Clever Orcas Command Respect

*Orcas are the most widespread of the cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises). These beauties are the pinnacle of mammalian evolution, and so worthy of our admiration and protection.

With brains more than twice as heavy and as complex as that of humans, orcas are feared predators. It’s not just other cetaceans that must constantly watch their backs for sudden ambushes by pods of the intelligent ones. Orcas give great white sharks a lot of grief and occasionally much pain.

New research reveals that when pods of orcas enter an area around South Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco, California, the great white sharks immediately vacate their preferred seal hunting grounds. They will not return for up to one year.

Orcas have been recorded attacking great white sharks and eating their large livers, rich in nutritious fats.

Orcas have been recorded attacking great white sharks.”

Unprecedented fossil fuel ocean heat and overfishing have cooked and plundered the seas of its once thriving fish stocks. The orcas, like all other marine predators, are hungry. It’s not just great white sharks that are fearful of the brainy ones. Alaskan fishermen have added their names to the growing list, too.

Pods of more than 40 family members relentlessly stalk individual boats, forcing them to hightail into port.

The orcas are sentinels of the sea, excellent barometers of ecosystem health. Frighteningly, they are full of long lasting Man-made poisons. 50% of the world’s orcas are so toxic with PCBs, DDTs, methylmercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, flame retardants, phenols, phalates and plastics that they are incapable of reproducing, doomed to extinction.

Instead of cleaning up Man-made poisons, we are accelerating the manufacture and use of these hideous cancer-causing chemicals.

While the rest of the world is emptying their tanks and padlocking dophinariums, Chinese cetacean prisons have more than doubled in the last couple years to 76. Cruel enslavement. Shame on China.

Russia, on the other hand, has ordered all its orcas and belugas in their whale prisons to be set free. Even the world’s fiercest leader, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, is exhibiting empathy towards our intelligent cetacean brethren.