Fish on Fridays: Killer Whale Verus Great White:

Killer Whale Verus Great White:



The Killer Whale grabs and flips the Great White to immobilize it. Yeah, I think this Orca has done this particular trick before!  

What's the Jack Russell connection you ask?  What?  You don't know who the lead singer of Great White is?  Seriously?
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The Day Could Have Been Worse

Pretty much everything is worse than awesome... except death.

This is what it looks like from below (this whale is off of Baja and probably not the same one).

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A Whale In Marrakech

I was sliding down a side street in Marrakech when I spied this bit of detritus on a table -- a chunk of whale back bone. The seller knew what it was, of course, but it was odd seeing it so far from the sea in a country we do not often associate with whales. Of course, Morocco has a long Atlantic coast and many whales are out there. No doubt this was a beach find that was traded inland.  Proof, once again, that anything and everything may be for sale on any given day.

Maybe Killer Whales are Just Smart?

This fellow is a bit math challenged. It's 2010. If the first Killer Whales were captured in the mid 1960s, then it's 45 years they they have been in captivity, not 60 or 70 years. It's a small point, I know, but this kind of stuff bugs me.

Also, his core thesis is not on the money either.

Very few Killer Whales have ever been in captivity. Only 47 are in captivity right now. Depite the low numbers, however, these animals have a pretty good track record of injuring, scaring, intimidating and even killing their trainers. Five trainers have been killed so far.

So, NO, it's NOT "a surprising thing that this thing would happen."

And for the record, for the trainers working with this particular animal, this should have been no suprise at all. After all this one whale had already killed three other people.

Come on people! We are dealing with an apex pack predator here -- one that weighs between three and six tons as an adult. One that is called a "Killer Whale."

It is smarter that a fifth grader and we keep them in a concrete tank.

We rip them from the ocean when they are a year or two old, and long before they are properly socialized.

And yet we wonder why a few might go crazy?

Yes, someone is out of their minds, but most of the time I do not think it is the whales!

As for the reference to Namu, the back story as to how Killer Whales ended up in American "curiosity aquariums" is worth telling.

As the old web site for the Center for Whale Research notes:

The first killer whale capture was in 1961 by Marineland of the Pacific in California. They captured a sick, disoriented mature female in Newport Harbor, California. Two days after the introduction into her tank, she smashed her rostrum head-on into the tanks' wall and died.

The next captive killer whale was in 1964. This did not start out as a live capture, but eventually ended up as the first whale to be kept in captivity for a period of time. A sculptor by the name of Samuel Burich was commissioned in 1964 by the Vancouver Aquarium to go out and kill a killer whale and fashion a life-sized model of it for the aquariums' new British Columbia hall. Burich harpooned a 15-foot long, 1-ton whale near East Point, Saturna Island in British Columbia. When the whale did not die immediately, even after being shot, the aquarium director, Murray Newman, decided to keep the killer whale alive and tow the whale back to Vancouver, British Columbia - a 20-mile journey. He used the harpoon line attached to the base of the whales dorsal fin as the tow line. The harpooned whale that was towed to Vancouver was named Moby Doll (although later they found out it was male). People were surprised by Moby Dolls docility. Moby Doll was kept in captivity for 87 days until he died from a skin disease caused by the harbors' low salinity water.

For the first time, newspapers and magazines including Reader's Digest, Life, The Times of London, and the Victoria Times gave some positive press about killer whales. Moby Doll's captivity started a new era for killer whales.

Killer whale captures for exhibition purposes began in the Northwest in 1965. The second capture in the Northwest was an accidental catch of a 24-foot long, 5-ton male who got snared in a fishing net off Namu, British Columbia. The two fishermen who owned the net decided to sell him alive to the first person who gave them a bid.

Ted Griffin, owner of the Seattle Public Aquarium, had dreamed for many years of befriending a killer whale. Killer whales are the largest of the dolphin family, and he was convinced that such a relationship was possible. When Griffin heard of the captured killer whale, he jumped at the opportunity and bought the whale for 8,000 dollars, the cost of replacing the net. He named the whale Namu, after the town if its capture.

And so the adventure began ....
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God Says to Kill SeaWorld's Management?

Over at a web site called Rightly Concerned they seem to be suggesting that God wants Seaworld's management DEAD.

Their rationale? The Bible tells them so!

Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture....

... If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum [the Killer Whale that killed its handler] would have been put out of everyone's misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, "When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable." (Exodus 21:28)

So, your animal kills somebody, your moral responsibility is to put that animal to death. You have no moral culpability in the death, because you didn't know the animal was going to go postal on somebody.

But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn't kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, "the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death." (Exodus 21:29)

Of course, the Bible also greenlights slavery, rape (provided you pay a small fine and marry the girl), and human sacrifice.

Follow directions people!
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Free Willy?

Whatever happened to Keiko?

Kieko, for those who do not know, was the star of the movie "Free Willy."

Keiko was born in 1977 or 1978, and captured near Iceland in 1979. He was then sold to the Icelandic aquarium in Hafnarfjörður.

Three years later, in 1982, he was sold to Marineland in Ontario, Canada, where he first started performing for the public and where he began to develop skin lesions.

In 1985, Keiko was sold to Reino Aventura (now "Six Flags Mexico"), in Mexico City, for $350,000.

It is here that Willy first came to the attention of a writer and producer for Warner Brothers, who wrote and produced the movie "Free Willy," which premiered in 1993 and made over $153 million worldwide.

Thanks to publicity from the movie and its sequels (and with the very reluctant support of Warner Brothers) a push was made to "save" Keiko by moving him to a better aquarium in the U.S.

In 1996, Keiko was flow out of Mexico by UPS and rehomed at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in his own $7 million tank. Over the next two years, Keiko gained over 2,000 pounds in weight and rid himself of his skin problems.

In September of 1998, Keiko was flown to Iceland under the auspices of Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society.

The goal: Return Keiko (aka "Willy") back to the wild.

Keiki was flown in a US Airforce C-17 transport jet to a massive holding pen in Klettsvik Bay in Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland where he was to be re-acclimatated to the wild.

Part of the reacclimatization program eventually included supervised free swims in the open ocean where, after a period, Keiko appeared to begin feeding on his own, and where he also met (and perhaps socialized) with wild Orcas.

On a supervised free swim in July of 2002, Keiko disappeared, and he could not be relocated despite satellite telemetry attached to one of his fins.

In November of 2002, Keiko was spotted off the coast of Norway, almost 900 miles away, and he followed a fishing boat to the port of of Halsa,. Norway.

From Halsa, Keiko was led, through the open ocean, to nearby Taknes Bay where he was fed by caretakers, and where the responsibility for his care was transfered from the Ocean Futures Society to the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and the Humane Society of the US.

In December of 2003, Keiko died in Taknes Bay, Norway, apparently of pneumonia.

He was buried on shore, his grave marked by a stone cairn assembled by Norwegian school children.
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Whale Song

Australian telecommunications company Optus asks the question, 'What if you could write a love song for a whale, and an orchestra went out into the ocean to play it?' Film director David Denneen worked with composer Bruce Heald and a specially selected chamber music group to perform music that both whales and humans could appreciate.

An orchestra was placed on a barge with film crew and sent out to serenade the whales, emulating the sounds made by male humpback whales as they migrate along the coast of Queensland.

Picture of Giant Squid Eaten by Sperm Whale

A female sperm whale with a giant squid in her mouth. Her calf follows closely, and another whale is pictured behind her, in this rare image taken in the seas of Japan earlier this year. Check out the entire photo set on The Daily Mail web site.
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Electrocuting Whales & Machine Gunning Seals

The above jaw-dropping article is from a 1931 edition of Modern Mechanics magazine.

Click on the picture to enlarge it, and be sure to read the whole thing

It seems some Norwegian fellow figured out a way to electrocute whales with a generator and a harpoon.

What could possibly go wrong with this idea?

One hundred thousand pounds of angry whale, a gasoline-powered generator putting out enough amps to kill five circus elephants, a lot of wire coiled in the bow, foaming swells breaking over the gunwales, straining oars, and a fellow standing up?

Sounds perfect!

Check out the last few sentences in the above article too, as well as the drawing at the bottom.

It seems a couple of intrepid Americans decided machine-gunning sea lions was a perfect solution to declining salmon fisheries on the West Coast. Never mind all those brand-new mile-long gill nets. The declining salmon population must be due to those pesky sea lions!

But, of course, nothing much changes, does it?

The last buffalo hunt is going on right now in our oceans and seas. Cod has been nearly wiped out in the North Atlantic, Swordfish has been pushed to the edge, Sharks have been decimated by long liners, and Tuna prices are shooting through the roof as catch numbers are plummeting into the basement.

Meanwhile, whales are still paying the price for human stupidity more than 100 years ago.

This summer, Inupiat whale hunters in Alaska found the business-end of a 115-year old harpoon buried in the body of a 50-ton Bowhead Whale caught off Alaska.

The harpoon was part of an exploding lance made between 1885 and 1895 on the Southeast Coast of Massachusetts, where supplies were quickly used up. The lance company went out of business, as whaling populations crashed.

And they have not recovered quickly, have they?

Today, there are only about 9,000 Bowhead Whales left in the world -- less than 20 percent of their former numbers.



Crosby, Stills & Nash: "To the Last Whale"
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