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.

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.

@goatsarah … most sadistic predators on earth …. ???
@orc They torture their food to death for fun.

@goatsarah Maybe yes, but that doesn't even come close to the spree killing that domestic cats (or humans, just to pick a couple of examples off the top of my head) do.

When you build your house in a fire zone, one of the risks is losing that house. People who live on sailboats in the PNW are hopefully taking a similar view when they sail their houses out into a fire zone.

@orc r/USDefaultism
@goatsarah Um. I don't think there are any orca attacks going on in the parts of the PNW that's controlled by the USA? But if there were, yeah, the fire risk is the same.
@orc Don’t think there are any Iberian orcas in the Pacific, mate.
@goatsarah The same risk is there, no? ruddering isn't any different when it's done in Canadian waters, unless the iberian orcas have started hanging around the boats and eating the passengers.
@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.
@goatsarah Admittedly, the lifestyle of cruising between the Mediterranean & Atlantic is not the kind of lifestyle many people would consider working class, but despite that there are ways to deal with it (up to and including just modifying the boat to ship the sailing rudder and travel under motor power (outboard motors aren't very attractive, but they're steerable)) just as you'd protect a forest house by clearing brush away from the property, installing fire shutters, and arranging the roof so cinders won't pool on it.

@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.

@goatsarah So you're saying this happens all over the Med? That makes it a bit pricklier, but maybe ... the photos I've seen of boats that have been holed by ruddering show the damage where the post enters the boat. A breakaway post might be a workaround (once you figure out the balance between steering forces and impact forces) because you might lose the rudder but you'll still have hull integrity.

If there are only certain parts of the sea where this happens it gets a lot easier. Ship the rudder when you reach the danger zone, motor through, then unship later.

@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.

@goatsarah If you can't easily drop the rudder it can at least be made to break away. Better to have to keep headway with the motor than to have a hole in the hull at the rudder post.

@orc @goatsarah

FFS, your trolling is sad.

This isn't an abstract, engineering problem.

Animal behavior is changing and people are dying.
Try to be human.

@TheActualBrian @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.

@goatsarah @orc

Sadly, it's over a matter of time.

@TheActualBrian @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.

@goatsarah @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.

@TheActualBrian @goatsarah Some marine biologists think that the PNW rudderings are because because the orca are trying to disable the boats like they would when they bite fins off sharks. (At least initially; these days I think the horrified consensus is that these are teenagers out for a joyride and they're ruddering boats for the lulz.)

And since we can't actually negotiate with them, we're stuck mitigating.

@TheActualBrian @goatsarah

You're right; it isn't an abstract engineering problem, but something that happens every day. Are you suggesting "we've tried nothing and we're out of ideas!

That's not a solution, unless your problem is that you want to complain about those mean whales. Which is fine, I guess, but not helpful to those people who cruise through the territory of those orca gangs.

@orc @goatsarah

Wow. Horrible straw man attempt.

Your trolling is really sad.

@TheActualBrian *your

If you don't want to engage, you have options.

@orc @goatsarah

Ok, ok.

sEcOnD mOsT.

Are you technically happy now?

@TheActualBrian @goatsarah

Third off the top of my head. There are too many stories of individual cats wiping out populations of endangered birds, and I hope I don't need to talk about humans.

@orc @goatsarah

No, you're doing a great job at showing us a sadistic human.

@TheActualBrian

You're weird. Are you trying to live up to your user picture? If so, congratulations, you have succeeded in your puzzling quest.

@orc

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

@goatsarah @orc Is there any reason to bring this up other than to imply it is morally correct to kill animals who's territory we have invaded?

I would argue that whether or not orcas are "sadistic" is a bullshit point that doesn't have anything to do with your main point, and only serves as a strawman to make people feel anger against them.

@WhyNotZoidberg @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

@goatsarah @WhyNotZoidberg

I’m sorry about your boat, but “kill the brutes!” is a bit of an overreaction.

@orc @WhyNotZoidberg 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.

@goatsarah @WhyNotZoidberg I ride bicycles long distances in the country; not so much during fire season. (Ditto for lions, which are another thing a lone femme can’t easily harden themselves against.)

What’s would be the point of saying that either of those are “sadistic”, even though the damage they cause is immediately to me instead of my possessions?

@orc @goatsarah I think she means humans eh.
@StereoIncognito @goatsarah It doesn't seem that way in context.
@goatsarah I’m innocent! Just my nature. . .
@Sarah Brown In fact it dosn't matter who runs what boats taking too much space around Gibraltar. Fact is, we - humans - take wayyy too much space. So i applaud orcas fighting for their space as much as any other non-human lifeform claiming back, what is theirs.
Who gives a fuck about boats? Only us.
@jrp Oh look, another arsehole wants a server block.
Can’t fucking help themselves. Seriously.
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.
@goatsarah And it would still make you an asshole even if they _were_ attacking billionaires.
@goatsarah Thank you! As a sailor it always physically hurts seeing a sailboat being crippled or sunk :(
@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.

@fedops @goatsarah

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 @fedops

For those in the back:

>>> DIRECT OBSERVATION <<<

@goatsarah 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).
@legumancer 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 …
@goatsarah actually yeah I guess that's a fair point.

@goatsarah 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.

@AcornSquashbuckler 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.
@goatsarah It isn't about facts. It is about the simmering rage that is raging just barely below the surface of our society.
@goatsarah thanks for this. i've been quietly grumbling for weeks saying the exact same thing to myself.
@goatsarah Thank you! I tried to say something similar yesterday, but you've made the point much more convincingly.
@goatsarah Reality lets us down once again.