Orca attack

[Thresher]

Local weather says come Friday it’s going to rain and get colder,are you staying the winter in the rias

I am slowly working my way down to the south of Spain, to return again in the Spring. I have hardly seen a drop of rain since I left the UK three months ago. It has been too good to last.

 

[Daydream believer]

I would imagine getting in position on the boat, where advice is to stay out of view, then aim the spray down wind, at an Orca within the time it surfaces is difficult. One does not know where it will surface or what side of the boat.. will it. Already have a chunk of rudder in its jaws. If so would it be wise to wind it up further?
Apart from that the water wil immediately wash off any spray. One should realise that the animal might be doing 10knots through the sea at the time & so the result might be irritating at the most.
perhaps the spray has been tried & rejected or put up for further investigation. No reasonable idea should get the cold shoulder.

 

[Laser310]

I would imagine getting in position on the boat, where advice is to stay out of view, then aim the spray down wind, at an Orca within the time it surfaces is difficult. One does not know where it will surface or what side of the boat.. will it. Already have a chunk of rudder in its jaws. If so would it be wise to wind it up further?
Apart from that the water wil immediately wash off any spray. One should realise that the animal might be doing 10knots through the sea at the time & so the result might be irritating at the most.
perhaps the spray has been tried & rejected or put up for further investigation. No reasonable idea should get the cold shoulder.

the spray is oil based and does not easily wash off in water - think of eating a particularly hot vindaloo, and trying to ease the pain by drinking water... It doesn't work quickly.

it's certainly possible that the orca might just get more aggressive - but that is not the experience with bears. They mostly cease the attack because of the extreme pain. Again: it is considered more effective at stopping a bear attack than a bullet, because the bears are huge, and the bullet isn't that painful, initially at least.

certainly a moving boat would present difficulties.

on the other hand, you are not going to out run them..., so why not stop if they are biting you rudder, and try to give them a spray with this stuff?

it's possible that just a small amount in a blow hole or eye would stop the attack

in the videos they often surface near the boat

All I am saying is: in the waters off spain, we have a problem with large mammals causing trouble - even danger - to humans. It turns out that we also have a product - designed by wildlife biologists - to deter large mammals without causing permanent injury. This product has been very successful on the mammals for which it was designed.

Why not try it?

 

[greeny]

the spray is oil based and does not easily wash off in water - think of eating a particularly hot vindaloo, and trying to ease the pain by drinking water... It doesn't work quickly.

it's certainly possible that the orca might just get more aggressive - but that is not the experience with bears. They mostly cease the attack because of the extreme pain. Again: it is considered more effective at stopping a bear attack than a bullet, because the bears are huge, and the bullet isn't that painful, initially at least.

certainly a moving boat would present difficulties.

on the other hand, you are not going to out run them..., so why not stop if they are biting you rudder, and try to give them a spray with this stuff?

it's possible that just a small amount in a blow hole or eye would stop the attack

in the videos they often surface near the boat

All I am saying is: in the waters off spain, we have a problem with large mammals causing trouble - even danger - to humans. It turns out that we also have a product - designed by wildlife biologists - to deter large mammals without causing permanent injury. This product has been very successful on the mammals for which it was designed.

Why not try it?

Because you will only have the one chance to scare them away (if you're lucky and see them in time). If you use the spray and it doesn't work, your rudder may well be damaged before you can use something else. At the moment my money is on firecrackers, the only thing I've personally seen work.

 

[Daydream believer]

Because you will only have the one chance to scare them away (if you're lucky and see them in time). If you use the spray and it doesn't work, your rudder may well be damaged before you can use something else. At the moment my money is on firecrackers, the only thing I've personally seen work.

My friends have taken diver recall signals. They have a fuse & are lowered into the water to a depth set by the string they are suspended on. The bang is meant to recall divers but close to an Orca would be better controlled than a randomly dropped firecracker.
they tried one on the boat & got a bit of a shock so it seems

 

[rogerthebodger]

When I was SCUBA diving our dive master has a device attached to his dive cylinder that made a noise from the compressed aut when a valve was pressed

I wonder if this would work to ward if orcas

 

[Zing]

Orcas use echolocation. It wouldn’t take much rocket science to make a device to work at the frequencies they are sensitive to and to make the volume and pattern so that they find it unpleasant and so go and make baby orcas instead. There’s surely a business opportunity in this for someone with some free time.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

Orcas use echolocation. It wouldn’t take much rocket science to make a device to work at the frequencies they are sensitive to and to make the volume and pattern so that they find it unpleasant and so go and make baby orcas instead. There’s surely a business opportunity in this for someone with some free time.

There are already acoustic diver recall systems that work with a hydrophone, in the region of £5K so might be a tad expensive for the traditional cruiser.

 

[Zing]

There are already acoustic diver recall systems that work with a hydrophone, in the region of £5K so might be a tad expensive for the traditional cruiser.

That would be, but most boats have echolocation devices already fitted that cost a tenth of that, so it’s not hard to imagine an anti-orca device could be made cheaply enough, all the more so as they will need no display screen or receive circuits.

 

[Laser310]

Orcas use echolocation. It wouldn’t take much rocket science to make a device to work at the frequencies they are sensitive to and to make the volume and pattern so that they find it unpleasant and so go and make baby orcas instead. There’s surely a business opportunity in this for someone with some free time.

that actually sounds like a lot of work...

and good luck getting any whale researchers to cooperate.

and to (legally) work with wild whales to test it would be nearly impossible.

supposedly, the US navy has worked on this - not with total success though.

If firecrackers work, and they can be obtained, that is probably the simplest way to go.

 

[Snowgoose-1]

Bit more info. with pics
COMPREHENDING ORCAS: Why the Heck Are They Messing With Sailboats? - Wave Train

 

[John_Silver]

Orcas use echolocation. It wouldn’t take much rocket science to make a device to work at the frequencies they are sensitive to and to make the volume and pattern so that they find it unpleasant and so go and make baby orcas instead. There’s surely a business opportunity in this for someone with some free time.

Such a device has been developed (by a company which has successfully employed a similar approach, to deter seals from predating on fish farms) according to this PBO news item . Be interesting to see how the trials off Galicia go.....

 

[webcraft]

Firecrackers

No need to reinvent the wheel!

- W

 

[michael_w]

Another boat sunk When is someone going to kill this rogue pod? Probably when a human gets eaten, spare the bleeding heart stuff please.

 

[Laser310]

it says near gibraltar

do we have a more precise location?

 

[Thresher]

it says near gibraltar

do we have a more precise location?

There is a report from insider.com that says the boat sank on the 31st of October at the entrance to Tanger-Med, a Moroccan port. That's at about the narrowest point in the straits of Gibraltar.
Strangely, it has not yet been reported either on orcas.pt or in the app Orcinus.

 

[Laser310]

There is a report from insider.com that says the boat sank on the 31st of October at the entrance to Tanger-Med, a Moroccan port. That's at about the narrowest point in the straits of Gibraltar.
Strangely, it has not yet been reported either on orcas.pt or in the app Orcinus.

i found this position

the date is oct 31 61:36 UTC

 

[kingsebi]

I read that no full keel yacht with the rudder attached to the keel got targeted by the orcas until now. Only free standing rudders. Can anybody confirm this?

 

[webcraft]

I read that no full keel yacht with the rudder attached to the keel got targeted by the orcas until now. Only free standing rudders. Can anybody confirm this?

A Nauticat had its rudder stripped to a bare steel shaft so no - no hull/keel/rudder combo is immune

 

[E39mad]

A Nauticat had its rudder stripped to a bare steel shaft so no - no hull/keel/rudder combo is immune

Depends on what age Nauticat - later designs from the 90's onwards had fin keels and spade rudders.