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The article offers some anecdotes, but nothing to support the claim that attacks have been "unusual" in the past or are increasing in number. There's no sense o
by aazaa 6y ago
The article offers some anecdotes, but nothing to support the claim that attacks have been "unusual" in the past or are increasing in number. There's no sense of whether this is still an isolated problem, whether it has exploded in recent years, or whether there's anything that connects these attacks with attacks in other places.
Local coast guards might keep track of this sort of information. But there's nothing about that one way or the other in the article.
Without some quantitative handle, it's impossible to even know whether something unusual is happening here.
- stupendousyappi 6y agoThere are no statistics because this has never been reported before. One of the key points that animal rights activists used to shut down the Sea World orca performances was that there were no reports of wild orcas ever attacking humans, indicating that the Sea World orcas must be extremely stressed. Wild orcas have had many friendly interactions with human boats, and have even successfully stolen fish from fishing boats many times, but as a layman who follows orca intelligence research as a hobby, I've never heard of attack-like incidents like this article describes before. And the scientists interviewed in the article evidently haven't either.
- occhains 6y ago"Rocío Espada works with the marine biology laboratory at the University of Seville and has observed this migratory population of orca in the Gibraltar Straits for years. She was astonished. “For killer whales to take out a piece of a fibreglass rudder is crazy,” she says. “I’ve seen these orcas grow from babies, I know their life stories, I’ve never seen or heard of attacks.”"
- Tiktaalik 6y ago> Without some quantitative handle, it's impossible to even know whether something unusual is happening here. Do you need a number? A chart? It's right there on the page. We're up to from "several" from "never". That's an astounding change in a rapid time.
- lixtra 6y ago> “several” from “never” TFA: In 1972 the Robertson family from Staffordshire were shipwrecked off the Galapagos Islands after an orca strike (their book, Survive the Savage Sea became a classic).