Posted on 05/17/2020 3:58:41 AM PDT by C19fan
This is the terrifying moment three killer whales circled a pair of Russian kayakers who had paddled half a mile out to sea. Two kayakers immediately stop paddling in the calm waters as they spot the huge orcas swimming towards them. The nail-biting 40-second saga took place off Cape Mramorniy, on Sakhalin, an island that is almost as big as Scotland.
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Looking at the video, seems that the orcas were just heading straight out to sea and the kayak was just in the way.
Not that my heart wouldn’t have been pounding, too.
Orcas seem to be more discerning diners than sharks. They prefer seals as their meals.
The good thing about Orcas is that they are at the top of the food chain and will cause any shark to dive deep to save its life.
Kind of a neat video. You can see one of the orcas wants to get a better look at what is on the surface so he pops his head above water.
“Ah, just silly humans. Not tasty like seal.”
Smart creatures.
I bet nobody knows where this is??
I bet nobody knows where this is??
—
I didn’t. Googling “Sakhalin” shows it is a huge island north of Japan which belongs to Russia.
Pfl
All you’re supposed to do is reach forward with both arms and use the metal shaft of your paddle to gently tap, tap, tap on the top surface of your kayak. That’s Orca for “I’m not a seal, please don’t try to eat me.”
Depends on the type of Orca.
Resident Orcas eat almost exclusively fish. Transient Orcas eat almost exclusively mammals.
Half of Sakhalin used to belong to Japan but the Soviets grabbed the Japanese part at the close of WWII.
Survive the Savage Sea
In June 1972, the 43-foor schooner Lucette was attacked by killer whales and sank in 60 seconds. What happened next is almost incredible. In an inflatable rubber raft, with a 9 foot fiberglass dinghy to tow it, Dougal Robertson and his family were miles from any shipping lanes.
Oh, noes! The murder hornets may be teaming up with killer whales, studies say!
To paraphrase the comedian Henry Cho, I wonder if Orcas can smell urine.
Orcas are fascinating. Different pods have differently shaped dorsal fins. Some researchers believe the pods featuring the tallest and stiffest dorsal fins are populated by killer whales that from the youngest age spent their lives occupying the greatest water depth on average. When they travel or hunt, killer whale pods continuously cycle from the surface of the sea downward into the ocean depths and upward again to the surface to breathe, roughly tracing out a sine wave. Since killer whales spend the overwhelming majority of their time either hunting or travelling together with the other members of their respective pods, the whales associated with the deepest-diving pods tend to develop the tallest, straightest and stiffest dorsal fins overall. It makes perfect sense—as the deepest diving open-ocean predators age and grow, they subject their dorsal fins to less average net downward force over time. This is due to the fact that as depth increases, the compressive or squeezing forces present in ocean water, which act in all directions simultaneously and directly arithmetically increase in magnitude with water depth due to the steadily increasing collective weight of the water volume above, begins to predominate over the force the gravity, which remains constant regardless of depth, eventually dwarfing it. Over time, this fosters relatively unrestrained upward growth of the dorsal fin by placing considerably less average overall lateral stress on the structural tissues of the dorsal fins of habitually deep diving whales compared to whales populating other pods whose dives while hunting or travelling as a pack tend to be shallower and cyclically faster. Included among the latter are killer whale pods that tend to remain or linger closer to the coast, having adapted to local patterns of prey availability. Their dorsal fins tend to be shorter and somewhat stubbier. In extreme cases, such as with whales kept for long periods of time in captivity, dorsal fin collapse can occur, giving the fin a flopped-over appearance.
Killer whale to his buddies: Hey look! Snacks!
LOL!
Kayakers are Friends, Not Food!
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