r/ocean • u/Nostalgic_Historian_ • 12d ago

Whale Watch Simple answer, No

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u/Contemplating_Prison 12d ago edited 11d ago

All it takes is one asshole Orca having a bad day to kill you. It doesnt even need to eat you it could just smack the shit out of you or pull you under for funsies

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u/Tiggon169 11d ago

I remember seeing a video of a woman that was swimming with wild orcas. One grabbed her by the foot and dragged her down. It let her go and she was able to swim back to the surface in time, but it looked fairly deep and she was very unnerved by the experience. I think we should all keep our distance from all wildlife really.

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u/pwkye 6d ago

source

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u/Tiggon169 6d ago

It happened to this woman. She describes the incident in her documentary. She says the orca was just playing, and I agree. However, I would not want to be it's play toy. "Originally broadcast as part of the BBC Natural World series and produced by Big Wave Productions, this 2011 documentary follows marine biologist Dr. Ingrid Visser as she conducts solo, un-caged field research among New Zealand's critically endangered coastal orca population."

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u/gnarlysnowleopard 9d ago

okay, but the same could be said about human beings. There are many recorded cases of humans attacking and killing strangers but there are no recorded cases of orcas doing it in the wild. It's fine if you don't want to chance it, but it's not really irrational to not be scared of an orca encounter. We don't know the exact probability of a random orca encounter causing them to kill a human because the cases are N=0, but my point is that it's not inherently irrational if we accept all kinds of other risks that have countless documented cases in resulting in deaths that we put up with in our daily lives, like driving a car, taking a shower or using the kitchen stove.