and trying a tactic like that? Or just curious in general and indifferent to whether you survived that curiosity?

edit: the below comment linked a video which then linked to a producer explaining the exact moment I was referring to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VEwsI4SlY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBRu3LGceAg

they do it to humans too. they are highly intelligent, so the options are vast. so similar to humans, they could be training, teaching, playing, angry, curious, etc.

Thanks for that, they're just incredible!

and just to elaborate on that specific technique. they will often have an orca coordinate it, likely an older female. that orca spyhops to see the target prey and then signals to the other orcas when to charge the block of ice in formation. they swim fast toward the ice and then dive under right before the ice to send a wave of water over the ice. many times they will intentionally let the seal back onto the ice to be able to practice the maneuver some more. they are also wary of seal bites and prefer to tire prey out. i have even seen one instance where they don't even eat the seal in the end, which indicates they were solely teaching and/or training.

there are other techniques they use which also require high levels of communication. one of which is where they leave one orca behind who stays silent while the rest of the pod leaves the area and starts vocalizing again. (when hunting mammals, orcas stop vocalizing since mammals have good hearing and intelligence.) this relaxes the prey and makes an easy catch for the orca who stayed silently behind. once the prey is caught, the other orcas join back, and the food is shared.

i am personally of the opinion that orcas are the second most intelligent species behind humans and ahead of all other primates. there are examples of orcas interacting with dolphins, even using dolphin vocalizations. there are also examples of orcas working with humans to catch whales, where it almost seems the orcas trained the humans and not the other way around.

I race small sailboats, and there’s a group of them that actively race on Monterrey Bay. A couple of friends had a whale, rather larger that an orca, surface below them.

They’re pretty high tech boats. Carbon fiber, Kevlar, nomex sandwich. Ripped the back of the boat off from the rudder.

One of the two guys was hanging off the side of the boat at the time (sounds strange,but normal), and so he suddenly found himself lying on a whale. Thought they had capsized. He said his first coherent thought was, “that’s not water?” Then promptly realized the barnacles on the whale were cutting through his 4mm wetsuit!

The whale dove and disappeared, none the wiser apparently. They got towed in by one of the safety boats.

For anybody who hasn't seen it, here's some video of "hanging off the side of the boat" in a trapeze... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8NwT9JBQJk

Perfectly normal on faster small-to-midsize boats (usually double-handed racing dinghies). The body weight and extra leverage helps keep the boat from capsizing. Some boats have only the crew in the trapeze, others have crew and captain.

Well...since you're breaking out the examples despite my being coy for the non-sailors.

Here's a video of the boats I was talking about. Trapeze sailing is really a blast and for the technically inclined, they are great boats: https://youtu.be/njSrgwlClNE

If those kinds of things grab your attention, foiling boats are a whole other level of tech and adrenaline. Since there's so many in the audience in the Bay Area, this is going on in SF next month and should be fabulous spectating. https://sailgp.com/races/san-francisco/

I expect the catamarans would fare worse than the 505s in a meet up with a whale.

I’m not sure about how orcas work. But in Norway you can dive with them (not recommended because you disturb them) and not a single person has been attacked there in recorded history (~200 years).

It may be that it was just curious about you, but heck they might just wanted a snack as well.

those are likely fish eating orcas who specialize on a single species of fish. i wouldn't try that with mammal eating orcas.

They are fascinating creatures, and very curious. I don't tend to worry about them much around here (BC coast), because they do at least have a very good idea of where you are. As someone else mentioned, they very rarely hurt people, despite being hugely capable of doing so.

We also tend to get quite a few humpback whales here. Because they don't echolocate as orcas and dolphins do, and they're massive, I'd be more concerned about one of them accidentally taking me out.

Here's a story (with video) on a local humpback encounter. Make sure you watch right to the end for the mama. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/humpback-wha...

Wow, hats off to you and that would have been so terrifying for me if I was there. I doubt I'd would've been able to even tell anyone such as your girlfriend to go below deck. Such a great story to read.

15' jump height on a killer whale. https://www.reference.com/science/high-can-killer-whale-jump...

This Columbia 22 has a mast height over 30'. http://www.sailingtexas.com/scolumbia22103.html

I don't sail, so I have nothing to prove, but something doesn't feel quite right about this story.

Sailing stories always become a little more dramatic with each retelling. An orca 15 feet above you on a small boat would be awesome and terrifying in a way units of measure cannot express.

And also never seen before nor since.

The story is true. It was a long time ago but I remember the head being up near the top of the mast, the rest of the body would have been lower. My strongest memories are of a beady black eye looking down on me and the feeling of the boat rolling.

I believe you believe it to be.

mark_l_watson: "We're gonna need a bigger boat"

Clearly he was challenging you to a race.

Bro, you are going into the "rich people problems" compilation.

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