This video, sent by reader Barry, is titled “Whales almost eat divers,” and I can’t link to it, but you can see it here.
I doubt that this was a nomming attempt; the whale appears to be a humpback whale (correct me if I’m wrong), a baleen whale that eats krill and couldn’t hurt a human.
Here’s a screenshot:
Stop the video after the whale part, for it continues onto more boring stuff.
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While definitely unintentional I do think a large whale could most certainly hurt a human. If the whale had come up mouth wide open directly underneath the diver things could have gotten hairy.
I don’t think a baleen whale would ever try to do anything with its mouth to an human, and I don’t think any human would be in any accidental danger from one, either. They also tend to be both gentle and curious, from what I understand.
But if the whale wanted to hurt you, such as if you were threatening its children or the like, you’d be a smudge on the side of its fluke before you even knew the whale was in the water with you.
b&
It’s a bad idea to approach a whale, not because it will try to eat you, but because if it touches you it crushes you.
I like their buddy taking pictures and laughing. LOL!
That cracked me up too. It reminded me of a good friend I had back in high school. I’d be lying there with my life’s blood gushing out and he would be doubled over with laughter.
He also once snuck up behind me and pulled my baggies (swim shorts) down to my ankles while I was standing on the beach speaking with some young ladies. One of which I was hoping to convince to go on a date with me.
Ha ha. Did it kibosh the date?
I suspect it depend on how cold it was that day.
Or if there had been swimming just before.
Nope! Not sure if it was humor, pity or, ahemmm, something else, but she did agree to try a date with me.
It would be a very interesting experience to be swallowed by a large baleen whale. With scuba gear you might even live to tell the tale.
I human with scuba gear probably wouldn’t fit through its throat.
A human infant wearing nothing wouldn’t fit through it’s throat. It’s diet is very much restricted in size.
So no persistantly precarious peristalsis related dangers to worry about? See, it would be a cake-walk! Probably even fun!
About all you have to worry about now is being strained through a wall of baleen by a tongue that could give an industrial trash compactor a run for its money.
I recall a story of wales once grabbing a human scuba diver thinking he was a seal but then actually putting him back on shore gently. As if he was saying, “oops sorry dude, I thought you were a seal”.
Whales. Not Wales. A whole country doing that would just be silly because why would all of Wales want to eat a seal? 😀
LOL 🙂 =^_^=
That story falls at the first credibility hurdle : large “wales” like deep water, so if they’re close to shore, then the shore slope is very steep. The geometry doesn’t work.
There are dolphins – called orcas, houmelan or “whale killers” depending on your choice of language; “killer whales” if you accept the British-English mis-translation of IIRC the Spanish – which do seal hunting on and very close to beaches. We’ve all, I’m sure, seen the videos. But they’re not baleen whales, but overgrown dolphins. Which are very definitely apex predators.
Don’t let the dolphin’s “smile” fool you. As a genus they’ve got as nice a rap sheet as humans. Organised gang rape – check. Bullying and murder of smaller con-generic (if not con-specific) animals – check. Tool use – check.
I’ve never had the pleasure of scuba-ing with dolphins (Oh, sorry, I can add bestiality and rubber fetishism to the Delphinidae rap sheet.), and people I know who have done it tell me that it’s incredible fun. But that’s with dolphins who are similar in body mass to humans (with or without tanks). I wouldn’t put it past a big dolphin (i.e. orca) to nom a human if it took the idea into it’s fishy brain.
And you know that I mean “fishy” when I say “fishy” ; they’re no less “fishy” than we are, or any other land-dwelling tetrapod. They just spend a bit more time in the water.
Agree with much of this, although ‘Killer Whale’ isn’t a British mistranslation from Spanish. The name ‘Killer Whale’ was used as long ago as the 1st century, and the scientific name Orcinus orca translates as ‘bringer of death’ ‘a kind of whale’.
Also, Humpback Whales (which are the ones featured in this video) don’t have too many problems in shallow coastal waters.
This is a story of possible biblical proportions.
In other news, Dunkin’ Donuts comes out with a treat for Jerry:
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/dunkin-donuts-debut-peeps-doughnut-article-1.1736617
Just think, we could have had replication of the “Job” experiment!!
Did you mean to say “Jonah”?
D’oh!!
Sacrificed in the name of science. But if they did not survive, it would obviously be from a lack of faith and not from lack of oxygen or getting their bones crushed.
What is happening is a coordinated group feeding phenomenon called ‘bubble feeding’ where whales surround schools of fish and herd them into one area by blowing a net of bubbles around them. Then the whales come up forcefully all at once under the fish with mouths open. Despite the fact that the whales were not after the divers, I definitely would not have wanted to be there when they exploded to the surface!
…or rather ‘bubble net feeding’…
That’s an interesting question: I imagine it’s not uncommon for baleen whales to chomp down on something bigger than krill and small fish when feeding. Would a baleen whale spit out a seal, or a person, right away, or would they want to hold on to the krill and thus end up sloshing the seal/ diver around with their tongue for several minutes?
I think they are unlikely to ever chomp down on anything larger than what they are after and if they did i suspect they´d spit it out as quickly as possible to protect their baleens, but i may be completely wrong xD
That is what I was thinking. Wouldn’t they just spit him back out?
All the clues were there that the whales were bubble feeding and it was a really stupid place to be not just in a boat so close to the whales (who probably either breached or slapped their tales previous to this as a warning to the silly humans to watch out) but in the almost opaque water filming.
This video was featured on the website of a Dutch newspaper a while ago. Discussion centered around the question whether the divers were even allowed to be that close to the whales – were they aware that they were getting close to whales? There’s roolz for that as well.
That’s the phenomenon I was thinking of too. Cooperative communicative hunting behaviour. I’m sure that after Benchley and Speilberg (IANA movie buff ; the ‘Jaws’ people) did their thing on the Great White, there were some really shoddy “Orca!” movies ; but out in the real world of splashing around in the margins of the North Atlantic, I’d have much more rational fears about an Orca than a Great White.
And I really want to go and play with the Basking Sharks of Soay! Did I post any photos? Yeah, but in the “I’ll sell your life” site ; I’ll have to re-post them.
Wow! The clue that something was coming of course was the swarm of fish appearing in the underwater camera. I would be definitely crapping in my wet suit just then.
Trust me on this : this is not a severe problem. If you’ve got a hose.
I’ve got a story of true love and wet suit diarrhoea, but it’s really better over the dinner table, between courses. Ummm, I could phrase that better?
I am sure the whales knew where the divers were and avoided them, but getting that close implies that the divers were very much in the way. On a different topic, that water looks freezing, they must have very effective diving suits.
It’s sea water ; unlikely to be much below 2degC.
Fresh water, particularly snow melt, can be significantly colder. The coldest I’ve ever been – nights out at minus thirty in the Scottish mountains and days at minus thirty in Siberia not withstanding – was during and after an ice dive with a rather tatty caving wetsuit. So cold that after getting out of the water I spent a half-hour vomiting and shivering in the car before I could start to de-kit. Not nice.
They look like they’re in 8mm semi-drys. Pretty cool in a well-insulated sort of way. But they’re feeling the cold already – cheeks and noses have gone from red and healthy back to pasty-yellow and ailing. Plenty of room between them and significant hypothermia, but the cold monster is swimming with them, wanting to kill them. And they know it – that buoyant yellow line with the grab-buoy on the end isn’t there for show!
When I started in the offshore game, everyone got thrown into the North Sea for an hour or so with just an immersion suit and a pair of thin coveralls on. A useful exercise – form a “huddle” ; practise recovering people who fall out of the huddle ; moving the huddle around. Then they’d throw a liferaft – in it’s storage container – into the sea with us, which we had to inflate in the water, then turn it right-side-up (from the water – it’s a technique!) load with the people from the water, and dress for a week’s survival at sea. Very good exercise. The certifying authorities stopped requiring it after there were several people who died on the exercise in a year. Which I think was a bit of an extreme response to a less-than 1% death rate during training.
Perhaps the authorities were more concerned that people were not staying in the industry. [SHRUG] is my comment : I want to know who I can rely on if the dung and the fan come together.
The Canadians still do an emasculated version of the in-water test in their offshore training. But with the Ocean Ranger in their history, I don’t find that surprising. Or bad.
Holy crap, no force on this planet could persuade me to go through that! I guess I’m just a woosie.
Don’t worry, whales don’t eat divers, they eat krill. Oh look! Krill!
These are humpback whales and they often feed quite close to shore. Depending on where they are and time of year, they eat a variety of things, including small schooling fish. They are probably very well aware of everything in the immediate vicinity while feeding. I doubt they would “eat” a person.