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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.
@fedops@fosstodon.org@goatsarah 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.
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.
@marq @fedops 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.
@goatsarah @marq @fedops how do you suggest this behavior by the orcas be stopped?
@jeanoappleseed @marq @fedops 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.
@goatsarah @marq @fedops Thanks for the info. It sounds like a very complex situation.