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Sarah Brown
@Orc They torture their food to death for fun.
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@Orc Don’t think there are any Iberian orcas in the Pacific, mate.
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@Orc Not really, no. The animals all the memes and the fucked up celebrity status spend most of the time in a waterway that’s basically impossible to avoid if you’re transiting between the Med and Atlantic, which a LOT of people do. There have been multiple attacks per day on average for the last 3-4 years now, and it’s escalating. One of the animals has turned up dead in a French estuary with a bullet in it. They have attacked boats from Gibraltar to the Scilly isles, basically the entire Atlantic coast of continental Europe.
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@Dutch1889 Because they’re not. Fuck off.
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.

reshared this

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@_jayrope Oh look, another arsehole wants a server block.
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@Orc No, you really can’t 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.

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@Orc No. They don’t go into the med. it happens between the Strait of Gibraltar the the English Channel.

Most boats these days with modern rudders, you can’t just drop it. Can’t on long keelers either. It’s integrated.

People have thought of this. All of it. It. Doesn’t. Work.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Anybody else want to leave an arsehole reply? Got anything you enjoy doing? Is it utterly consumption neutral? Maybe you should be chased by a fucking tiger while doing it? No? Good. Then fuck off.

reshared this

in reply to Sarah Brown

And it would still make you an asshole even if they _were_ attacking billionaires.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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The Actual Brian

@orc
Ok, ok.

sEcOnD mOsT.

Are you technically happy now?

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The Actual Brian

@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.

in reply to The Actual Brian

@The Actual Brian @Orc Thankfully nobody has died yet. It’s 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.

in reply to The Actual Brian

@The Actual Brian @Orc I fear so, although now we have good intel on their position, the attacks should decrease. They decrease for the latter part of the year anyway because the animals migrate to Biscay and are much more spread out. At the moment, if you sail out of the med into the Atlantic and go beyond the 20 metre contour line, they WILL get you.
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The Actual Brian
@orc
No, you're doing a great job at showing us a sadistic human.
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.

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The Actual Brian

Wow. Horrible straw man attempt.

Your trolling is really sad.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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The Actual Brian

@orc

Sorry that I don't feed your trolling attempts.
They're lame and amateuristic.

in reply to Sarah Brown

very interesting thanks. It would make sense to me if they'd attack fishing boats. (and, in that case, they would be harming the wrong class as well, but I would still be cheering them on?)
in reply to bebatjof πŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ

@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.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@bebatjof says 2020 here:

orcaiberica.org/en/antecedente…

I remember reading a paper about it but I can't find it now...

in reply to Russ Garrett

@Russ Garrett @bebatjof Indeed. Absolutely certain I first heard of this happening in sailing community forums before Covid though.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Thank you! As a sailor it always physically hurts seeing a sailboat being crippled or sunk πŸ™
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@Why Not Zoidberg? πŸ¦‘ @Orc It matters quite a lot if you’re the one about to be in the fucking water with them, tosser.

Another arsehole, another server block. plonk

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@Orc @Why Not Zoidberg? πŸ¦‘ Do you enjoy doing something?

Maybe you should be chased by tigers while doing it.

You were hovering on the edge, but I think you’re engaging in bad faith here and it’s server block time. Tchau.

in reply to Sarah Brown

nice lecture. However, there are no sadistic predators. This is the kind of anthropomorphic BS that currently takes a huge toll on the shark population and leads so-called humans to eliminate lots of species over the centuries. Please stop projecting human traits onto animals - they don't deserve it.
in reply to fedops πŸ’™πŸ’›

@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.

in reply to Buster McNutt

@Marq βš›οΈ @fedops πŸ’™πŸ’› 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 they’re not as bad as their close relative: the bottlenose dolphin. Now they can really be prone to being utter bastards.

in reply to jeanoappleseed

@jeanoappleseed @Marq βš›οΈ @fedops πŸ’™πŸ’› 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. It’s 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? It’s narrow). The ones in Biscay in the winter and autumn are much further out, and there’s not so much oversight of what goes on out there. In previous years, it’s 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.

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Sarah Brown

@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, it’s providing something of a quality filter on my social media connections, so there’s that, I suppose.

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Sarah Brown
@golly josh darn @Orc It’s worse than losing it in the middle of the ocean. A lot of these attacks happen close to lee shores (I.e., lose your rudder and you get blown onto rocks)
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Miguel Arroz
@klardotsh @orc Having lived on both sides of the pond, there’s definitely a clash on how people look at the relationship between people and nature. Here it’s more β€œthe deer is not crossing the road, the road is crossing the forest” and there are heavy fines and prision time if people mess or even disturb wild life. So different views on the whole orca issue are expected.
in reply to Miguel Arroz

The association with wealth is more dubious, though. There are a lot of people here in Vancouver living in boats, or trying to, and they are not rich folks. I’m fact many do it because it’s cheaper than renting or owning property. Their biggest enemies are the marinas, which increasingly forbid living in boats that are parked there. But I’m sure they would be sympathetic with Iberian sailors and wanting a solution that protected both sides.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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Sarah Brown
@merzbow and chill @Why Not Zoidberg? πŸ¦‘ @Orc And another one for the β€œarsehole server block” list. Bit of a target-rich environment today.
in reply to Miguel Arroz

@Miguel Arroz @Orc @golly josh darn Yes. I get the feeling that if we were talking about narrow boats, the reaction would be profoundly different.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@Orc @golly josh darn @Miguel Arroz I just looked, and second hand narrowboats, which are much more β€œworking class coded” than sailboats, are about 5-10 times the cost of second hand sailboats at a similar level.

But no, it’s the people living on sailboats who are apparently wealthy.

in reply to Miguel Arroz

in reply to Sarah Brown

@orc @klardotsh I think Europe is very heterogenous in that regard. For example, UK has the same culture of urban parks and green spaces as here. People understand the daily contact with nature is essential. That doesn't happen in Portugal. As much as I think about coming back every day, how Portugal deals with nature is a downside for me. See the episode of asphalting the Fonte da Telha parking lot right on the beach (or having a parking lot on the beach in first place). 1/…
in reply to Miguel Arroz

@orc @klardotsh Although there has been more effort to preserve nature and make it enjoyable by people (lots of passadiΓ§os popping up everywhere), there's still a strong mindset nature is just something in the way of people being able to drive their cars everywhere. Last December I walked on some trails near the cliffs in Cabo SardΓ£o and Cabo Espichel, and I saw people driving on those trais on both locations… 2/…
in reply to Miguel Arroz

@orc @klardotsh It's more of less unanimous among Portuguese people I know that moved to North America that preserving and enjoying nature here is something done much better than in PT. Doesn't help the constitutional court keeps challenging the application of the new law that criminalizes attacks against animals and wildlife. 3/…
in reply to Miguel Arroz

@orc @klardotsh You're 100% right regarding fire management. Recently I learned that the controlled burns that were always done in California, especially by native people, stopped being done a few years ago because people complained about the smoke… so when everything caught fire, it was quite bad. 4/4
in reply to Miguel Arroz

@Miguel Arroz @Orc Although it should be noted that there is not one square metre of untouched wilderness in the UK. It’s all entirely curated, and most of it has been for thousands of years.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@orc Yeah, that is true. I was surprised when I learned pretty much all the forest around Vancouver is like that. Everything was logged, and re-planted (probably with much higher density than before, which is a fire risk, but the douglas firs have plenty of humidity so it isn't too bad).
@Orc
in reply to Sarah Brown

I think sadistic is anthropomorphizing, but the rest of this is accurate. My husband and I lived on a 1990s sailboat for a few years. She was technically a "yacht" because any recreational vessel is a yacht (and it's still classed as recreational if you live there), but we also got turned away from repair yards because they "only work on yachts" (the other, fancy boat definition).
in reply to legumancer Davy

@legumancer Davy I’ve seen videos of them playing volleyball with seals before killing and eating them, and obviously having a great time doing it. If the shoe fits …
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 – that there's tagging, tracking, and communication going on to combat the problem and avoid encounters. I find that really interesting and resourceful.

in reply to Acorn Squashbuckler

@Acorn Squashbuckler It’s already paid dividends. We were notified last night that one pod has started migrating west. Before, the first we’d have known about it was when boats were suddenly attacked off Faro. Now we know to stay away.
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Sarah Brown

@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.

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Sarah Brown

@Noodlemaz Yes, people call cats sadistic for torturing animals.

And orcas absolutely kill for pleasure, without eating.

*plonk*

in reply to Sarah Brown

It isn't about facts. It is about the simmering rage that is raging just barely below the surface of our society.
in reply to Sarah Brown

thanks for this. i've been quietly grumbling for weeks saying the exact same thing to myself.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Thank you! I tried to say something similar yesterday, but you've made the point much more convincingly.
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