Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou...
Old Tom, one of the most helpful orcas, died in 1930. His skeleton is on display at a museum, and the wear marks from the ropes are visible on his teeth.
This was after most of the pod of killer whales had disappeared - thought maybe hunted down in Norway. Whaling is fascinating history. But it is very sad.
Are you sure? I don't know much about orcas but that's a very long way to track the same whales. The Wikipedia article [1] states Norwegian whalers a little further north in Jervis Bay, still in Australian waters.
I fully agree, whaling is a very sad history. As a kid, I occasionally saw "whale pots", big iron cauldrons used for boiling down blubber (I suppose.) I thought they were really cool. I don't think so any more.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tom_(orca)#Death_and_the_e...
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 distinctions in regard to which ships it attacked, recorded as having attacked fishing vessels, merchant ships and warships.[1] Many ships were sunk by Porphyrios, and its mere reputation terrified the crews of many more; ships often took detours to go around the waters where the whale most commonly swam.[4] Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565), perplexed by the whale attacks and wishing to keep sea routes safe,[11] made it a matter of great concern to capture Porphyrios, though he was unable to devise a means through which to do this.[1][4][12]
A sinking yacht it a serious threat to life but, hey, it's pretty neat, right?
The reality is that anyone earning over 70k a year is earning more than thier fair share of society's production.
We only produce a fixed amount of GDP, which when divided by population makes for a fairly small number even excluding children.
Yachts are hella expensive, with even the cheapest used sail boats costing more than a new car and an "ok" used one being 200k+
That not middle class shit, that's rich people shit. People earning 65 k a year and raising 2 kids can Never afford that, unless they are neglectful, go bankrupt to do it etc.
People need to stop using Elon level wealth as the metric for rich.... That's not rich, that's Obscene. Rich is anyone earning over 100k a year. That's Extreme privilege having nearly 2 shares of GDP while how many have to have less than a fair share to get you there? Yea....
Not because it's too high or too low but because it's just so arbitrary. 70k in Glasgow is a very comfortable income, 70k in Tacoma Washington is just about enough to get by. In San Francisco there are indigents living (primarily) on the street whose income and benefits technically sum higher than 70k. And if any not-yet-indigent tried to move to San Francisco on that income they would soon join them.
I've always felt a scaling factor proportional to the extremes of individual difference makes the most sense here. Ideally the highest earning income possible in an economy should be somewhat proportional to the scale of capability in any given individual within it. I could acknowledge that people exist who might be five, possibly even 10 times as productive as I am when all of their merits are considered.
But there's no way in hell someone is 100 times, or 1,000 times or 10,000 times more productive or valuable and contributor to the world as me (or anyone), at least on the scale of individual capability. Without , that is, the benefit of some amplification apparatus that they happen to have at their disposal.
But it's pretty hopeless to get upset about these things. As a species we've hit some sort of ceiling long ago on efficiently allocating resources and rewards to ability. For example we'd much rather pay 30 bucks a week to give ourselves permission to dream about becoming millionaires, and as a reward watch yet another schlub (who like all that have come before him will do nothing of any consequence with the windfall) collect a two billion dollar paycheck - of our money - instead.
It's only because the average incomes are higher that costs are higher. Drop those wages to a normalized value and suddenly the market corrects as it reaches price equilibrium through bilateral supply and demand.
Figured I'd add this because you, as with so many, are confused as to what constitutes middle class.
You have to earn over $100000 to be middle class as clearly shown in the illustration, and you're still in that group at $1mm a year.
Under $100k down to $10k is classed as poor, with those below $10k classed as miserable and making up the Vast majority of humanity.
This isn't my definition, this is the agreed upon standards.
The theory presented in that segment was the first orcas are sort of like rowdy teenagers participating in a fad, and the newer event near Scotland was something of a coincidence.
It’s a good segment regardless of what you think, and the first half of the episode was one of the better reports of ChatGPT I have heard, so also of interest to people here. The name of the episode is “Greetings, People of Earth.”
That sounds more amazing to me than the theory of the traumatic event, an Ocra equivalent to a TikTok trend.
Orcas do go in for fads (look up 'orca salmon hats') but experts oftentimes dismiss things as coincidence because they don't have a theory and don't want to look stupid by speculating. When I was growing up reports of ball lightning were dismissed as hallucinations or optical illusions until video and spectrographic technology advanced sufficiently to capture the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
> An optical spectrum of what appears to have been a ball lightning event was published in January 2014 and included a video at high frame rate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bBNeyrMOJE
I think what that sentence is saying is that we don't know how to reproduce it in a lab. We don't know what exactly is happening in the real world that is causing us to perceive this. It could be an illusion I guess, but I think it's undisputed it's a real phenomenon.
That describes Bigfoot. I’d hope your epidemic standard is beyond anecdotes + videos that report to show what they report they’re showing. Else you can be made to believe anything.
I don’t know enough about ball lightning to care one way or another.
No one has dressed up and walked in front of a camera as ball lightning
I personally agree that ball lightning probably exists. However, there is another interesting phenomenon where a brilliant blue/white "spark" of electricity can travel along a wire. I don't have a name for it but power companies are certainly familiar with it. I've seen footage of it happening repeatedly along the same stretch of wire after a storm as an automated system tried to restore power a few times before keeping the power shut off.
It’s possible it was a mass delusion or a ghost but both of those strike me as less likely.
Ball lightning is one of those things that you'd expect to be easier to detect because of the increased use of cameras. Why isn't Youtube flooded with dozens of videos showing lightning balls? There are a few, but none of them are convincing. (One is clearly a drone being flown in a thunderstorm.) Most are fakumentaries. (3 seconds of shaky zoomed-in "proof" and 5 minutes of a so-called expert breathlessly talking about it.) How can ball lightning both have lots of people claiming to see it, but is infrequently caught on video?
My suspicion is people are encountering normal lightning discharges at close range and the "ball" is an illusion caused by how eyes work. If someone attempted to get ball lightning on camera they'd be disappointed to see the recording look nothing like how they remembered it.
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 it too). Until today I never knew what it might have been as this is my first time hearing of ball lighting. But it seems likely that is what it was.
After so many decades, glad to have a rational explanation at last! Thanks HN!
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychic_abilities
Link for context https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/14/66693872/and-now...
The idea that it was started by some way all that got a kick out of causing destruction doesn't have the same social resonance
You are injecting a political spin where there is none. Orcas live in a matriarchical hierarchy. People assume that the orcas have started hunting because the "pack leader" was hurt. They might or might not be correct, but they're not doing what you're describing.
Edit: ok Ira was sick and it's mentioned halfway through
If I'm not wrong, the giant worm Crassicauda does not affect orcas, but can attack false killer whales and relatives, so is not an impossible hypothese
Yeah I know the argument that humans are too bony and taste bad, but how would they know we taste bad if they never even take a nibble to taste test us? These are very intelligent mammals, they should be curious about how we taste. Am I to believe that sharks are more inquisitive and willing to experiment with food than orcas?
Maybe they're intelligent enough to recognize our intelligence, and don't want to attack other intelligent beings?
I’m not sure that ethics and intelligence correlate nearly as well as we would like to think.
I feel bad for the animals, but sailing doesn't seem to be going anywhere as a global interest and boats produced are getting to be more and more fragile in the search for performance. I imagine that it's only a matter of time until there will be a violent reaction when a crew feels that they're in mortal danger -- all I can hope for is that it produces a recognition of danger that also sweeps through the Orca community as a trend and they start to avoid yachts for the sake of both parties.
When I watch the videos I just kind of think it's like watching a cat scratching themselves and rubbing up against anything with an edge on my desk. Wholly benign behavior that is a detriment simply due to their scale compared to us.
Yacht does not mean wealthy. I am firmly middle class. My family is planning to move onto a sailboat next year.
I doubt you'd save any money living on a boat in LA or Miami.
The cheapest thing is living on anchor.
If you outfit the boat with solar, some lithium, and a water maker, your real expenses are boat maintenance which is cheap when doing it yourself.
I know digital nomads who’s total expenses for a year are 30k for a family of four. That includes all boat costs and living expenses.
Orcas are cultural animals that are similar to us in that fads are a thing for them. A while back they had a fad where they'd kill a salmon and wear it as a hat. I think this is a fad, they're having fun, it'll pass.
These headlines are so fun!
You might even say they’re orcastrating these attacks. It’s delphinidaely something worth paying attention to.
It was the 80s, dude. Big hair was radical!
https://www.gearrice.com/update/in-the-80s-an-orca-made-it-f...
The most amazing part is how clever the orcas were while trying to avoid capture. The young and their mothers dove down deep and then swam towards a river where they surfaced while the other adults swam along the surface to lead the boats away. It’s hard to imagine a group of humans coming up with a better plan, and it’s hard to imagine how to execute that plan without some kind of language.
'Scary moment' as orcas disrupt ocean boat race - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36452464 - June 2023 (89 comments)
Orcas sink 3 boats in Europe and appear to teach others to do the same. But why? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36006861 - May 2023 (21 comments)
Orcas are breaking rudders off boats in Europe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32593799 - Aug 2022 (239 comments)
Killer whales are 'attacking' sailboats near Europe's coast - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32540473 - Aug 2022 (9 comments)
Orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24460126 - Sept 2020 (154 comments)
As the great George Carlin said: the planet isn’t going anywhere, we are!
The earth returns to land and sea
Our buildings burned and highways gone
I love my friends and everyone
But we've had our chance let's move aside
Let time wash us out with the tide
So it is both a dolphin and a whale.
Ah, unidan. Back when Reddit drama was low stakes.
Why should the richest humans sail on personal gilded craft?!
Down with yachts! The hour of revolution is at hand!
But never forget that Orcas aren't called Killer Whales because they're "Whales That Kill", but because they're "Killers Of Whales".
Orcas kill other whales, sometimes for fun not for food. And they have such a reputation in the cetacean kingdom as brutal murderous assholes, that whales will help seals escape from them, to their own detriment/risk.
So yeah. In Humans vs. Orcas, it's hard not to root for the orcas, especially considering how we've treated them in captivity for the last 100 years. But on a more broader mammalian scale, we're both kind of the intelligent assholes of the animal kingdom.
The inspiration for Moby Dick, one of the most read books in English, was based on a ship sunk my sperm whales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)
Yes I know orcas and sperm whales are different, but its weird that this is suggested a new behavior in general. And not just a new counting of something that has been going on for centuries.
Imagine when they discover that there are calorie sources aboard the ships. Orcas are known to eat terrestrial mammals such as swimming deer and moose. They've been observed hunting swimming dogs.
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.
Though I guess it’s possible that they’re also avenging or preemptively defending themselves.
Only if you assume that the inspirational event in 1820 was the only time it happened.
I don't think the Georgians had the ability or inclination to document every time a whale took down a ship around the whole planet.
Today's killer whale behavior is clearly new, and nearly the only violent behavior seen in any whale in a hundred years. .. and with multiple recent reports, it is a new trend.
I think an easier explanation is someone started tracking this and now boat owners know to report it, because they have heard that someone is tracking it.
There is now an Orca Reporting form: https://www.theca.org.uk/orcas/interaction-report-form
I believe it is only running since 2020. I realize the argument you are making is that it was created/publicized AFTER a couple orca attacks. I'm suggesting that if this online portal had existed for anytime in history you would have gotten reports consistently. I would wager this is mostly, if not all, an observation bias.
And now last week one near Scotland, and this one this week.
Surely if it happened all the time, and it was in the news for so long, it would have been noticed and reported from all over the world?
I dont know every incident but this one in Scotland involved an orca ramming into a boat and causing zero injuries and no actual damage to the boat. How would this even have been reported before the internet? A tv anchor decides to dedicate a minute of their broadcast to describing a boat that collided with an orca?
And if it were normal behaviour, we'd see it reported from everywhere.
Also they damaged a bunch of ships near Gibraltar, and sank three. That would have been reported before 2020.
there are plenty of anecdotal reports dating back almost 100 years. there are reports here before 2020 of ships being destroyed.
yes I realize the hugeness of the numbers now is much larger than it was before 2020 - but again that is when the database was established which allowed anyone to submit a report, no matter the extent of the damage
At least one pod has learned to hunt and kill great whites, which may not be new to orcas but was news to us.
So could this be a side-effect of a larger whale population? More whales, higher statistical probability to attack some human boat. There are after all thousands of human controlled vessels in the sea at any time.
Ancient texts indicate that these were monsters to be feared, so maybe back in ancient times, before whale hunting became efficient, this was a frequent danger.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(Sch%C3%A4tzing_no...
Humans are jerks. Sonar makes orcas bleed from their ears.
Orcas are also used as circus animals (i.e.: SeaWorld), and some of them get so aggravated that they commit suicide by bumping their heads against the pool walls.
Orcas should attack more often, I fully approve of it.
In fact, we should help orcas multiply in numbers so that the yacht enthusiasts get displaced and leave the sea to the creatures doing a free service for the environment.
I somehow imagine an orca in top hat, kindly suggesting that he will continue to ram other yachts if some conditions are not met :-)
Muay Thai practitioners roll their shins and smack them against trees, causing pain.
Anxiety often induced animals to cause pain to themselves in the form of self-harm.
And so on and so forth.
So maybe something like this could be "switched on" temporarily -- run on batteries for a few minutes -- but you sure wouldn't want the boat to run with this on all the time. It probably wouldn't even be possible, energetically.
But yeah, electric eels do exist.
Maybe a big drum of capsaicin would be better.
Ideally you'd find a way to befriend them though. Some kind of carrot instead. Hm.
Also, when news say orcas are attacking small sailboats, I think they are comparing them to large yachts. And not actually small sailboats below 25'. I suspect most are 30-50' since that is most popular size for offshore.
Don’t do this on your boat. It will eat your propeller and every other metal object you’ve got underwater.
In dock it will be off
It was funny to see Alfredo mentioned here.
it's like trying to solve school shooting, by giving teachers guns
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 species capable of getting us off this rock and avoiding the total annihilation of all life are humans. If we die off and another intelligence emerges later on, all of the easily accessible energy for industrialization and getting us out of the gravity well may be gone. This is our one, best shot.
When our sun dies, none of this will have mattered at all. If we're still stuck on this earth, we may as well have never even existed. A brief brilliant flash that led to nothing and was forgotten.
The existential counter to that is if we can make it beyond our solar system. Maybe we evolve beyond our current biological forms, maybe computers become our custodians, who knows. Maybe some future super intellect revives all of the state leading up to it, and maybe we'll become (or already are) holographic simulations of what once was: memories of our world.
With respect to the geologic timescale and the fate of earth intelligence and biology, humans matter way more than orcas. That isn't to say we shouldn't go to great lengths to preserve orcas. But there's a much bigger story at play, and we shouldn't discount our place in it.
Also it seems the orcas are bored.
If Hvaldimir is anything to go by a ball would be a good solution here.
Speculation among sailors is that "hey, did you know you can break bits off those things?" is as plausible an explanation as any.
There are known ways to scare orcas off but it's illegal to distress them and nobody really wants to. I certainly don't.
“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.“
It’s humbling to see nature trying somehow to fight back against us. Their goal. For us to chill more and be more content. What if mankind just lives in peace and balance with nature? No plastic. Carbon balance. Nothing added annually that wouldn’t be taken back and fixed anew by nature. Greenhouse gases back at 350 ppm. What if?