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Killer Whales: 'Transient' Orcas Are Thriving
- tjr225 6y agoKind of ironic that the author used a whale watching tour to observe the Orcas. These tours are disruptive to resident Orca populations(non-transient).
- vmception 6y agoWhat’s the tjr225 compliant way of observing Orcas?
- genericone 6y agoWe don't yet have the technology. But where there is a will there is a way. If we could derive ad money from Orca observation, I'm sure our bright minds will come up with something this decade. Or OAAS.
- jschwartzi 6y agoI'm actually working on a side project called Whalebernetes which will allow you to orchestrate groups of virtual Orcas to perform tasks like gather salmon or seals. These Orca groups, or Pods can then be moved between various Oceans as-needed depending on the needs of your business.
- jholman 6y agoThat sounds promising. Watch out, you'll also need some way to get those pods to stay where you need them, like to dock them with a harbour. I imagine one day, if your idea really takes off, we could abstract away our fisheries activities almost entirely (for most businesses), simply doing our fishing in "The Foam". (The Foam is really just other people's water)
- fsagx 6y agoMaybe someday they could be viewed from an innocuous object with cameras installed. Like the remote controlled elephant dung pile cam: https://youtu.be/LCqaFvc7rDw https://youtu.be/LCqaFvc7rDw
- emmelaich 6y agoThere is long range infra-red: https://www.mmo-association.org/infrared https://www.mmo-association.org/infrared I'm involved in setting something up like this in Australian waters.
- tjr225 6y agoThe post was noting the irony of the article- not my personal ethics. But sure if it makes you that self conscious I’ll go there: there really isn’t one aside from getting lucky from the shore or some sort of sustainable fishing vessel.
- hitekker 6y agoThe GP was just poking fun. Getting defensive and suddenly asserting a bold, moral stance without evidence, seems a bit thin-skinned to me. FWIW, I read this paper which says that whale-watching is not unethical provided certain protocols are observed. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jmb/2012/807294/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jmb/2012/807294/
- tjr225 6y agoI don’t really care what the GP was doing. Tourists come to the puget sound and fuel an economy of boats that swarm an ostensibly endangered group of local whales. Why would I care what a person who thinks that is funny thinks? There are seventy five resident orcas in the puget sound. Seventy five. Their lives are disrupted by 100 years of industrialization and we’ll be lucky if they’re here in 2121. For what it’s worth I went on a whale watching tour a few years ago. I regret it.
- ironmagma 6y agoThere are several marine parks that have dolphins and/or orcas. It's probably better from the orcas' utilitarian perspective to go there where it's contained than to add on demand to the intrusions on the wild populations.
- treeman79 6y agoWho cares about nature, spends a week camping / hiking. Nature is awesome! It’s easier to get people to care if they have some level of hands on involvement. Wife has taught kids that have never seen an ocean. Despite living a mile from the ocean. To those kids it was a concept, not meaningful.
- ironmagma 6y agoI wrote a blog post [1] partly about why the answer to this is not whale watching. [1] https://medium.com/@pc.peterso/why-seaworld-must-be-saved-758c40e4ce30 https://medium.com/@pc.peterso/why-seaworld-must-be-saved-75...
- nradov 6y agoAre whale watching tours more disruptive to orcas then other regular boat traffic? The tours in California are required to stay a safe distance from marine mammals.
- newman8r 6y agoSome of the larger whale boats in my area (CA) are very loud, and I can hear their droning miles away when I'm kayaking - there's dozens of these boats. They cooperate with each other to find the whales, so I assume it's a constant pestering presence. I think it might be more reasonable if they were restricted to weekends only. It was eerily peaceful out on the water for the several months the whale boats were shut down due to covid.
- bmitc 6y agoI believe orcas should be at the top of the list in terms of being granted human level species rights. They should be removed from tanks ASAP and placed in sanctuaries, such as the one being built in Nova Scotia. I also have a suspicion that orca intelligence possibly matches that of humans.
- chmod775 6y agoAssuming most animals experience similar emotions in much the same way as humans, why is it okay to inflict pain and suffering only on the less intelligent animals, but not the more intelligent ones? Does harming them make you uncomfortable because you have an easier time relating to them? Or is it because they are possibly intelligent enough to blame humans for what we've been doing to them, and that makes you uncomfortable? Either way, intelligence can't be bar to use, because that argument would exclude mentally retarded humans from enjoying human rights as well. That may sound harsh, but I strongly believe humanity should stop and think on the why for a moment. Are we doing something because it is right, because the alternative makes us feel bad, or because doing so will make us look better? The first motivation is altruistic, the other is egoistic, and the last egotistic. Do all three align in this case? What about other examples? I imagine even reflecting on one's own motivations will be uncomfortable to some. It certainly was to me. Edit: Also I don't believe any of these motivations are inherently bad, but often one is dishonest about which one it really is.
- bmitc 6y agoYour questions address or imply things I didn’t say, and you’re making a lot of assumptions. I don’t really feel like debating in this manner, so all I will say is that I have a problem with any animal being mentally, physically, or emotionally abused, neglected, etc. by humans, regardless of intelligence.
- upinsmoke1980 6y ago> why is it okay to inflict pain and suffering only on the less intelligent animals? I don't think anyone argues that it's okay to inflict pain and suffering on animals. We do inflict pain and suffering on factory-farmed animals, but most people oppose it (at least in a half-assed verbal manner; people say they don't like it but still buy products made in that way, in the same way people say they care about slavery and racism and inequality and exploitation of the third world but don't change their consumer behaviour to avoid supporting those things.)
- dd_roger 6y agoIs this an article or a novel? I lost patience before getting to the point.
- treeman79 6y ago"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoThis is an issue that gets repeated through history over and over again. The group that develops tech, ends up totally screwing over the group that doesn't. So while, before the encounter the group that did not develop the tech, may have a better quality of life, once they encounter each other, the group without the tech gets screwed over. For example, dolphins and orcas have been screwed over by humans whether getting captured and sent to live in tanks, or entangled in fishing nets, or having their food sources over fished. It happens in the human realm too. A big example is the the Spanish Conquistadors and the Native Americans. Prior to them meeting, the Native Americans probably had a better quality of life than the Spaniards. But after the meeting, they got totally screwed over.
- tuatoru 6y ago> A big example is the the Spanish Conquistadors and the Native Americans. Prior to them meeting, the Native Americans probably had a better quality of life than the Spaniards. But after the meeting, they got totally screwed over. That had nothing to do with technology levels. The native Americans were wiped out by novel diseases. The conquistadors were helped greatly by the based-on-fact rumours of people dying a while after coming into contact with them. Factionalism and partisanship, various groups thinking they could use the chaos to grab power, made things worse too.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoEven Columbus screwed over the Indians on the islands, even before disease had a chance to wreak havoc. Just the fact that they sailed in ships, wore armor, and had steel swords and rudimentary firearms gave a huge advantage to the Spanish.
- nickgrosvenor 6y agoOne of the best articles I've read in a long time.
- Tiktaalik 6y agoThe residents are starving to death and the governments around the salish sea seem to be uninterested in doing anything to address this. It's incredibly depressing.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoMy partner works with DFO and it’s pretty complicated. Everyone cares, it’s just a political nightmare. Not many people with careers at DFO don’t care about the ocean or its inhabitants. It’s just so hard to enact change. Real knowledge of what’s going on and what effective solutions would be is surprisingly lacking too. We know industry doesn’t help, such as fishing, shipping, and transport, but these are virtually impossible to change positively in the short term.
- Tiktaalik 6y agoI'm sure many on the ground at DFO cares but yeah there's no political leadership to do anything to prevent the seemingly inevitable extinction of residents. No political will to cancel fishing. No political will to halt TMX, etc. Jobs > *
- steve_adams_86 6y agoYeah, this is my assessment as well. It's quite demoralizing for several people I know working in sciences at DFO. When you have a PhD in a science and can't use it as it's intended because money matters more than the thing you study, it gets difficult to deal with on a day to day basis. It's not a trivial thing to get to that point in a career, but you, your knowledge, and your potential are completely kneecapped when it comes to most jobs competing with the well-being o the environment. The leadership I do know of from second-hand information is hyper-focused on organization performance - they couldn't be further from the sciences, and they actively work to suppress science at times. In fact, there's very compelling evidence of a significant factor in reduced salmon population, but that research was initially muzzled by the Harper administration, and since then, the findings were revealed but the research more or less put on hold. Some action was taken based on the research (shutting down salmon aquaculture near spawning rivers), but it's decades late and a decade later than the research came out. Then we have the evidence that hatcheries put incredibly small amounts of harvestable biomass into the ocean while deteriorating salmon genetics. Salmon are evolved to thrive in their specific spawning territories at a critical, vunerable point in their life cycle; by muddying those genes, you can make it so they lose what gave them the ability to thrive at all. Meanwhile, hatcheries are so established and commonly believed to be so effective and it's exceedingly unlikely to see them go anywhere any time soon. We celebrate the addition of a hatchery but we may have been undermining salmon this entire time. I could go on. It's a very sad situation and very close to my family and heart. Tomorrow I'm going to go free diving and soak it all in. I like to appreciate the beauty while it's still here and remind myself how important it all is.
- bufferout 6y agoFun fact: despite being an apex predator, there are no recorded human fatalities from orcas in the wild.
- oh_sigh 6y agoThat's because humans don't go swimming where Orcas hang out trying to find something to eat.
- tlavoie 6y agoActually, lots do, and the transients eat mammals. I think they're smart enough to differentiate the ones (us) that would cause too many problems to eat. In our area (Discovery Islands), there is no lack of humans swimming, or in kayaks, or diving. The transients are common here, far more than the residents. Of course, so are seals and sea lions.
- oh_sigh 6y agoYes but I can all but guarantee you that humans aren't swimming where there have been known orca sightings.
- libraryatnight 6y agopeople dive near wild orcas all the time.
- svl 6y agoSwimming and diving with orcas is not just regularly done, it's so common and safe that it's something which is offered as a guided tourist activity in Norway. (I personally know someone who went on such a trip.)
- hackissimo123 6y agoSharks rarely attack humans too, despite the popularity of Jaws. I was always taught that sharks generally only bother to attack humans when they mistake us for another animal.