Ok, so I need to say something about the orcas, or rather the response to them, because this is pissing me off.
There is a popular portrayal that they are somehow proxies for a class war hunting down and destroying the playthings of the rich, invading their habitat, and this is absolutely not what is happening.
There are two types of vessel that can broadly be described as "yachts". The first type are the ones you're probably thinking of: things owned by multi millionaires who cruise about living a life of unattainable luxury. These vessels have price tags that start at 7 digits for a modest one, and go up from there. They are owned by multimillionaires, centi-millionaires, and billionaires, and they are completely and utterly immune from orca attack.
This is because they are motor vessels. They steer by vectored thrust, or by directing propeller wash over a relatively small hydrofoil. As a result, there is nothing for the orcas to attack, and even if there was, these people don't like to be kept waiting on their way to Monaco or wherever. They have power plants the size of road haulage vehicles and can outrun the orcas.
The second type, which are the boats that the orcas are attacking, are sailboats. These travel at about 5 knots, which is the cruising speed of an orca, and have huge rudders because they need to balance turning forces from the sails that power the boats. The smallest boats that are capable of sailing in the waters where these animals are have rudders comparable in size to an adult human. The orcas seem to regard these as prizes and love detaching them.
While the very rich sometimes do buy these kind of boats, they are not the typical person who does so. Most of them are bought second hand, and they have very long lives (a lot from the 1970s are still in perfectly good condition). They are generally bought for the price of a used car, or less A lot of people live on them and pay for mooring and maintenance fees by doing casual labour. This is still cheaper than renting a one bedroom flat in a lot of Europe.
I live in the area where these animals operate. Friends of friends have been attacked. They aren't "yachties", they're just people with day jobs who have enough disposable income to invest in a hobby they enjoy.
So either, best case, you are gloating at people of modest means facing a salvage and repair bill that they can't afford and is more than the value of the boat, or potentially you are laughing at terrified people watching their home and everything they own get sent to the bottom of the ocean by one of the most sadistic predators on earth, and who will then have to get in the sea with these predators which, if they're lucky, will decide to leave them to drown.
This doesn't make you an online class warrior, or the left-wing equivalent of an edge-lord. It just makes you an arsehole.
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •π₯₯ Tucker Carlson's Nuts π₯₯
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK reshared this.
Mo Edray
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Dear god, after I make it perfectly clear why I think some people are arseholes, it seems they really want to demonstrate that, yes, they are arseholes.
Still, server block is a thing.
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Orc No, you really canβt do that. The first most people know of the attack is when the boat is violently struck.
This shit has been talked about for years. Whatever you can think of has been thought of. Explosives work. Nothing else does.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Orc No. They donβt go into the med. it happens between the Strait of Gibraltar the the English Channel.
Most boats these days with modern rudders, you canβt just drop it. Canβt on long keelers either. Itβs integrated.
People have thought of this. All of it. It. Doesnβt. Work.
Sarah Brown
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kechpaja
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •The Actual Brian
Unknown parent • • •@orc
Ok, ok.
sEcOnD mOsT.
Are you technically happy now?
Sarah Brown likes this.
The Actual Brian
Unknown parent • • •@orc
FFS, your trolling is sad.
This isn't an abstract, engineering problem.
Animal behavior is changing and people are dying.
Try to be human.
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Sarah Brown
in reply to The Actual Brian • •@The Actual Brian @Orc Thankfully nobody has died yet. Itβs been very close on occasion though.
Some of the pods are now electronically tagged, and they will try to tag more in a few weeks as they migrate to Biscay for the winter.
When we know where they are, we can avoid them.
The Actual Brian
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@orc
Sadly, it's over a matter of time.
Sarah Brown
in reply to The Actual Brian • •The Actual Brian
Unknown parent • • •No, you're doing a great job at showing us a sadistic human.
The Actual Brian
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@orc
Is anyone studying this to see if they can figure out why?
I've read that these behaviors are learned and can be fleeting or become permanent.
The Actual Brian
Unknown parent • • •Wow. Horrible straw man attempt.
Your trolling is really sad.
The Actual Brian
Unknown parent • • •@orc
Sorry that I don't feed your trolling attempts.
They're lame and amateuristic.
bebatjof π΅πΈ
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Russ Garrett
in reply to bebatjof π΅πΈ • • •@bebatjof one of the theories is that they were primarily annoyed at the fishing boats but they found sailboats more enjoyable to attack, and it became more of a play/bonding thing.
Interestingly this behaviour started in mid-2020, after boat volumes reduced due to covid lockdowns. I wonder if they thought they could make the boats go away again.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Russ Garrett • •Russ Garrett
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@bebatjof says 2020 here:
orcaiberica.org/en/antecedenteβ¦
I remember reading a paper about it but I can't find it now...
Antecedentes | Orca IbΓ©rica
Orca IbΓ©ricaSarah Brown likes this.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Russ Garrett • •Jeroen Baert
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Aearil :nonbinary_flag:
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Why Not Zoidberg? π¦ @Orc It matters quite a lot if youβre the one about to be in the fucking water with them, tosser.
Another arsehole, another server block. plonk
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Orc @Why Not Zoidberg? π¦ Do you enjoy doing something?
Maybe you should be chased by tigers while doing it.
You were hovering on the edge, but I think youβre engaging in bad faith here and itβs server block time. Tchau.
fedops ππ
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Buster McNutt
in reply to fedops ππ • • •@fedops
Humans are animals. Orcas are known to engage in sadistic behaviors in contrast to making clean kills. They know the difference.
Now, what we do with that knowledge lies on a different decision tree.
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Sarah Brown
in reply to Buster McNutt • •@Marq βοΈ @fedops ππ Yup. The idea that we are uniquely, amongst all animals, able to engage in sadistic cruelty is bizarre to me. It also flies in the face of direct observation.
At least theyβre not as bad as their close relative: the bottlenose dolphin. Now they can really be prone to being utter bastards.
Buster McNutt
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@fedops
For those in the back:
>>> DIRECT OBSERVATION <<<
jeanoappleseed
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to jeanoappleseed • •@jeanoappleseed @Marq βοΈ @fedops ππ The pods are now being tagged and information on their whereabouts is being communicated through. Boat owners are also increasingly collaborating to report attacks and their locations in real time, and there are apps that show it. Itβs getting easier to just not be where they are.
Hopefully as we get better at avoiding them, they will start to forget about their stupid little rudder game.
If not, then I suspect things are going to get messy. The attacks in the strait are happening close to shore (how can they not? Itβs narrow). The ones in Biscay in the winter and autumn are much further out, and thereβs not so much oversight of what goes on out there. In previous years, itβs been suggested that some of the encounters in Biscay have ended very badly for the orcas, although details are scarce because nobody wants to get in trouble.
jeanoappleseed
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@golly josh darn @Orc Yeah. I liked this better for the 3 years that the only people who knew about this were sailboat owners.
On the other hand, itβs providing something of a quality filter on my social media connections, so thereβs that, I suppose.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Miguel Arroz
Unknown parent • • •Miguel Arroz
in reply to Miguel Arroz • • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Miguel Arroz • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •@Orc @golly josh darn @Miguel Arroz I just looked, and second hand narrowboats, which are much more βworking class codedβ than sailboats, are about 5-10 times the cost of second hand sailboats at a similar level.
But no, itβs the people living on sailboats who are apparently wealthy.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Miguel Arroz • •@Miguel Arroz @Orc @golly josh darn This is a good point and something I hadn’t thought about. There are thousands of years of practice of Europeans managing the environment, which we treat ourselves as part of. I understand the Native American population very much did the same until the settlers stopped them (which, it has been suggested, has contributed to catastrophic wildfires being much worse than they otherwise would be - also the Little Ice Age is theorised to have been caused by massive US reforestation soaking up atmospheric CO2 within a couple of generations after the Native Americans were driven from their ancestral lands).
The more recent settler population in North America seems to have very different ideas to both the people they displaced, and
... show more@Miguel Arroz @Orc @golly josh darn This is a good point and something I hadnβt thought about. There are thousands of years of practice of Europeans managing the environment, which we treat ourselves as part of. I understand the Native American population very much did the same until the settlers stopped them (which, it has been suggested, has contributed to catastrophic wildfires being much worse than they otherwise would be - also the Little Ice Age is theorised to have been caused by massive US reforestation soaking up atmospheric CO2 within a couple of generations after the Native Americans were driven from their ancestral lands).
The more recent settler population in North America seems to have very different ideas to both the people they displaced, and their European ancestors about how to manage the environment, with a sort of βall or nothingβ approach (for example, nobody is allowed to live in many(most?) US national parks)
Most of the responses to this thread that have resulted in me server blocking people have occurred in US waking hours, although the fediverse is more culturally European than much social media, and the vast majority of the reaction to this thread has been very positive.
Something to think about.
Miguel Arroz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Miguel Arroz
in reply to Miguel Arroz • • •Miguel Arroz
in reply to Miguel Arroz • • •Miguel Arroz
in reply to Miguel Arroz • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Miguel Arroz • •Miguel Arroz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •legumancer Davy
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to legumancer Davy • •legumancer Davy
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legumancer Davy
Unknown parent • • •Acorn Squashbuckler
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Thanks for this insight! It's really helped me understand what's going on with the Orcas and boats, and why it's a problem. I've thought about this post a number of times since seeing it a few days ago, so I wanted to come back and thank you.
I also appreciate your insight in one of the replies β that there's tagging, tracking, and communication going on to combat the problem and avoid encounters. I find that really interesting and resourceful.
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Sarah Brown
in reply to Acorn Squashbuckler • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Noodlemaz You may not think playing volleyball with seals before killing and eating them isn't saidstic, but if so, you and I have very different definitions of that word.
Lots of dolphins in general are, let's be honest, bastards. Orcas aren't the worst dolphins, but they are certainly up there.
If you think that enjoying inflicting pain and suffering, and killing for enjoyment, is something that is unique to humans, then you're a fool.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Noodlemaz Yes, people call cats sadistic for torturing animals.
And orcas absolutely kill for pleasure, without eating.
*plonk*
Thaiis Thei π
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •vga256
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Allen Very Serious Versfeld
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Benjamin D. Hutchins
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •