Researchers attach cameras to orcas, revealing a marvelous underwater world | Hacker News Reader

Researchers attach cameras to orcas, revealing a marvelous underwater world

seattletimes.com

153 pointswallflower55 comments

Researchers have also been attaching beacons (via time-release suction cups) to sharks and to follow them with autonomous vehicles outfitted with cameras. You may have seen the footage on Discovery Channel programs.

Article on the SharkCam: https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/remus-sharkcam/

Video on the TurtleCam: https://www.whoi.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Final-Turtle...

Recovering a lost SharkCam: https://vimeo.com/172975132

aren't all suction cups essentially time-release?

If I recall, these have some kind of tube that is plugged on one end with some time-release mechanism, perhaps a material that slowly dissolves in the water. Eventually water enters the tube and equalizes pressure on both sides, causing it to detach. This allows them to recover the beacon and make another deployment.

I was talking to my dad a few years ago. I told him that Orcas never killed a human in the wild. My dad goes, that's because they know how to bury a body!

Orcas are most terrifying animals when you know what they are capable of.

I have only scanned through the article but have not found how they attached the cameras.

I wonder how did they do that.

If Free Willy is any indication they waited until an Orca jumped above them and quickly attached a camera to its belly.

To make my comment more productive, maybe they attach it to the fins using sticks and bait, like with sharks: https://phys.org/news/2016-06-camera-tag-white-sharks.html

Let's just say Johah sort of fell into this line of research.

"It’s tricky work. Finding the orcas is the first problem. Getting a tag on a wild orca is the next one. It takes strength and dexterity to extend a 25-foot-long carbon-fiber pole from a bouncing skiff to tap the 2-pound tag onto a swimming killer whale, aiming for the area right below the dorsal fin. So far the team has been able to tag two southern residents, L87 and L88, and nine northern residents."

Thanks :)

More details in this post they made in Facebook the 28th of August:

> It takes a lot of skill and expertise to place a suction-cupped data-logger onto a killer whale.

> The most difficult part of tagging a whale is piloting the vessel into the proper position next to the whales. Fortunately, we have a skipper with years of whale-watching experience to safely navigate near them. He starts each approach by analysing the behaviour of the whales to establish their swimming speed and heading. He will then parallel them and gently slide towards an individual until we are at just the right distance. Any harassment or sudden movements on our part, would cause the whale to avoid us. They are very aware of our presence and behaviour ---- they just don’t know our intent.

> Polarized sunglasses helps the tagger standing in the pulpit at the front of the Steller Quest to see the whales underwater. As he senses that the whale is coming to the surface to breathe, he will lower a very long pole (25.5 ft, ~8 m) and place the tag near the dorsal fin.

> The carbon fiber pole holding the tag only weighs about 10 lbs (4.5 kg), and the tag is about 2 lbs (0.9 kg). However as the pole is lowered to a horizontal position, the weight of this 2-lb tag (as felt by the tagger at the pivot point of the pole) increases to about 100 lbs (45 kg). The tagger’s front arm on the pole feels it is lifting 100 lbs, while his back arm pushes down against 100 lbs of force to counter balance the pole. It takes incredible strength and skill.

> All four suction cups need to be pushed firmly against the whale. To a person, it would feel like being pushed or shoved as the suction cups are pushed flat. However, to a 3,000 kg (~6,500 lb) killer whale, it appears to be a relatively soft touch. Some killer whales shudder briefly when touched, while others show no reaction. However, all of the whales we have tagged continue about their business seemingly unaware of the hitchhiker they just picked up. To a killer whale, the weight of the tag is like the weight of a wedding ring worn by a person.

https://www.facebook.com/marinemammal/posts/3426676784050634

I used to work a chartered fishing boat with my father out of Blaine and we'd often get orcas swimming alongside us so close that you could reach out and pet them, which some customers did. They are very curious.

Orcas are terrifying to sea creatures, but oddly enough are not interested in humans.

They’ve been attacking boats in the Gibraltar region recently, though.

I think more accurately motors of motorboats.

They have been attacking the rudders of sailboats.

The relationship is also largely reciprocal. Humans are terrifying land creatures, but don't often attack Orcas.

Orcas knows what food they like. We're not on the list.

There are interesting stories of human/orca cooperation, even. This one even comes with photographic and physical evidence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou...

Well, they also are pretty terrifying to Moose too.

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are the moose's only known marine predator as they have been known to prey on moose swimming between islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose

Neat! And I'd imagine any other target of opportunity that swims between islands in same waters - i.e. deer, bear.

> Orcas are most terrifying animals when you know what they are capable of.

They are not [erroneously] called 'Killer Whales' for nothing.

What is “erroneous” about referring to them as killer whales?

Because Orcas are not whales, they are dolphins.

From Wikipedia:

“The killer whale or orca is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member.

The toothed whales are a parvorder of cetaceans that includes dolphins, porpoises, and all other whales possessing teeth, such as the beaked whales and sperm whales.“

So, yes, in the sense that sperm whales and porpoises are also dolphins, it too is a dolphin. but that’s not typically how we use the word dolphin.

I think it's normal to consider that porpoises are dolphins. Sperm whales, not so much.

I’m not sure if this settles the debate, but sperm whales and porpoises are in a different (super?) family than dolphins and killer whales.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physeteroidea

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphinoidea

> toothed whales are a parvorder of cetaceans that includes dolphins, porpoises, and all other whales possessing teeth

The article for whales [1] linked from that sentence says "They are an informal grouping within the infraorder Cetacea, usually excluding dolphins and porpoises."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

I mean, when I was presented the "Orcas aren't actually whales" factoid as a kid, it was to group them specifically with Dolphins and Porpoises.

Orcas are both dolphins and whales, in the similar manner that dogs are canids and carnivoras.

Because they are not whales who are also killers. Rather, they are killers who are killers of whales. They were named for their tendency to hunt whales. A better translation would be whale-killers.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/killer_whale

They are whales though, since Delphinidae is a family within Cetacea. Certainly also killers.

Swimming with wild orcas is a popular activity in Norway where you get as close as an arm length from them while they circle you.

Are you sure you're talking about orcas, I'd think there'd be videos of that? Seems crazy. I've only seen one video of a lady swimming with orcas but she was very familiar with them

I just searched for “Norway swimming with orcas” on YouTube, and surprisingly a lot of adventure-tourism type videos showed up.

I'm on my phone but there should be a lot on YouTube. Here's one such company:

https://www.orcanorway.info/services/snorkeling-with-orcas

No prior experience or training needed so not just for professionals. You just jump in with pretty basic snorkeling equipment.

Are they more terrifying than humans? We are capable of a lot more, for better or worse.

In the post you're replying to, most is an adverb modifying terrifying meaning "to a very great degree". It isn't saying they're THE most terrifying. It's another way of saying they're very terrifying.

They are capable animals, but I think they aren't terrifying to humans because they seem intelligent/sentient and display group social dynamics that are similar to our own. There are also no records of orcas attacking humans in the wild. Most encounters look like this: https://youtu.be/Vaq4pHxM5P4

There are records of orca attacks on humans, just not deaths. Here are a few:

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/02/24/did-wild-orca-rea...

https://nypost.com/2020/10/10/killer-whales-orchestrating-re...

I've always wondered why we haven't done more of this. Why not put cameras on eagles, jaguars, pythons, etc and see what their lives really are like rather than studying them in captivity mostly.

95% Oceans floor is unexplored;

I would imagine the Orca-accessible part of the ocean is has a much higher percentage of exploration.

No, it's just classified

This is interesting in of itself, but it’s too bad the researchers chose to post the content native to Facebook.

At this point it feels like science and the products of scientific work should be very wary of Facebook for hosting, despite the simplicity and breadth of distribution.

How is this top comment? Where is Dang?

I've marked it off-topic now.

Just a reminder, so as not to pick on anybody personally, that the issue with these is not the comment itself but the upvotes that pin it to the top of a thread. It's a tragedy of the commons in that no one upvote does that, but the sum of the upvotes does. Then we end up with a generic argument about Facebook instead of a discussion about orcas.

Thanks for the comment and your work, dang.

I would have assumed YouTube. Facebook may or may not show it's very large audience your posts in other people's feeds. Also, YT is searchable on site and via web search.

Reminds me of the dolphin hacker in Johnny Mnemonic

Such a funny mistake to call them killer whales.

Seals and a lot of ocean life think it's accurate.

it's not the killer part i am talking about, it's the whale part. see my other message.

Why is it a funny mistake?

I believe that some are keying in on the word order and how 'killer whale' sounds like a term for a particularly carnivorous whale when in fact the creature in question is an ocean predator who sometimes happens to kill whales.

because orcas are actually part of Delphinidae family, which is dolphin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale

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