Orca Quotes

Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.

All of the reasons its orcas cannot be returned to nature stem from the fact that they have been psychologically and physically damaged by captivity.

SeaWorld’s corporate marketing strategy turned the orcas into the pandas of the sea, commercial and cuddly, with little hint of the complexities of killer whales and the effects of confinement on them.

When the moon gets bored, it kills whales. Blue whales and fin whales and humpback, sperm, and orca whales: centrifugal forces don’t discriminate.

Young orcas have so much energy and curiosity—I could sense the desperation sink in when they finally realize their fate is to be one of repetitive performance and routine.

Two weeks earlier than scheduled, she flew into Vancouver and signed on with Greenpeace. The work was neither taxing nor truly exciting but the people she met more than compensated and she forged many new friendships. The high points were the trips they made by sea kayak, exploring the wild inlets farther up the coast. They watched bears scoop salmon from the shallows and paddled among pods of orcas, so close you could have reached out and touched them. At night they camped at the water's edge, listening to the blow of whales in the bay and the distant howls of wolves in the forest above.

Captive whales bake in the sun and suffer from sunburn and dehydration. Orcas in the wild spend much of their time fully submerged.

They are no longer really orcas but mutants, genetically killer whales but made up of warped psychologies.

(SeaWorld likes to say that they own only five orcas captured in the wild. More accurately, they have owned 32 killer whales captured in the wild throughout the company’s history, only five of whom have survived.)

Look at them. Where are they looking? They're not looking at each other, they're not looking at the art on the wall or the sun in the sky; they're looking at their phones. They hang on to every beep and alert and tweet and status update. I don't want to be that. I'm distracted enough as it is by the actual, tangible, physical world. I've embraced the efficiency of a desktop PC for work and research, and I even use a laptop on my own time, but I draw the line at a cell phone. If I want social media, I'll join a book club. I will not be collared and leashed and tracked like a tagged orca in the ocean.

Dad?" But he's still looking out the window, not at me. I walk over and lean my head against his shoulder. His green raincoat is wet and smooth and stinky, like an orca's nose. He smells of salt and wind and more love for me that I probably deserve. He pats my hair and, as if he's talking to the ocean, says, "You should have just asked.

Knowledge is not wisdom, Orca. You could see the whole world, learn everything there is to learn, read every book written by every philosopher... and still go to your grave not a fraction wiser than the day you were born. Most people follow the compass of the world. But you have a different compass.

Well, not anymore, Tsunami thought fiercely. Even Queen Coral would have to believe the truth once she saw the statue as it was now. Marble Orca, once serene and regal on her pedestal, was trapped by the spear in battle position. Her

One faction views SeaWorld as a Garden Hilton for killer whales, and the other views it as a Hanoi Hilton for killer whales.

Orcas may not be very intelligent humans, but humans are really stupid orcas

Orcas can sense affection and they can return it.

In 1964, no one was watching whales for fun. Today, every orca in the Salish Sea is a star.

Orcas continually prove there are more things in the ocean than are dreamt of in our science.

The only intelligence tests orcas don't pass are the ones that require hands.

Scientists warn that if orcas can't survive, we won't either.

Pity the male orca with no female relations. He is shunted aside in whale society, very quickly pines away and dies. SeaWorld has basically forced motherlessness on many of its male orcas. It is these males who are often the outcasts of the societies that emerge among SeaWorld’s orcas, subjected to vicious and repeated attacks by the other whales.

Nearly one-quarter of all orcas captured for display during the late sixties and early seventies showed signs of bullet wounds. Royal Canadian fighter pilots used to bomb orcas during practice runs, and in 1960, private fishing lodges on Vancouver Island persuaded the Canadian government to install a machine gun at Campbell River to cull the orca population.

If you are what you eat, you're part plastic - because every animal on earth is eating it.

It is riskier to swim with another human than with a shark. Humans aren't just more likely to drown you - they're more likely to bite you.

No SeaWorld trainer has been allowed into a pool to perform with a killer whale since February 24, 2010, when Dawn Brancheau, one of the most skillful and experienced of our small club, was killed by the 12,000-pound male orca Tilikum in Orlando.

Every bar that’s set to prove human superiority to orcas seems to be as easy for the whales to jump as the hurdles set out for them at SeaWorld. Orcas fit every definition for humanity humans have come up with that doesn’t require opposable thumbs.

Somewhere, there are orcas. Somewhere, there is a living bristlecone pine that stood when the pyramids were built at Giza. Somewhere, an unnamed creature swims in dark waters and has never witnessed an electric light. This is where we live. This is our world.

Transient orcas?” Beck leaned toward the monitor as images of whales flashed on screen. “Subspecies of killer whale,” said Ring. “Highly specialized. Extraordinarily lethal—if you happen to be a seal. Transient orcas eat only mammals. Seals, sea lions, sea otters, porpoises, other whales. Sometimes they’ll help themselves to a swimming moose or deer, as well. No fish, though. They hate fish.

Keiko was interested in videos of other orcas, but his favorite seemed to be Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the only movie he watched in its entirety. He also showed interest in parts of Blazing Saddles and The Lion King, but reportedly turned his back on Free Willy.

For a long time, humans have wondered about the possibility of intelligent life on other planets while ignoring the intelligent life on this one. Orcas have a language and a culture that predates ours, so how do we justify imprisoning them or, more importantly, destroying their habitat?

The orca’s big brain was bigger than he had hoped—five times the size of a human’s and weighing in at nearly fifteen pounds. And this was from a young whale, not a mature adult. The brain was also more complicated than McGeer had imagined—more complicated than a human brain. Dolphin brains were impressive, but this brain was spectacular.

The southern residents are the most photographed, filmed, recorded, and documented mammals on the planet who aren’t either running a country or headlining Hollywood blockbusters.

If you swim in the ocean every day for 100 years, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than swallowed by a shark.

In captivity, all the orcas are ‘feral’ children—they had no adult orcas to socialize them properly.

Is it wrong of me to propose a ceasefire agreement between humans and whales and dolphins, I know it is in actuality a one sided massacre, but so was Bosnia and there the ceasefire is holding, so would it be nice to have a declaration backing a ceasefire between us mammals?

In an age when whales were judged by how easy it was to render them into oil, or grind them into pet food and fertilizer, killer whales were a problem even if they weren’t killing humans.

Orcas can be spotted from the shores of Seattle, Tacoma, Port Angeles, Bellingham, and the popular San Juan Islands in Washington State; and Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River, and other cities in BC. These venues not only offer easy access to the whales, they are scenic and pleasant places to live: Researchers who study orcas tend to gravitate more toward this region than, say, Iceland.

Orcas and some other large whales have spindle neurons in their brains. These are cells that process emotion humans thought existed only in apes and us. Spindle neurons have been called the cells that make us human. They're the part of the brain that deals with complex emotions like love, guilt, grief and even embarrassment. Since these are the cells that allow us to feel deeply, isn't it likely they do the same for orcas?

Last year a baby orca and its mother wandered too far upriver from the ocean; we saw the story in The Oregonian. They didn’t know how to get back home. Pater said all the fuss from people and boaters and news helicopters was probably confusing them more. He didn’t say he thought they’d never find their way back, but I know that’s what he was thinking. In my mind, I like to think they submerged so no one could see them under all that deep blue, popping up again when they were safely out to sea.

Human groups who find themselves hunting in the same territory are almost expected to fight. For the most part, regardless of the continent they’re on or their culture, it’s rare when they don’t battle over land or resources. But the orca culture is more ancient than ours and, apparently, more civilized. Killer whales don’t just share food; they share the same sectors of the seas without challenging each other to determine dominance. This is true for orca families found in every ocean in the world.

Dr. Rose has an accurate but tragic assessment of the plight of SeaWorld’s orcas. “I personally think,” she says, “all captive orcas, whether caught in the wild or born in captivity, are behaviorally abnormal. They are like the children in Lord of the Flies—unnaturally violent because they do not have any of the normal societal brakes on their immature tendency toward violence. Children can be very violent, but under normal circumstances, they are socialized to suppress that violence and channel it productively as they mature.

Play fulfilled some of the deeper needs of the orcas. I was aware even then of how boring and sterile their captive lives were. In the evenings, they would float in limited space, almost never having access to all the pools in Shamu stadium, usually restricted to just one or two.

Corky is the oldest whale at SeaWorld (as well as the oldest orca in captivity in the world) but the name first belonged to an orca from the early days of the marine park, one that died in 1970. Corky would not get to SeaWorld till 1987, along with her companion, friend and sometime mate Orky.

That summer, there was a Name the Babies contest, an annual event organized by the Whale Museum on San Juan Island. A young girl from Bellingham submitted the winning entry. The little orca should be named "Luna", she wrote, because "the whale explores the ocean like the moon explores the Earth.

Regardless of how scientists may feel about respecting the history of the name, there’s no world in which “killer” sounds like a safe species to swim with. If you’re on their menu, the name is accurate, but if you’re not—and we’re clearly not—it’s an archaic holdover from an ancient era that makes it harder to save this vital species.

He knew all of the answers.

She read him like a first-grade teacher. She let him be free.

Being what we humans are, what else could we do but wrong?

Unlike in SeaWorld, there is no known instance of mother-son mating in wild orca communities. In SeaWorld Orlando, Katina mated with her son Taku, resulting in the female calf Nalani. Kohana was bred with her uncle Keto twice. This is an instance of what appears to be a taboo—strictly reinforced in the wild by generations of matriarchs—that has broken down in the confines of captivity.

People had considered this the most fearsome creature on the planet. The most vicious. The most predatory. Without any rivals. It could beat anything in the ocean, so, therefore, it qualified as the most feared of all beasts. Totally wrong. So I guess Moby Doll changed the world’s attitudes towards killer whales. Instead of seeing a killer—a savage monster like Moby Dick—the world met a cuddly companion, Moby Doll.

The full extent of Samuel’s powers had yet to be determined because he was in a Claire Vinson daze for much of his rapid acceleration to adulthood. The combination’s were endless as his father Maxwell had emerged from the union of Daniel and Nicole – vampire and protector – with a full cycle of facades, including wolf, hippopotamus, Orca killer whale and Bottlenose dolphin. But he also had the capability of copying anything he could see and he was a master of battle strategy.

Hartwell’s subconscious was treated to a lengthy reel of the evolutionary tract of cetaceans – from their early days as hoofed creatures with triangular teeth like wolves, to cat-like creatures, to early variations of the hippopotamus, to bottlenose dolphins and Orca, the ‘killer whale’, which is the largest species of dolphin. The hybrid mammal also had the ability to convert to a smaller aquatic mammal, capable of diving into water and hiding beneath the surface to avoid birds of prey.

We now know that killer whales are one of the very few mammalian species that can learn new sounds and reproduce them. Dogs and cats, for example—there’s not a chance you could teach a dog to meow or a cat to bark. It’s a very rare ability to learn sounds and reproduce them. We can do it, as humans. Some primates can. Some of the whales can. The calls Moby Doll made in 1964—we still hear today from his kin group that still exists out there. If all roads lead to Rome, all oceans lead to Moby Doll.

The whales always fell silent when the throbbing hum of humanity grew overwhelming. Whenever a ship of any size came near, I had to take off the headset to protect my ears. I wondered if a species that had taken millennia to evolve such a delicate and sophisticated sense of hearing could adapt to humanity’s sonic onslaught. My notes from the time bear witness to the effect on my own primitive ears: “I have been listening to boats all day; my head is throbbing; the silence of my canvas tent feels good tonight—poor whales.” That

Until that rainy Sunday at the movies 31 years ago, for me, companionship had been a mandate for life’s good times. After Orca, it became a choice. My trip to the theater helped me to distinguish between loneliness (experienced by default), and solitude (choosing when and how to enjoy my own company), as I began a journey of engaging the world on my own terms. Over the years, that journey deepened as I traveled life’s roads with increasing independence and confidence, whether I was attending graduate school at night while working during the day, buying my first house or changing careers.

We all cast our own shadows and chose where they fall, and the lives of men and women and otters and dogs and whales are linked forever across the reaches of time. We distance ourselves from them with our hunger for flesh, or our carelessness, or our cruelty. But what of the forces that bind us together?

Ingrid Visser describes the strategy of a particular quartet of dolphin-hunting killer whales off New Zealand (she prefers the name “orca”): The orca are cruising nonchalantly towards a small group of dolphins. The dolphins head away, but not too fast, as they don’t want to draw the attention of the orca just in case they aren’t really hunting. After following for 30 minutes, one female orca, named Stealth, doesn’t surface the next time the others breathe, nor the next, nor for the following 10 minutes. The three remaining orcas take off towards the dolphins at high speed, which is incredibly dramatic as they hurtle through the surface. The dolphins are fleeing for their lives and they know it; they fly out of the water and don’t even seem to touch down before they are off again. The three orca are closing fast. But suddenly one of the front dolphins goes flying as if it was a tennis ball, tumbling through the air as it turns somersaults. Stealth is also hurtling through the air in the follow-through after hitting the dolphin from below. She grabs the dolphin in mid-air, then falls back into the water with it in her jaws. Together, the four orcas devour the meal. Visser adds, “I have never seen them miss.” *   *   *

Attacks by orcas and dolphins are on the rise. Why? Not enough food? Ocean temperatures rising too quickly? I have another idea. With the amount of plastic in the world's oceans the plastic will degenerate down into microplastics. Already these microplastics have entered all food chains and are to be found in soils, plants, animals and people. What are these microplastics doing? Well, we have no idea because not enough informed research has been carried out. For me, I believe that the toxins contained within the plastics are causing neurological disorders in animals & people alike. It's causing more irrational behavior and aggression. The orcas & dolphins are Apex predators, just as we are. Coincidence? Because man at present is doing some really irrational things. Only time and more research will find out some truthful answers.

Chronicling the passage of whales has led me to an understanding that we, as a species, now sand at a crossroads. We can face the possibility of our own extinction and work to avert it, or we can flow the more traditional path of earths organisms and fall blindly over the edge. If there's one trait that characterised human beings, it's the will to survive. This, I believe, will motivate us to work with the natural world rather than opposite it, which is all we need to do to give the children of earth - of all species - the opportunity to thrive.

I had an experience in the whale nursery in Baja, Mexico, that moved me deeply. I noticed that one whale was extremely white, which our guide explained occurs with these whales as they get older. Its body and tail had numerous scratches and gouges, which usually come from years of defending babies from orcas that try to eat the young on their annual migration from Alaska to Baja. As the whale came closer, we could see many barnacles on its skin and a deep indentation in the back of the blowhole, which also were signs of an elder whale. Our guide said it was almost certainly a grandmother whale. “The grandmother whale’s head popped up next to our boat as the swirling, bubbling water spilled away. She raised her chin toward the rail of our boat, and we began to stroke her silvery skin. Aside from the barnacles, her skin was smooth and spongy, as we could feel the soft blubber beneath. As we stroked her she rolled to her side, opening her mouth and showing us her baleen, a sign of relaxation. And then she looked at us with one of her beautiful eyes. What she could see of us as we stared down at her from the boat, smiling and laughing, I had no idea, but it was clear she felt safe and wanted to connect in these bays, where possibly during her lifetime we had almost exterminated her kind. I felt so moved that tears were rolling down my cheeks. “Our guide was in the background saying, ‘This whale has forgiven us. She has forgiven us for who we were and is seeing who we are today.

But what if the capture of the young calf had never occurred? Tilikum might still be swimming free in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, chasing his cherished herring, perhaps alongside his mother. He might be surrounded by siblings, nieces, and nephews, and his grandmother might still be leading the pod. An oceanic Tilikum would be gliding through his boundless home with fearless power and majestic grace, his fin erect, his teeth intact, his interactions with humans minimal and nonlethal. There would be no need for gelatin or Tagamet, antibiotics or isolation. And of course, if Tilikum had never been wrenched away from his family and friends, entirely for the amusement of humans, the family and friends of Keltie Byrne, Daniel Dukes, and Dawn Brancheau might not be grieving to this day. Tilikum was trying to tell us something. It was time to listen.

The hurricane was almost upon her. If she didn’t leave right now, dragons on the lost continent would die. Dragons who might one day be her friends, if she saved them. Dragons who had no idea what was bearing down on them, because there was no one there to warn them. Yet. Clearsight took a deep breath, vaulted into the sky, and pointed herself west. Her mind immediately started flashing through all the ways she could die in the next two days. This was why she hated flying in storms. They were too unpredictable; the smallest twitch of the wind in the wrong direction could send her plummeting to the rocks below, or drive a stray palm branch into her heart. Don’t think about that. Think about the dragons who need you. The other vision was fading; the one where she flew southeast and hid. In that one, she’d arrived on the lost continent in the hurricane’s aftermath. The images of the devastation and dead bodies would be hard to shake off, even if she prevented them in reality. Will they believe me? Will they listen to me? In some of her visions, they did; in some, they didn’t. All she could do was fly her hardest and hope. The hurricane fought her at every wingbeat, as if it knew she was trying to snatch victims from its claws. Rain battered her ferociously. She felt like she’d be driven into the endless sea at any moment. Or maybe she’d drown up here, in the waterlogged sky. But this was only the outer edge of the storm; there was far worse still to come. Clearsight was trying to reach land before the really terrible fury behind her did. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down for a moment. At one point she glanced back and saw a spout of water sucked into the air. In the middle of it, an orca flailed desperately, before the storm flung it away. A while later, after the sun had apparently been swallowed for good, Clearsight saw an entire hut fly by her, then splinter apart. She had to duck quickly to a lower air current to avoid the debris. Where had it come from? Who had lived in it? She would never know, her visions told her. And then, when Clearsight was beginning to lose all feeling in her wings, she saw a shape loom out of the clouds ahead. A cliff. Land. A lot of land. A whole continent, in fact.

Yeesh. I didn’t exactly love the idea of racing against Bigs Maloney. I’d rather go swimming with Orca the Killer Whale.

Because—are we really here, alive, if we interface with the world via a small black box? I don’t want my brain in a vat. I don’t want to be fed with input from the equivalent of a cerebral implant until I can’t tell fiction from reality. Don’t you see those people?” I motioned with my free hand to a line of customers waiting for their coffee orders to be filled. “Look at them. Where are they looking? They’re not looking at each other, they’re not looking at the art on the wall or the sun in the sky; they’re looking at their phones. They hang on to every beep and alert and message and tweet and status update. I don’t want to be that. I’m distracted enough as it is by the actual, tangible, physical world. I’ve embraced the efficiency of a desktop PC for work and research, and I even use a laptop on my own time, but I draw the line at a cell phone. If I want social media, I’ll join a book club. I will not be collared and leashed and tracked like a tagged Orca in the ocean.

Fishermen themselves can also sometimes blame orcas for damage to expensive fishing gear and loss of their catch. There have been reports of orcas being shot as a result.

the old cedars watch us make love by the pools that drain to the inlet where orcas slip ghostlike through a salmonless sea

noises of the Summer Palace waking up. Dragon wings fluttered overhead. Bubbles burbled up from underwater caves where most of the SeaWings were sleeping. Pots clattered on the kitchen level of the pavilion, reminding her of how hungry she was. “Uh-oh,” Anemone whispered, glancing down. “I think she’s waking up. We’d better go back in.” Tsunami hesitated. Should she go visit her friends now? But what would her mother think if she woke up and found Tsunami gone? “All right,” she said, “but I have one more question. What happened to Orca?” If Anemone could tell her, she could put off going to ask Starflight about it.

There is no Red Lobster close to us. We live in Seattle, and the nearest one to our home is either thirteen miles north or twenty-seven miles south of us. To encounter one is a rare thing, like finding a truffle in dirt. Red Lobster, it should be noted, offers a truffle lobster mac and cheese on its seasonal Lobsterfest menu. A dinner-sized portion contains 1,460 calories and proudly exceeds the recommended daily intake of sodium and cholesterol. With every bite you are laughing at mortality itself. To eat it is to believe, for a moment, that you will live forever. This is simply part of the excellent value proposition Red Lobster offers. My husband does not realize this. And so, as the restaurant and the strip mall it resides in grow smaller in our rearview mirror, I explain it to him again. “I need endless shrimp for $19.99.” “No you do not. No one needs endless shrimp.” “Orcas do,” I say. This is obviously a winning argument. “You are not an orca,” he replies, and keeps on driving. I accuse him of not loving me. This is a laughable charge, and we both know it.

The belugas spent the winter in the Bering Sea, between Russia and Alaska, where Arctic pack ice could not trap them. Now it's almost spring. The ice is melting, splitting, retreating toward the pole. The whales' migration route is opening up. The older females lead the way, north and east, teaching younger belugas how to find Canada's Beaufort Sea. At more than 2500 km (1550 mi.), the belugas' journey takes months to complete. It's worth it. When the whales reach the Mackenzie River Delta, they'll rub against the ocean floor, shedding itchy layers of yellowed skin until they're glowing white again. Pregnant mothers will also give birth. The shallow coastal waters will protect the newborns from hungry orcas. While the babies play, their mothers will feast on krill and codfish, regaining their strength. Their rich milk will fatten the calves all summer, before the journey south begins.

You know, I heard once that if a baby orca dies, its mother will carry the dead infant through the icy waters for days,

It's the orca who've adapted to compensate for the inability of the trainers.

But what if the capture of the young calf had never occurred? Tilikum might still be swimming free in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, chasing his cherished herring, perhaps alongside his mother. He might be surrounded by siblings, nieces, and nephews, and his grandmother might still be leading the pod. An oceanic Tilikum would be gliding through his boundless home with fearless power and majestic grace, his fin erect, his teeth intact, his interactions with humans minimal and nonlethal. There would be no need for gelatin or Tagamet, antibiotics or isolation. And of course, if Tilikum had never been wrenched away from his family and friends, entirely for the amusement of humans, the family and friends of Keltie Byrne, Daniel Dukes, and Dawn Brancheau might not be grieving to this day. Tilikum was trying to tell us something. It was time to listen.

HERE LIES SAM Gibbs, Pulverized by a Squirrel the Size of a Small Orca.

Deep blue water and emerald green islands capped by evergreen forests. Rocky bays and serene white ferries chugging past pods of orcas. A tiny town of quaint clapboard buildings painted in a rainbow of hues. A harbor clogged with bobbing sailboats. It looked idyllic, soaked in natural beauty. Serene. It was a world away from Paris, or Texas, for that matter. Georgia took the phone and studied the photos, mesmerized. She'd never seen anything like it. She felt a longing tug in her chest, something she couldn't quite articulate. Something was calling to her there. She had to go. Phoebe took her phone back and read avidly for a few minutes. "It says here that San Juan Island is known for pods of orcas, kayaking, a lavender farm, cidery, vineyard, shellfish farm, restaurants with Pacific Northwest cuisine, and farmers markets.

Then Jack Hanna joined the fray: “How are you going to love something, Larry, unless you see something? You can’t love something and save something unless you see it.” Naomi had heard this argument before. It was ridiculous on its face, she thought. What about dinosaurs? People, and especially kids, were crazy about dinosaurs. They loved them, without ever having laid eyes on a single one.

Honor means something different to every House, yet there are threads common to them all. It is an old concept, going back to the Second Cycle, or late in the First. The idea grew up with commerce, and borrowing, when it became important to have a reputation for reliability in paying debts. Though expanded, and now filled with elaborate ornaments and embellishments, that original use is still at its heart. And in the way of all ideas that escape their bounds and go running off into the wild, the ornaments and embellishments have come to be seen as the central point, and no House epitomized that so fully as the Lyorn. The Jhereg and the Orca, who most fully express honor in its purest sense, never use the word except ironically.

Orcinus orca!” Hewey cries, then translates the Latin. “Bringer of death!

With their tidy, evenly spaced teeth, pillowy pink tongues, and cheerful faces, orcas look like malevolent clowns, so embroiled in the religion of death their markings resemble skulls.

Jaws would make a lasting impression on me and my friends. This imagination manifested itself into our playground games. We built our very own Orca. A large dose of childlike imagination, the vital ingredient here. With buckets, watering can, old bits of corrugated iron, anything we could muster, the Orca took shape. A game invented, for downtime, between screenings of Jaws.

Although killer whales are dolphins, they occupy a quite different place in the food chain. Orcas are the only dolphin relatives known to eat dolphins, whales, and porpoises. They sit at the very pinnacle of the aquatic food

S: "La leggerezza, cercava... Ma che è 'sta leggerezza?" Z: "Tu ti senti leggero, Sè?" S: "Leggerissimo, come con una balena arenata sulla schiena. O leggero come uno che se non gli riattaccano l'ADSL non può giocare, e se non gioca non paga l'affitto. E' abbastanza leggero?" Z: "Una balena? Io avrei detto più un'orca" S: "Perché un'orca?" Z: "Boh. E' più elegante. E' un animale di design. Però è pesante uguale.

A particularly gruesome hunt targeted the basking shark, the second-largest fish in the world. At one time these creatures, which may reach fifteen metres in length, were abundant along the coast. For all their size they are peaceable giants, feeding on zooplankton in the nutrient-rich ocean waters close to the surface. They do not eat salmon or any other fish, but fishermen considered them a nuisance because they often became entangled in fishing gear. In 1949 the Department of Fisheries labelled them a "destructive pest" and in 1955 the department was persuaded to take aggressive action against the sharks in Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where they were especially prevalent. A large triangular cutting blade was mounted on the bow of a fisheries patrol vessel, the Comox Post. This knife could be lowered just below the surface of the water. When the vessel drove straight into a lounging shark, the blade sliced the animal in half. Between 1955 and 1969, when the blade was in use, hundreds of sharks were slaughtered in the sound. "The great shark slaughter began at noon and continued for hours," wrote a reporter who witnessed one of these excursions in 1956. "We littered the beaches with their livers and the bottom with their carcasses." Other fisheries vessels that were not equipped with the knife had orders to simply ram any sharks they encountered in the hope of killing them. Basking sharks are today almost never encountered in Barkley Sound or anywhere else on the coast.

JULY 20. I've just walked into the opera house. I have no programme. Strange new players are premiering a piece by a flamboyant new composer. Front and centre, three, maybe four, whales begin — a swelling string section — discordant, irresolute harmonies fill the concert hall. Then two more whales, stage right, come in, playing eight octave clarinets, counterpointing the string section. And then they, too, are counterpointed by occasional glissando slurs and passages played pizzicato by whales at the rear of the stage. But suddenly, a programme change: The orchestra members switch clothes and pull new instruments from their cases. The French horn players begin wailing on shiny, sleazy saxophones. The trumpeters spit rapid-fire bursts into an underwater echo chamber — the deep, rocky corridor of Johnstone Strait.

It’s December 19th, and the Yakima is speeding towards Orcas Island. Located in the picturesque Puget Sound, off the coast of Washington State; it’s one of four islands accessible by the ferry system.

Places of confinement providing free food and medical care are called prisons.

Ton: »Iss das jetzt. Durch mein Gebäck

Stop. Wherever you are, look outside. Look up, look down. Look away from your bloody steak, and look into the swirling, chocolate eyes of a spring calf. Look away from the stone tanks and cotton candy stands at Sea World, and look at the absolutely magnificent fin that crests a wave. Look away from the stone walls, the metal bars, and look into the eyes of Mother Nature. Orca whales belong deep under the mouth of the ocean. Lions belong bellowing out an intimidating roar to the rolling dunes and jutting rocks. Mother Nature's intent was for us to protect what we once lived in harmony with. Greed has pushed us far away, and that brings sobs ricocheting out of my core. Look away from what signs along the highway and 'innocent' brochures feed us, and look into the heart of the wild.

I draw the line at a cell phone. If I want social media, I’ll join a book club. I will not be collared and leashed and tracked like a tagged Orca in the ocean.” I was a little breathless when I concluded and withdrew my fingers from his, leaving the phone in his hand. I tried to look everywhere but at him and his damn tenebrous blue eyes. He placed the phone in my hand once again. “As much as the idea of collaring and leashing you sounds promising, the purpose of the phone is to ensure you’re reachable.” I interrupted him. “You mean bound and restrained.” “Janie, if I wanted to restrain you, I’d use rope.

Orca, orca, orca, there's nothing quite, as black and white, as you.

Las asociaciones de defensa del animal reaccionan igual que mi madre: defienden al animal grandote (la ballena, el elefante, el gorila), defienden al amistoso (el perro, el gato siamés, el potrillo), al animal que es bello (el tigre de bengala, el oso polar) y sobre todo luchan por la defensa del animal blanco y negro (el pingüino, la orca, el oso panda). Los ecologistas están enamorados de los animales blancos y negros. Si los osos panda fueran verdes con pintitas amarillas les tendrían asco, los pisarían en la ruta. Pero en cambio viajan kilómetros para sacarle las manchas de petróleo a un pingüino, no sea cosa que les cambie el color. Hay otros animales a los que no les dan tanta importancia: su muerte no les preocupa. Su sufrimiento, muchísimo menos. No sienten sensibilidad por los animales sin huesos (la mosca, la medusa, el bicho bolita), tampoco por los que son ricos después del fuego (la ternera, el chancho, el pollo), y mucho menos por los que no gritan cuando se están muriendo o los están matando (el bagre, la cucaracha, la culebra).

The orca's fin collapses while held in captivity and the human soul is no different.

But this thing that we share came to us through every single drama of our unbelievably many lives only because it is necessary. If it had just been optional as we wandered across those deserts or those storms, we would have thrown it aside. In the tumble of time and the ferocity of living, the casual falls away. Nothing we did not require could pass through the stone filter of time. If you don't need it, it's gone. Yet it came with us, you and me and all like us, because we had to have it. It made us who we are because it got us here. Every day our hearts read the message in the blood and act upon it, and the message overwhelms us: We do not live alone. We care about one another.

They would herd the large whale into shallow waters close to a whaling vessel, allowing the whalers to harpoon the harassed leviathan. Once the whale was killed, the orcas would be given one day to consume their preferred delicacy—its tongue and lips—after which the whalers would collect their prize. Here too humans gave names to their preferred orca partners and recognized the tit-for-tat that is the foundation of all cooperation, human as well as animal.45

I began to question NWF’s position on killer whale displays and I became more skeptical of NWF’s pro-captivity arguments, which parroted SeaWorld’s talking points. After all, NWF openly supported hunting and trapping; they were hardly in a good position to suddenly get maudlin about the suffering of orcas in captivity.

Following the shocking death of a trainer working with one of the killer whales just after a performance in February 2010, SeaWorld withdrew its orca trainers from the tanks at all of its parks. Now, no trainers will be in the water during any killer whale performances—at any SeaWorld park. Yet the theme of this show, One Ocean, which debuted in April 2011, is that humans and animals are connected, that ours is “one world united by one ocean,” the narration says.

Looking at the lives of those 36—which include orcas who were born and died in SeaWorld as well as orcas that were already a certain age in the wild before being captured—the

Emotional pain for whales—because it is so much part of their social existence—might then be of a higher magnitude than for human beings. It makes it almost possible to apply the word “mourning” to the fact that male orcas can often waste away and perish after the death of their mothers—the dominant centers of their social existence.

the comparison shouldn’t be to orca family units in the wild. In this case, they are acting more like prisoners thrown into the same cell, with all the dysfunctions that come with human incarceration—and with violence as the main way of establishing authority.

I believe in something greater and deeper about orcas. Every time a killer whale looked me in the eye, I saw intelligence shine through and felt his or her emotions. I sensed a presence in the orcas that is closer to the power of the myths surrounding their species, a consciousness that is both approachable and beyond human probing. They are both compelling and unfathomable.

the whale’s food was withheld for behavioral reasons—that is, to make sure the whales performed to SeaWorld’s expectations. The deprivation I am referring to is vindictive and more insidious. In accordance with SeaWorld policies, trainers have reduced the amount of fish that a whale needs to eat daily—sometimes by more than two-thirds—to remind the orca who provides sustenance at the marine park. It is not done often and it has a mixed record of effectiveness. But it has been one of the trainer’s options for making sure a whale understands that it is best to cooperate. Because SeaWorld meticulously documents the lives, health and constantly shifting psychology of the orcas, the company has kept records of depriving whales of fish to make them behave or perform to the standards set by the trainers. But because such a form of “behavior modification” would sound barbarous to human audiences, the practice has been kept secret. It would not be good for business to say that the stars of the show were not given food in order to make them perform. But it has happened. I have been part of inflicting the policy myself at the request of a supervisor.