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Comment by hoorayimhelping | Hacker News Reader

Orcas don't eat typically humans, there are many examples of them not doing this when they could have. I have no evidence to support this, but if they're intelligent enough to have culture differences between pods, they might be intelligent enough to tell stories about the animals in boats on the surface and how they seem harmless, but if you attack one of them, the entire tribe of them will come and wipe out your entire family as retribution.

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Different groups of orcas have very different diets to the point where for example dolphins know it's safe to hang out with some pods but not others. Since they are very cautious and picky eaters, its possible humans were avoided but now a group has added them as OK food

Orcas are picky eaters, especially the ones that feed on fish like the Gibraltar orcas. There have been an enormous number of human-orca interactions both in the wild and in captivity, and even in the only known attacks on humans- the Sea World attacks- no orca has ever eaten a human. The likelihood that the fish-eating Gibraltar orcas are attempting to eat people is extremely low, IMO. It's much more likely an attempt to simply kill due to stress, like the Sea World orca attacks.

For those who haven’t seen it I’d recommend the documentary Blackfish. https://www.blackfishmovie.com/

The Sea World orca Tilikum killed three people, though not for eating.

> I’d recommend the documentary Blackfish

If you see blackfish take in mind that must not be seen as an honest bona-fide documentary. Is entertaining if you understand what it really is. A fictionary monster's film.

I would define it as a "blaxfishploitation" film. A new genre aimed to attract animal activists, tell them what they want to hear, and sell a rewarding sense of outrage.

In order to get the desired emotional response, the film is trying to mislead the viewer all the time and takes a lot of creative licenses.

Like experts talking about an orca specimen or an event, even if they never worked with orcas or had been fired decades before the arrival of the whale (so didn't have direct experience with neither the whale, nor the event). Of course they will not mention this little details in the film.

Or mixing footage of people and orcas in different years and pools, to make it seem as if they are interacting in the same pool at the same time.

Or inserting a few frames of whales jumping (as a normal part of the show) in the middle of an interview, to suggest a unexpected attack

Or putting words in the mouth of Sea World staff to make them appear as evil, but were debunked later as false, with data.

Or telling that they lied and covered facts in a trial, even if the real declarations where videotaped and show the opposite.

The number of inaccuracies and false claimings does not end here. Here is a list with 69 points (that for a film of just 90 minutes is pretty astonishing):

http://da15bdaf715461308003-0c725c907c2d637068751776aeee5fbf...

I understand that is the nature of documentary film making, non-fiction literature, and frankly even photography. Typically anything very engaging has an editorial slant. And personally I'm not terribly sympathetic with a radical animal rights agenda.

However, the "69 errors in 90 minutes" link you attached is an exercise in legalistic hair splitting which really does little to undermine the theme of the movie.

Some could say that the main theme of the movie is "how to exploit a sad and emotional event (involving an orca trainer young woman killed by a whale, and her naive co-workers), to make money, get fame and earn awards" [1]. Not more, not less.

Unfortunately, the cut made by blaxfishploitation was deep and still bleeds today.

To start, Killer wales aren't reproduced in Sea World anymore [2]. This is bad, not good. There are less orcas in the planet.

The damage caused by this film to cetacean research, understanding, and conservation is irreversible. To study wild lions is one thing, to study wild cetaceans is a totally different one. Is much more difficult and field studies at open sea are really expensive. At this moment, we don't even know how many species of Killer whales remain in the planet.

Campaigns to release all captive whales proliferated forcing to the release to some whales by "humanitary" reasons, with the logical result of its death. Good job. Leaving your pooch in a forest so it can run free and make frienship with their brothers wolves, would achieve the same result.

At least one species of dolphin got extinct in our lifetime, something that didn't happened before in all the history of humanity. Other cetaceans are about to vanish forever and do you know what? We can not even talk about breeding cetaceans in captivity without being harassed and called assassins of babies, and Gabriela Cowperthwaite has some responsibility for that, in my opinion.

[1] https://www.micechat.com/53915-blackfish-exposed/

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35829477

But hold, on. The history still can be more sinister...

In 2015 a man drove to a Spanish airport with a ticket to fly to US, but didn't took the plane. Some days later was found dead inside his car.

Jose Luis Barbero worked as dolphin's trainer in Marineland Mallorca until 2015 (two years after blackfish was released). He has an extensive professional experience starting in the 80's, and received the 'Best Trainer' award from the International Marine Trainer's Association IMATA in 1992. He implemented also a swimming with dolphins program as therapy for children autistic and down syndrome.

In 2015 he received an offer for becoming vicepresident to the Georgia's Aquarium in Atlanta and was about to get interviewed for his longtime dream job.

At this moment, an harassment campaign against him started in internet tagging him as animal abuser. A video showing supposedly the proofs was uploaded to internet, and spread like fire for all news, creating a lot of buzz, and surfing in the same wave of outrage that blackfish created.

They video supposedly shows a young Jose Luis kicking and shouting dolphins in a trainer session. Calling it nasty things like "tonto" (dumb) and "vago" (lazy) that could lead to severe depression to any spanish speaker dolphin.

Of course with blackfish spreading rage and justice fire, something like a "swim with dolphins" program was unacceptable and frowned upon by the public: Dolphins could kill people. It seems that the same public don't see any problem with the concept of therapy dogs or horses, even if dogs and horses kill each year thousands of people (and dolphins kill zero). But dolphins are magical mystic non-human humans that came from outer space and appear in all psychodelic posters, and dogs are... just dogs, I suppose.

The association SOS delfines sued Barbero by animal abuse and for violating the law in the therapy dolphins program, and he and his family received the usual package of sadistic death menaces on internet.

The Atlanta's aquarium received a lot of mails threatening with a boycott campaign if they dare to hire him. Afraid of the consequences, they removed the hiring offer, and the rest is known.

Personally I think that the video was clearly fake. Audio and video don't match clearly. The supposed 'kick' to dolphins does not look at all like a kick, and the silhouettes in the video could belong to anybody. As proof of anything would be seen as a highly suspiciously doctored one... but it does not change a bit the fact that it caused real and massive damage in the life of this man without any real possibility of defense.

And if it were real, wow, somebody really hated this man!. Such old video was reserved for decades to be released with surgical precision at the exact time that could do more harm to him?. If the goal was stopping animal abuse, why they waited for decades instead to denounce it ASAP?. This seems a pretty miserable act to me.

Nobody was sued for deliberately destroying the professional reputation of a man, harassing his family and driving him to commit suicide in a parking's airport.

After the "ca-ching" opportunity dissapeared, SOS delfines go 'shalalala' in silent mode. Everybody enjoys a good twitter witch hunt before dinner (It makes you feel morally better than the other guys). The bad man died, hurrah! Isn't marvellous animalism?

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