Pilot whale attacks

[KellysEye]

This was in the ocean Cruising Cub's latest monthly newsletter.

''A recent issue of Cruising World magazine carried an article about a vessel that was repeatedly attacked by pilot whales in the Pacific. This was curious as friends of ours were attacked by false killer whales in the North Atlantic in a very similar incident. A member of our SSB net mentioned that there have been other incidents of whales attacking boats with red bottoms, and sure enough our friends had just painted their boat’s bottom red before they left. Upon researching it further, indeed I found a few reports of whales (like bulls) attacking boats with red bottoms. It would be useful to gather more evidence to share with cruisers. If you have had a violent encounter with whales or know of someone who did, please email me details and please indicate the color of the boat’s bottom.

I've always understood that killer whales attack boats with white bottoms on the permise that they look like the botoms of larger whales. Seems like pilot whals are different and thus red and white are not a good idea.

 

[PaulJ]

...... and I've got a red bottom

We were attacked by what I think was a sperm whale near East Diamond Islet, about 150nm outside the Great Barrier Reef. Yes, we do have a red bottom but........

FWIW..... Having heard this theory about whale attacks, I asked the same question about six years ago shortly before deciding what colour antifouling to buy. There were a number of replies, including one from someone (sorry, 'can't remember who) who seemed very knowlegeable about things biological, assuring me that whales do not have the requisite rods or cones (or whatever it was) to determine colour and that therefore they see in black and white.....

I have posted this pic before but it is topical so here it is again........ The dent in my steel hull left by the forehead of a sperm whale.......

 

[Terra-Loon]

A couple of weekends ago I had an encounter with 10-20 large creatures that may have been pilot whales, a mile or into the bay off Brixham.

At first I assumed they were dolphins, but both of us on board were taken a'back by how large they were and their deep black colour.

We watched them for a good 5 mins as they showed up almost all around us. They didn't seem interested in playing in our bows, but one or two of them put on a fairly spectalular show jumping out of the water. Thats when we both noted how large they were.

Could they have been pilot whales?

The bottom of my boat is maroon, by the way...

 

[Conachair]

We were attacked by what I think was a sperm whale near East Diamond Islet, about 150nm outside the Great Barrier Reef. Yes, we do have a red bottom but........

FWIW..... Having heard this theory about whale attacks, I asked the same question about six years ago shortly before deciding what colour antifouling to buy. There were a number of replies, including one from someone (sorry, 'can't remember who) who seemed very knowlegeable about things biological, assuring me that whales do not have the requisite rods or cones (or whatever it was) to determine colour and that therefore they see in black and white.....

I have posted this pic before but it is topical so here it is again........ The dent in my steel hull left by the forehead of a sperm whale.......

Thanks for the post, if there is ever a shred of doubt about having a steel boat then a post like this banishes it.

ta (from an Ebbtide)


Also, just finished http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mingming-Ar...3519/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1317386345&sr=8-9

He talks of being almost becalmed and surrounded by pilot whales in the far north for hours, but none attached the boat.

 

[KellysEye]

>We were attacked by what I think was a sperm whale near East Diamond Islet

Wow, what an amazing picture. Funnily enough we bought a steel boat on the premise that if you sail for long enough something will hit you or you will hit something. We got hit twice, the first time by a boat boy in Dominica at full speed in a heavy pirogue. It would have sunk a GRP boat. He came at our beam and couldn't get his engine out of gear. We pointed out that you should always approach parallel to a boat.

 

[idpnd]

Hehe! topical! red bottom steel boat, saw lots of pilot whales the other day, swam around bow didn't attack though

 

[AntarcticPilot]

FWIW..... Having heard this theory about whale attacks, I asked the same question about six years ago shortly before deciding what colour antifouling to buy. There were a number of replies, including one from someone (sorry, 'can't remember who) who seemed very knowlegeable about things biological, assuring me that whales do not have the requisite rods or cones (or whatever it was) to determine colour and that therefore they see in black and white.....

Neither do bulls - it is the movement of the cape that attracts them and enrages them, not the colour.

THIS suggests that whales (Cetaceans in the language of the paper) do have colour vision - but that it isn't like our colour vision.

 

[PaulJ]

THIS suggests that whales (Cetaceans in the language of the paper) do have colour vision - but that it isn't like our colour vision.

Hmmm...... 'Bit deep but fascinating stuff. Thanks

P

 

[VO5]

I was told by an old salt in the U S that killer whales attack boats with black antifouling. Any Comments ?

 

[[10753]]

There's probably no confirmed reason !

Wonder how a proper built ferro boat would have stood up ?

 

[HinewaisMan]

We had a pod of pilot whales playing with us in the Indian Ocean.

There were three or four mums with littlies surfing the quarter wave, a couple of biggies just slowly cruising back and forth off the stern, and what we took to be the adolescents playing around the boat.

Most of the time they were playing off the bow wave, but every now and again, one would come alongside our hull and nudge us. It wasn’t threatening, almost as if they wanted to see what we felt like.

This went on for a magic 30 minutes.

(We’re steel, black heavy displacement hull)

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I've just been re-reading "The Yankee Whaler" by Clifford W Ashley (yes, the one who wrote the book of knots). Ashley grew up in New Bedford during the closing years of the Sperm Whale fishery, and he documented what he recognized to be a declining industry. He did at least one voyage on a whaler - and this was whaling from open boats using hand harpoons, not the whaling of the southern ocean using harpoon guns and powered catcher vessels. In the book, he makes some interesting remarks about the danger to ships of different species of whale.

The main one is that he reckons the only whale dangerous to ships is the sperm whale, which he regards as having "hard" flesh; that other species have "soft" flesh and so not capable of inflicting damage by ramming, It is, perhaps, also instructive that Maurice and Marilyn Bailey (109 days adrift) attributed their sinking to Sperm whales, and the Robertson Family (Survive the savage sea) to Killer whales - also toothed whales, like sperm whales. Of course, Ashley only considers the great whales, not the smaller cetacea.

 

[Ric]

Video here of a sperm whale attacking a (irony of ironies) Japanese fishing boat, killing one person.

The comments are worth a read!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oncM13e9Y1w


I have on two occasions nearly hit sperm whales in the Med - after a deep dive they lie recovering almost motionless on the surface and are quite hard to spot. I often wonder how they would react if one accidentally did hit one.

 

[PaulJ]

Ric, that is an amazing video...... in my posting above I said "We were attacked by what I think was a sperm whale....." , I said "I think" because never having seen one before, I only had pictures to go on but that video confirms that what attacked us was indeed a Sperm Whale. I didn't see the whole animal but I saw from it's head back to just behind the dorsal fin and I would guestimate that it was about 40ft long. We were doing around 6kts at the time and it was disappearing fast in our wake and "lolloping around" as if it was drunk......... but then it had just banged it's head on about 17tons of steel boat!

 

[Ric]

You may have accidentally run over the sperm whale while it was recovering from a deep dive. They lie semi-comatose on the surface, and don't necessarily hear an approaching sailing yacht. If surprised, I suppose they could react violently. As the video from Japan shows, if provoked they will attack.

Pilot whales also certainly bump boats in the Med occasionally. A friend of mine had his 27fter bumped continuously for several minutes and even had his boat spun round.

Pilot whales are very sociable and protective of each other. If one is threatened, the rest of the pod will come to assist and protect - which is why they may attack boats. This is also one theory for why pilot whales often beach en masse - if one gets stuck, the others come to assist.

Here's a link to a video of a pilot whale encounter in the Med.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ot-whale-and-did-it-attack-my-boat-66644.html

 

[PaulJ]

You may have accidentally run over the sperm whale while it was recovering from a deep dive. They lie semi-comatose on the surface, and don't necessarily hear an approaching sailing yacht. If surprised, I suppose they could react violently. As the video from Japan shows, if provoked they will attack.
/QUOTE]

Yes, our first thought was that we must have bumped into him while he was asleep but when we got the boat out of the water and saw the localised extent of the damage, it became evident that he must have "T-boned" us. Maybe we had given him a scare first and that was why he attacked...... We were below decks at the time so the first we knew of it was the big lurch when he hit us.

 

[CruisingKitty]

I have posted this pic before but it is topical so here it is again........ The dent in my steel hull left by the forehead of a sperm whale.......

Paul, I am the one who wrote the original note in the OCC bulletin. I have also written an article for the OCC magazine about encounters between whales and boats. I would love to include your photo. Could I please have your permission to reproduce the photo and might you have a higher res version? If you agree, please let me know how you would like the photo credit to read.

Many thanks! And thanks so much to all of you for sharing your stories.

 

[AndrewB]

We watched them for a good 5 mins as they showed up almost all around us. They didn't seem interested in playing in our bows, but one or two of them put on a fairly spectalular show jumping out of the water. Thats when we both noted how large they were.

Could they have been pilot whales?

Below is a pic of a pod of maybe 100 pilot whales that accompanied us past the Canary Islands.

They aren't really that much bigger than dolphins. Their blunt heads and hooked dorsal fin distinguishes them from dolphins. They aren't great jumpers though. I would guess at a different type of whale.

I don't know about dangerous but they can be mischievous. One Christmas day we were becalmed in the middle of the Atlantic when a pod of pilot whales found us. I was peering over the side to see them when one dived right under the boat, surfaced right beneath me and spouted, soaking me with stinking water. The rest of the pod responded with squeaks and chirps that sounded for all the world like laughter!

 

[Tricia]

We were sailing in the Gulf of Aden back in Sept '08, when we had a close encounter with a lone whale.

Rob could hear it blowing for about half an hour before he spotted it circling us about 100 meters out. I went below to get the camera and, as I came into the cockpit, Rob pointed to port and shouted "Look at that, look at that!". Well, I nearly died. The whale was hurtling through the water directly at our amidships, about 10/15 meters off, it dived. We saw the water go light, bright blue as it slapped it's tail on the water and it shot under our boat and surfaced about 20 meters on the other side.

I was half thrilled, half terrified and managed to take a photo of my foot as opposed to the whale.

It is difficult to say how big it was, we guessed at about 10 to 12 meters, anyway bigger than us (we have a Sadler 25).

Later on speaking to someone who supposedly knew about whales, we were told it was probably warning us off however, we did have a family of dorade under the boat, so maybe it was hunting them.