Orcas sink another yacht: why killer whales are attacking boats

SchnoodleDoodle wholesome vibes

I'm still unironically on Team Orca here. Get sunk, scrubs.

- I'd vote for him.

Last I heard, they're bored and rudders are fun to play with.

We need to give them some orca proof toys.

orca sinks yacht, we need to give them alternatives

Nah, I'm cool with them having the yachts
- I'm not. It's only a matter of time before some rich asshole starts shooting at the whales, dropping sticks of dynamite or some equivalent callous and heartless thing. I don't give two shits about the rich fucks, but I am highly concerned about the consequences to the whales. Humans, as a species, have no chill.
- You're thinking Bezos yachts, these are $50-200$k boats people use as homes to see the world, not rich people. The word yacht doesn't mean wealth, it's just not a common mode of transportation.
- Well, a yacht is just a class of vessel. I think a lot of people are confusing them with LUXURY yachts which are way too big to be sunk by orchas.
  
  Here's one for sale, $59,000. I could actually buy this, I mean, yeah, it's from freakin' 1984... but still.
These scientists say they don't intend to sink the boats but they're definitely doing it on porpoise.
- Not to blow the joke, but I recently learned Orcas are in the dolphin family. I always thought they were porpoises myself
- Groan.
"Cause it's fun."

Signed, the orca community

Just wait until Orcas get opposable flippers.

Yes Mr Sha, last name Moo, could you please sign on the dotted line? Next time you should think twice about swimming drunk.
The ability to manipulate objects isn't really that useful underwater, I feel, apart from being an unprecedented adaptation on the flipper and almost definitely coming at the cost of efficiency while swimming. Everything you want to mess around with as an orca can be transported with your mouth.

Now, sonar loud enough to shatter human rib cages, that's what's going to be the next big step.
- Sounds like something octopi would say.

I, for one, welcome our new orca overlords!

Because they know that if they kill anyone rich enough to afford a boat that some jackass will kill them back. So they keep it to property damage.

Shh, nobody tell the orcas how many humans get killed/ruined to protect property.

They're based

saved a click

Answer: because they are fucking based

Nature is healing.

Did they eat the rich? 🤑 Otherwise the plan is going swimmingly.

I think the answer to this question is in their name tbh. Should have named them Panda Whales instead.

Tell me you know nothing about pandas
- pandas
  
  Ugh those fucking fickle hostile, always pooping, weird extra thumb having, sexless weirdos.
  
  I think I know too much about Pandas, and it makes me want nothing to do with their conservation.

Another article...

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/orcas-sink-yacht-in-strait-of-gibraltar

This one has useful comments, like...

Rudders certainly look like a fin...best way to disable prey is to maim a fin. The orcas have learned power vessels are of sterner stuff.

I wonder how practical it'd be to have an underwater sound emitter to repel one. The use of sonar gets sometimes criticized for its impact on whales. You'd think that you could take advantage of that.

kagis

Probably not powerful enough. Looks like military sonar pulls down a lot of power:

https://www.quora.com/How-do-submarines-surface-ships-produce-such-loud-active-sonar-sound-emissions-from-their-transducers

The first ship I was on used a sonar system from the ‘60s. The system used the maximum amount of power, just short of causing the transducer (an underwater combination speaker and microphone) array to cavitate (boil the water). As you go deeper, it takes more power to cavitate, so submarine sonars were even more powerful (but seldom used, to keep from advertising their location). Our system used 288,000 watts (A powerful home stereo may use 250 watts, so this is like 1000 home stereos all going at the same time!) When the power supply for the amplifiers malfunctioned, it often erupted fireballs across the room (Our Division Officer was so frightened, after seeing one, that he refused to enter the room, or even come down the stairs to the room’s door!). In addition, besides the raw power, the signal can be electronically focused to go in a single direction, much like the powerful spotlights used for advertising (car dealerships, for example). This makes the signal strong enough, that you can bounce it off the bottom of the ocean and detect a submarine more than 40 miles away.

The sound is so loud, that you can hear it IN THE AIR while near a pier, when the ship was over 1,000 feet away (several city blocks). For a nearby diver in the water, it would extremely painful. In Vietnam, the ships in-port would run their sonars 24 hours a day, to keep enemy divers away from the ships.

Inside the ship, you could hear it, no matter where you were below decks, even in noisy places. Most of the crew hated it. Sometimes, we (the sonarmen) would light-off the system, with the most powerful beam pointed at the rest of the ship, at 6:00 AM for Reveille (“Damned %&$ sonarmen! *%#$%^%$!!!”).

I think we should use AI to decifer their language and send them messages saying, "Chill bro! I'm just passing through." We'll probably get a response going something like, "You in the wrong neighborhood boy!"
- "Get off my lawn!"
- "YU WOT MATE??!?!?"

These scientists have never heard that "revenge is a dish best served cold".

The article is about orcas, but that video at the top is not an orca and just happened to sink a small fishing boat while it was feeding. Pretty sure that incident was an accident and the whale wasn't trying to sink it, it was just breaching and eating.

I thought they settled on juveniles playing. There are more now and food supply is better, so they have more time and that's why it's increasing.

Quarter stick of dynamite or 110 volts would do the trick.

That's no way to behave as a guest.
- Maybe the host shouldn’t trash my ride.
110 would not do the trick.
- Not with that attitude.
  
  “Ohm's law says that the current is voltage divided by resistance, so 110 volts / 2500 ohms gives 0.044 amps. At first, one might say that the orca would survive since that's less than the fatal level of 0.1 amp. However, that level is easily enough to cause the muscles to contract violently, and if that condition persisted for more than a short time, it would kill by respiratory paralysis. (Again, assuming whale physiology is comparable to humans'.”