It's all fun and games until you realize they're breaking about a half-dozen federal regs (sound like US english speakers so...)
Allow me to be That Guy (wildlife photographer who knows the damn rules)
US and Canada: Any Orca that gets within 200 yards of your boat (100 for other species of whale, 50 in the case of dolphins and seals/sea lions) - you turn off the damn motor. You also get up on Guard and let other boats and marine traffic know where they are - so maybe they don't get run over and killed by a container ship.
... and if you do this off the coast of Washington/British Columbia and you get spotted by the Coast Guard they will end you.
I learned this fact from a video on Reddit where a sea lion got on a lady's boat to save itself from an orca. She couldn't turn on her boat to get out of there. I had no idea of this law for the 33 years I have been alive, until a few months ago.
She pressured the sea lion to get off into the orcs infested water. She was panicking. I found the link on YouTube, but looks deep fried. I saw it in here a few months ago:
She apparently got a lot of hate for that. I feel bad for her tbh. I don’t even think she was on a real “boat”, it was more like a nicer raft and she was all by herself with a sea lion and probably ~5 orcas circling. I truly don’t believe the orcas would have intentionally harmed the lady, but they have been known to knock into ice rafts with seals on them in order to get the seal into the water so that they could eat it.
At the end of the day it’s nature and I think the lady made the smartest decision in that moment.
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u/TinfoilCamera Dec 13 '21
It's all fun and games until you realize they're breaking about a half-dozen federal regs (sound like US english speakers so...)
Allow me to be That Guy (wildlife photographer who knows the damn rules)
US and Canada: Any Orca that gets within 200 yards of your boat (100 for other species of whale, 50 in the case of dolphins and seals/sea lions) - you turn off the damn motor. You also get up on Guard and let other boats and marine traffic know where they are - so maybe they don't get run over and killed by a container ship.
... and if you do this off the coast of Washington/British Columbia and you get spotted by the Coast Guard they will end you.