Ever Been Shit-Scared ...

[Ideologue]

Is that so?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVPRGfNNNE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJVxP7gZ4HQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtntDW0KnM

There are three different orca subspecies/species/populations, with highly variant behavior patterns.  Some are deep sea, others are not.  Resident orcas live just offshore and are easily accessible to humans, and are not always highly visible.  (It remains common sense to avoid giant fucking animals even if they aren't intent on eating you.)

I concede that most of the places you're likely to swim, surf, or boat in Missouri are not highly populated by cetaceans.

[jimmy olsen]

I'd only recently started working underground at the coal mine.

Tyr's hero!

[Razgovory]

Is that so?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVPRGfNNNE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJVxP7gZ4HQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtntDW0KnM

There are three different orca subspecies/species/populations, with highly variant behavior patterns.  Some are deep sea, others are not.  Resident orcas live just offshore and are easily accessible to humans, and are not always highly visible.  (It remains common sense to avoid giant fucking animals even if they aren't intent on eating you.)

I concede that most of the places you're likely to swim, surf, or boat in Missouri are not highly populated by cetaceans.

Yes, it is.  Your examples are news reports of some whales swimming off the coast of Canada.  Indicating that A: since it's a new report they aren't commonly seen in the area, and B: it's off the coast of fucking Canada.  That's cold water where few people swim.  Only one of your videos showed people swimming with the whales, and in that video the swimmers fled.

[Ideologue]

Meh.  There are news reports about the fucking rain.

[PRC]

That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.

People rarely swim off Vancouver and Seattle?  Perhaps they do.  The Pac Northwest might as well be Narnia.

Ocean is too cold to swim in for long in the Pacific NorthWest.  CC's swim in Porpoise Bay was in an inlet so would be warmer than right off the more open coastline, or he had a wetsuit on.

[Malthus]

Shark attacks get reported all the time because so many people survive them (apparently we don't taste very good to sharks, and they often take one bite and spit us out); also, sharks are basically stupid, so they often attack people when there are other people around to see it and rescue the victim.

Killer Whales are clever, and much larger, on average, than sharks. Maybe they eat people all the time, but only in ways that don't get found out. 

[merithyn]

I'd only recently started working underground at the coal mine. As often happened I'd been sent to a cushy job in a remote part of the pit which required only one man but was not a desirable job for superstitious workmates.

It was for me, as only a few small actions operating an endless rope haulage system were required, possibly none at all..............I arranged some dust into a comfortable heap, sat myself down and started reading my copy of Pere Goriot.

Then the whole bloody tunnel started shaking and rumbling.......aargh, I'm 2000 feet underground and 3 miles out to sea..........I'm doomed!!!

So doomed that I started relaxing, no way to get out, may as well carry on reading the (rather good) book. An hour or two later I realise that while I'm remote in walkable distance there may well have been a face in development quite near me. On the train back to the shaft I chat to the guys and find out that some shotfiring had been done developing a face above where I was "working" but very distant as a walking route.

Needless to say, there was no cause for worry whatsoever and this sort of thing became routine, but the first time when nobody had warned me..............for 30 seconds I thought I was a dead man 

I think I understood about 10 words of this.

[Viking]

Shark attacks get reported all the time because so many people survive them (apparently we don't taste very good to sharks, and they often take one bite and spit us out); also, sharks are basically stupid, so they often attack people when there are other people around to see it and rescue the victim.

Killer Whales are clever, and much larger, on average, than sharks. Maybe they eat people all the time, but only in ways that don't get found out. 

Sharks only have the sense of touch to examine an object. They use sight and the electrical sense to find out where things are rather than what they are. A killer whale doesn't use the bite to find out what you are, it uses sight and sonar to find out what you are. The Killer Whale knows you aren't a seal but will look and listen to find out what you are. The Shark also knows you aren't a seal but will bite you to find out what you are. To the best of my knowledge most shark attacks are actually inquisitorial bites.

[The Brain]

Killer whales aren't fish.

[crazy canuck]

That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.

People rarely swim off Vancouver and Seattle?  Perhaps they do.  The Pac Northwest might as well be Narnia.

Ocean is too cold to swim in for long in the Pacific NorthWest.  CC's swim in Porpoise Bay was in an inlet so would be warmer than right off the more open coastline, or he had a wetsuit on.

That is true but Orca pods are very common around here.  People often swim in areas where the pods are active in the summer (for example the Gulf Islands).  Porpoise Bay is an inlet and so is warmer (and more importantly more calm) but it isnt that much warmer than the surface of the water to the West of the Sunshine coast.

Its just that Orcas prefer to eat Grey Whales, salmon and seals and dont bother with humans.

Here is an interesting piece I found that gives an explanation as to why Orcas dont attack humans  -  if you dont buy the culture bit other explanations are provided.  I do accept that part of the explanation is that Orca are highly intelligent and social animals who know what they want to eat and its not us.

SAN JUAN ISLAND, WASHINGTON – It's an image you often see on paintings and wood carvings – a giant totemic killer whale, with the images of sea creatures and faces artistically contained within the whale's body.

The image tells the story of the Tlingit legend of the creation of the killer whale, which goes as follows: Natsilane was a charismatic and skilled wood carver who married the Chief's daughter. Jealous of Natsilane's popularity and talent, his brothers-in-law devised a plan to abandon Natsilane at sea during a traditional sea lion hunt. Left to die on a small rock in the middle of nowhere, Natsilane was summoned under the waves by a sea lion. The sea lion asked him to heal his son who was injured by a spear during the hunt. After pulling the spear point out, the Sea Lion Chief granted Natsilane great powers and helped him back to shore. Still angry about being abandoned, he began carving a great whale out of different types of wood. The first two carvings, when set in the water, simply floated away. But the third, made of yellow cedar, came to life. Natsilane sent it to exact revenge on his brothers-in-law. When the killer whale found them, he smashed their canoe and killed the brothers. But Natsilane felt badly about what he had done, and when the whale returned to him, he instructed it to never harm humans again.

The legend tries to explain something curious about orcas. They don't attack people. The question is — why not? On a simple, biological scale they are bigger and stronger than we are, have sharper teeth, and they're carnivores. Any similar creature might see humans as a tasty little snack, but not orcas.

Observation has shown that one answer may not be far from the ancient legend. Killer whales seem to follow rules that go beyond basic instinct and border on culture. Individual pods forage, communicate and navigate differently, much the way different cultures of people do. Researchers have witnessed "greeting ceremonies" between pods. They've even seen the equivalent of a funeral. It may very well be that within "orca culture" there is a social norm not to go after people.

A more scientific explanation might be that we're simply not tasty enough to be included on the killer whales' menu. Orcas, it turns out, have picky palates. The Southern Resident Killer Whales of Puget Sound dine on only the fattest Chinook salmon, even if it means allowing an entire school of skinnier salmon to swim by. Transient orcas, which have a broader diet, have shown similar selective behavior, in one case killing a gray whale but eating only its tongue.

A third possible reason is that we don't resemble any food source killer whales typically depend on. There have reportedly been incidents where an orca attempted to hunt a human, but broke off the hunt immediately upon realizing it wasn't a sea lion.

Okay, so we've established that killer whales are pretty darned smart — they have a culture with specific behaviors, a picky diet, and they know that we don't taste very good. Still, humans pump toxins into their water, we bombard them with noise, and sometimes we kidnap their babies and put them in aquariums. Orcas have a pretty good reason to hate us, perhaps even enough to want to extract revenge, yet they don't. The answer here might be friendship. There are many cases where nomadic killer whales have gravitated to humans, bonding with them and playing games. Trainers at places like Sea World say very little goes into orca training. The whales seem to understand people, and are eager to cooperate and create bonds.

In fact, the only apparent instances of orcas attacking people have happened at aquatic parks, where the whales have killed trainers. Many experts think these attacks are not malicious, rather a case of play getting out of hand. Howard Garrett of the Orca Network disagrees. He argues the attacks are deliberate, though not in cold blood. Cut off from their pods, confined in small concrete tanks, and hand fed instead of being allowed to hunt, Garrett thinks the pressures build causing the orcas to occasionally lash out.

Whether that's the case or not, it's clear that in the wild, orcas seem to have a pretty universal rule: don't attack humans. The reason would appear to be both biological and cultural. Killer whales have been around about 11 million years. Compared to them, we are a relatively new species on the planet. Physically we're no match for this apex predator, but they've apparently deemed us worthy of coexistence. We owe them the same.

At the very least, we can admire and respect these creatures, and be grateful to Natsilane for commanding the killer whale to follow the universal rule.

[crazy canuck]

I'd only recently started working underground at the coal mine. As often happened I'd been sent to a cushy job in a remote part of the pit which required only one man but was not a desirable job for superstitious workmates.

It was for me, as only a few small actions operating an endless rope haulage system were required, possibly none at all..............I arranged some dust into a comfortable heap, sat myself down and started reading my copy of Pere Goriot.

Then the whole bloody tunnel started shaking and rumbling.......aargh, I'm 2000 feet underground and 3 miles out to sea..........I'm doomed!!!

So doomed that I started relaxing, no way to get out, may as well carry on reading the (rather good) book. An hour or two later I realise that while I'm remote in walkable distance there may well have been a face in development quite near me. On the train back to the shaft I chat to the guys and find out that some shotfiring had been done developing a face above where I was "working" but very distant as a walking route.

Needless to say, there was no cause for worry whatsoever and this sort of thing became routine, but the first time when nobody had warned me..............for 30 seconds I thought I was a dead man 

I think I understood about 10 words of this.

[Viking]

Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.

[crazy canuck]

Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.

I think you have a point there.  My parents had pictures of me playing in the ocean as a small child with the dorsal fins of a pod of Orca in the background.  I was looking at them but had no fear.  Neither apparantly did my parents as they took the time to snap the photos.

These associations must be hardwired in us somehow over mellenia of living near eachother.

[Malthus]

A more scientific explanation might be that we're simply not tasty enough to be included on the killer whales' menu. Orcas, it turns out, have picky palates. The Southern Resident Killer Whales of Puget Sound dine on only the fattest Chinook salmon, even if it means allowing an entire school of skinnier salmon to swim by.

So, they don't eat us because we are not fat enough to be tasty?

Presumably, Katami doesn't swim.  Or Americans in general. 

[Viking]

Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.

I think you have a point there.  My parents had pictures of me playing in the ocean as a small child with the dorsal fins of a pod of Orca in the background.  I was looking at them but had no fear.  Neither apparantly did my parents as they took the time to snap the photos.

These associations must be hardwired in us somehow over mellenia of living near eachother.

Fear of snakes is not learned. We know this by instinct. The same presumably applies to sharks. Remember, dolphins are as big, as dangerous and much smarter than sharks but we do not fear them. Sea world doesn't have many people swimming with sharks.