Dumping sand in the water is said to confuse our orca foes. But for how long? We’re talking orcas here, not flounders.
When I last looked, the orca attacks were localized, confined to the skirmishes off the Iberian coast described by Jeffrey Blehar here.
Now there’s this (via the Daily Telegraph):
A killer whale has repeatedly rammed a yacht off the coast of Scotland, it has emerged, in an attack reminiscent of those seen 3,000 miles further south near Gibraltar.
The orca is said to have made contact with a small boat off the Shetland coast in the North sea as a solo sailor embarked on a trip from Lerwick to Bergen, Norway.
Dr Wim Rutten, 72, is a retired scientist and told The Guardian he saw the whale come up through the water and repeatedly, and deliberately, collide with his boat. The most frightening aspect of the ordeal, he claims, was not the several shocks from the impacts but the “very loud breathing of the animal”.
He claims the orca was “looking for the keel” after its initial barrage before vanishing back into the water before mounting numerous follow-up attacks afterwards and circling the seven-tonne yacht. “Maybe he just wanted to play. Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line,” he told the newspaper.
“Maybe he just wanted to play.” Somehow I don’t think that’s what the captain of the Lusitania would have said.
The Telegraph’s Joe Pinkstone warns that the “apparent focus on the rudders of boats has led some experts to suggest the attacks are a deliberate technique learnt over time to disable the boat.”
The concern is that this tactic, apparently dreamt up by “Gladis” (sometimes known as “White Gladis“), a “particularly vindictive” orca operating near Gibraltar, has been passed on to other packs (euphemistically known as pods) far to the north.
Dumping sand in the water is said to confuse our orca foes.
But for how long? We’re talking orcas here, not flounders.
Meanwhile, I note that this report is over a week old, which means the orca hordes could be closing in on our shores, which are, I hear, defended only by a hastily assembled seal militia.
That doesn’t bode well.