Serious mature question about Orcas

Question

if i swam in the water with wild orcas out in the ocean, like if i was in a boat, and i went up to a pod of orcas, and jumped in the water to swim up to them, would they attack me? this had been my dream since i was a child, i'm 25 years old now.

Answer 1

You would look like a seal.  Therefore they would eat you if they were hungry. (and possibly if they weren't).

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The 'thumb-downers' here are a vindication of Darwin, and should each adopt a polar bear cub..  Go to South-Cal, and talk to people from Ocean Beach and places about what Orcas do to baby Grey whales.  Orcas are very intelligent.  There is  a good account of an expedition stuck on an ice-floe that found a school of killer whales (when did 'orcas' come creeping out of disneyland? 'Grampus' maybe)  - were trying to break up the floe to get at them.  Eventually they had to throw their donkeys into the sea to get rid of them.

Answer 2

You'd better try to find someone who knows how orcas act so you'll know what to do and what not to do. Orcas in general don't attack people, but still you don't now how an animal's going to act.

Answer 3

No, there too dangerous

Answer 4

im pretty sure they would eat you

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attack...

Answer 6

yeah probably. they dont call em killer whales for nothing.

Answer 7

here is a grate link that tells you all about the  Orcas

what I can read they don't eat humans

enjoy the reading

and no more bad dreams

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca

Answer 8

No they would not attack you, but they would shun you immediately for at least four good reasons, each rude enough to get you completely ignored.  You closely approached them with your boat, you entered their space without an invitation, you pointed your face at them, and you surely failed to keep your hands at your sides at all times.  If you really want to swim with orcas, or any other dolphins in the wild, you must start by minding your manners, and you can't mind your manners if you don't know how, so listen up.

First of all, never approach within 100 yds. of any cetaceans you wish to get close to.  Whether it's a blue whale or a harbor porpoise, the "approach" is the same.  The only way to get really close to these creatures is to stop at a respectful distance and hope that they come over to check you out.  They are naturally curious, and your chances of them checking you out are much better than you probably think, but you have to exercise a bit of patience.

Take a wooden box with a plate glass bottom with you as an underwater viewing box.  Instead of jumping in with them, put the box over the side and watch them and let them watch you for a while.  This allows them to interact with you on their terms, gives them time to build a relationship with you, and lets them decide if they want you in the water with them.

If they decide they want you in the water with them, they will extend an invitation, and you will not have any trouble recognizing such an invitation.  There's nothing subtle about it.  Usually they will gently grab your hand or part of your clothing and pull you slowly out of your boat, but a gray whale once invited me to go swimming by wrapping its huge tongue around me and sort of l*****g me out of the boat and then it held me on its tongue until I got my bearings back.

Wear a life jacket, and tie the end of a line from your boat to it.  You don't want your boat drifting off while you're otherwise engaged.  If you don't wear a life jacket, the dolphins will usually start by swimming around you faster than you can turn in place just to show you that you can't begin to keep up with them.  Wearing a life jacket seems to make that part unnecessary, perhaps because it communicates that you want to be with them, as opposed to really swimming with them, which you can't begin to do even with good flippers.

Once in the water with them, never approach them or, far worse, reach for them.  Keep your hands at your sides at all times and don't even try to use them for swimmimg in any way.  Dolphins react to being reached for exactly the way you'd react to a large squid reaching out for you.  If you wish to touch a wild dolphin, think about how you are going to keep your hands at your sides at all times and about how much you'd like to know what dolphims feel like.  The first time I did that with a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), it spent the next half an hour touching every part of its body with every part of mine.  Anyone who has ever worked with captive dolphins will tell you how psychic they are, and those poor creatures are almost comatose with boredom compared to dolphins in the wild.

Pointing your head at a dolphin is always rude, so be sure not to point your nose at them even when using the viewing box.  If a dolphin ever points its head at you and holds it there, especially if its head is held lower than its body, you're in deep doodoo, and the dolphin is threatening to hurt or kill you if you don't stop whatever it is you're doing.  It is rude for a dolphin to point its head at you or another dolphin for exactly the same reason it's rude to point a shotgun at someone else.  

Many years ago, my mentor, John Olguin, Curator Emeritus at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, asked me if I'd like to take a stab at writing up some whale watch guidelines for the government, and I said yes.  A week later I gave him my first draft, he read it, and said he was going to send it off exactly as written with a recommendation that it be adopted as written.  It was, and my draft became the Whale Watch Guidelines for the Marine Mammal Protection Act.  Please remember that those guidelines weren't meant to keep you away from cetaceans, they were written to give you a shot at getting really close to them.

Answer 9

ok orcas eat seals....... sharks attack surfers bacause they look like seals......people look like seals to thoes sort of animals! dont risk it!

they arenot gonna be like free willy!

Answer 10

I wouldn't recommended it, especially if there are baby caves. Orca though they may look peaceful, have a reputation of being aggressive and/or protective.

Although there are more reports of killer whales attacks in captivity than in the wild, I still wouldn't recommend trying to approach any animal in the wild.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca#Attack...

There are few confirmed attacks on humans by wild Orcas. Two recorded instances include a boy charged while swimming in Alaska, and Orcas trying to tip ice floes on which a dog team and photographer of the Terra Nova Expedition was standing.[40] In the case of the boy in Ketchikan Alaska, the boy was splashing in a region frequented by harbour seals and in what was possibly an aborted attack due to misidentification, the orca bumped the boy but did not bite. In the case of the Terra Nova expedition, the seal-like barking of the sled dogs may have triggered the orca's hunting curiosity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attack...

Wild Orcas are not usually considered a threat to humans. However, there have been about two dozen cases of Orcas attacking humans.[1] Four documented incidents involving domesticated Orcas are listed below.

On April 20, 1971; SeaWorld secretary Annette Eckis was riding on Shamu at the park in San Diego, California. Eckis slid off and Shamu grabbed her leg in its mouth. After a few minutes, Shamu was coaxed into letting Eckis go, and she was taken away from the tank on a stretcher, and required 100 stitches on her leg. Shamu may have done this out of curiosity, as Eckis was wearing a bathing suit while riding the Orca, instead of the traditional wet suit that was usually worn.[2]

http://dolphins.jump-gate.com/differnt_d...

There have been incidents with orcas in captivity attacking humans. In 1991, a group of orcas killed a trainer named Keltie Byrne at Sealand in Victoria, British Columbia (where employees were not allowed in the water with orcas), apparently not knowing she could not survive underwater. In 1999, at the SeaWorld park in Orlando, Florida, one of the same orcas allegedly killed a tourist who had sneaked into the orca's pool at night[1] (http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/06/killer.wha... (The tourist was also thought to be a victim of hypothermia.) In late July 2004, during a show at the SeaWorld park in San Antonio, Texas, an orca pushed its trainer of ten years underwater and barred the way to the rim of the pool; the trainer could only be rescued from the raging animal after several minutes.

One of the more infamous incidents involving orca aggression took place in August 1989, when, during a live show, one female whale, Kandu V (who had established herself as the dominant female) struck another whale, Corky II, imported from Marineworld California just months prior to the incident. According to reports, a loud smack was heard across the stadium. Although trainers tried to keep the show rolling, the blow severed an artery near Kandu V's jaw, and she began spouting blood. The crowd was quickly ushered out, and after a 45-minute hemorrhage, Kandu V died. Opponents of these shows see these incidents as supporting their criticism.

http://worldanimalfoundation.homestead.c...

Captive animals are not the only victims o f these "circuses of the sea." Sea World patrons were stunned when two orcas repeatedly

dragged trainer Jonathan Smith to the bottom of their tank, in an apparent attempt to drown him.(21) Trainer Keltie Lee Byrne was

killed by three Sea Land orcas after she fell into the water with them.(22)

http://www.ptreyeslight.com/stories/oct2...

Shark-Eating killer whale ID'd as from 'the LA pod'

http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/article.php?...

Swimming with killers

By Sarah Baxter

Arctic Norway is the place to get in the water with orca – unless you’re a herring. Sarah Baxter dives in...

http://www.whaleresearch.com/thecenter/2...

Early Attitudes Towards Killer Whales

Answer 11

You can't answer this question positively over the internet.  it all depends on how you approach them and how they feel to your presents.  (If they even notice you)

most of the time people are not attacked but it is a danger because they are so big that they can hurt you without meaning to.

any my personal opinion and reply to other answers:  Your not living if you don't live your life dangerously.

Answer 12

A lot of factors come into play when dealing with wild animals. So there is not simple yes or no but if you want a short answer:

No probably not.

Chances are they are either going to ignore you or swim off.

Attacks on people are very rare, in fact there are only one or two documented cases of wild orcas attacking people, attacks in captivity are actually more common and can probably be attributed to the severe stress the animals are under.  

In the few reported cases, it was probably a case of mistaken identity as the attack took place in shallow murky water and was actually aborted once the animal realised what it had in front of him.

See:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo...

They are highly intelligent predators and many populations are highly specialised hunters, humans generally do not fit their prey pattern.

There are many people who have swum with these animals in the wild but most of them are either very experienced divers or/and marine biologists working with the animals, they are not overly aggressive, especially if they are left alone, however they are a powerful apex predator that should never be underestimated.

It all depends on how the animals are approached, how much you know about them, what they are doing and who you are approaching.

Resident orcas in British Columbia are probably the 'safest', they are mainly fish eating and generally do not predate on mammals so the likelihood of being mistaken for food is drastically reduced although people do dive with transients as well.

Other people have dived safely with these animals previously as well however it is important to note these were professionals. It is important to understand body language and threat displays and to keep a respectful distance, or even to know the individuals character which is why this sort of venture is not undertaken very often and is not generally encouraged. Misinterpretation of the animals behaviour or continuous interference with them could lead to aggression even if they were previously passive or curious. If this sort of thing is attempted it should always be very much hands off and not invasive. Generally they do not attack out of the blue, there are usually  warning signs, but you of course need to know how to read them.

It is also important to note that even if they do not attack, a playful whack by an overenthusiastic and curious juvenile (the age group most likely to approach divers) would probably be enough to send you into hospital. Diving straight into a feeding or heavily socialising group is of course not advisable either as they will pay little attention to you and you may get injured or rushed in the confusion, nor should they be approached when they are resting though as this might startle them which may lead to aggression.

Apart from the obvious dangers however, it is important to think of the animals as well, cetaceans obviously hold a certain fascination to many people and many people wish to be close to them, however it is a proven scientific fact that in some areas of the world, this yearning for contact has actually displaced local populations and is very disruptive to natural behaviour patterns, to the point that animals go out of there way to avoid people.

http://whitelab.biology.dal.ca/dl/Lussea...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jh...

People assume that because we want to interact with dolphins, dolphins will want to interact with us, however that is only very rarely the case. Of course you get the odd curious individual but on the whole, they have their own lives to get on with where curious humans diving in their midst is merely an unpleasant disruption which in the long term can even lead to detrimental changes in behaviour.

This is why diving with cetaceans is regulated or forbidden in many states and countries or is only allowed by licensed operators.

While it might be your dream to approach them in this way, I would not advise it, not because I feel there is a great risk for your safety but for the animal's sake unless accompanied by experienced divers who know the rules, both the ones set up by the law and more importantly the ones laid out by the animals.

BTW, Mo Fayed, 'orcas' ( taken from their scientific name Orcinus orca) is only superficially more flattering, seeing it is derived from 'orcus' and means something along the lines of 'demon from the underworld' ;) Grampus is no longer used to avoid confusion with the odontocete genus Grampus, the genus of the Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus) . In fact Grampus was really more flattering as it merely means 'fish' as far as I am aware.

Answer 13

Im not sure,they might think ur a fish,You would need to do that with professionals.Follow your dreams its all we have

Answer 14

there is an awesome video of just that on you tube.  Type in swimming with orcas or go to this...

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_qu...

I think if you go to disneys website or sea world you can sign up to swim with dolphins.  But there are alot of dangers swimming with orcas.  I remember one of the trainers was accidently killed by one once.   He didnt mean to do it, they are just so big and they are wild animals.  

Couldnt you buy the Zoo Tycoon game of waterpark adventure and do it by cyber?