From: johnlake@microsoft.com (John Lake)
Subject: Re: How about Whales?
Date: 10 Nov 92 05:14:41 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Nov6.060322.7974@cc.uow.edu.au> g9024557@cc.uow.edu.au (James Phillip ANDREW) writes:
>ludwig@cm.deakin.OZ.AU (Ludwig Omachen) writes:
>
>Clarkee valspeaks:
>>>One of the most totally awesome (valspeak finally serves an appropriate
>>>purpose) pictures I have ever seen was a shot of a killer whale
>>>body-surfing onto a beach to eat a baby seal sitting on the sand.  This
>>>was in South America and apparently happens occasionally.  They just
>>>ride up onto the sand so fast the baby seal is gobbled before it's
>>>knows it's in danger.
>>>
>
>Lud Torquays: 
>>If that was the same shot I saw, this was on TV, awesome is an
>>understatement ! .
>
>>There was a cameraman in the water, must have been only feet away, who
>>was shooting the whole thing, he gets my Hellman of the century award!
>
>>Cheer's
>>Lud.
>
>I have seen similar footage except it was in the Antartic (you know - near
>Bells in winter :-) ). Also in the footage I saw it wasn't a baby seal
>it was some MOTHER seal or something. A big black (bad :-)) orca came
>screaming out of the water and skated along the ice shelf before chomping
>this seal. It came across the ice at least a couple of body lengths. It
>is one of the most frightening things I have ever seen. 
>
>Apparently there are very few recorded orca attacks on humans: 
>(I may stand to be corrected here: it is just something out of my dim memory)


Well lo-and-behold.  Friday night I got home from work and since it was too
late to go out with my roommates (they had left) and I wasn't going surfing
in the morning, I turned on the evil boob-tube.  On the Discovery Channel 
was a show about the same thing this thread deals with.  It was a pretty 
interesting show.  I kinda started watching toward the end so I'm sure i 
missed quite a bit.  What I saw was partly from Alaska and the rest was 
from Argentina.  The Argentina segment dealt mainly with shoreline hunting.
They said that the older Sea Lions usually avoided the whales O.K. because 
they knew where the rock shelf was and that the whales couldn't get them
there, but that the younger ones didn't and occasionally get caught by the 
orcas.  They also showed a sequence where 2 young bull Elephant Seals were 
sparing in the shore break and didn't see a big bull Orca commign at them
until the last minute.  When the Orca was about 20 feet away, one of them saw 
it and bolted.  The other started to take off too, but only because he was 
chasing the other one.  SLAM, the Orca surfed up onto the beach and nabbed 
him.  Now here is the really interesting part of the whole story.  The 
young Orca and it's mother (the bulls mate) were about 400 yards offshore.
The big bull took the still-alive Elephant Seal (about half a ton worth)
out to the young Orca and used it to teach it about how to kill.  After about
3 passes the young Orca finally got the hang of how to kill it and they had
a big, gnarly, bloody feast.  They also said that most of the shoreline hunting
is done by the bulls.  They showed about 7 different sequences of Orcas sliding
up onto the beach after seals (it has to be a really steep beach they said) and
then thrashing about in ankle deep water until they slid back into the water.
The Orca's that they showed were called Patagonia Killer Whales and like I said
they were in southern Argentina.  It was a pretty hot show, I jsut wished I'd 
seen the first part of it.  The closing segment showed an Orca somewhere in 
either Alaska or British Columbia doing a full arial with major hang time.
They also said that there has only been 1 know purposeful attack on a human
and that it took place in California on a surfer.  It was probably the same
one that Airey was referring to.


Surfs big and stormy up here.  Didn't go at all this weekend.  Yesterday (sunda It haled so fetching hard that I kept setting off my roommates car alarm and
we got a noise complaint from our friends neighbors.  A cop showed up and
gave our friends roommate a warning (we were gone with our friend).  What
a dick.......like we knew it was gonna hail and like our friends roommate
could do anything about it.  Stupid old bitch next door needs a foot in her
head.  Anyways when we came home there was about an inch to 2 inches of 
hail everywhere.  It looked like snow.  Most hail I've ever seen in one shot.

Swell is supposed to drop a little tonight and winds turn kinda offshore.
But I have no school on wednesday because of Veterans Day so I think I shall
have to surf in the morning.  It sounds like it might be pretty good.  7 foot
west swell and moderate southeast winds.




John H. Lake


"facing cold and wet Washington winter weather.........it keeps the crowds
down at least."



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