That’s why I said they’re overreacting. With the limited knowledge they had about the situation, the lady who called for official help, seemed the most reasonable to me. Better than the guy ‘calming’ everyone down by saying “we can all swim, whatev’s”.
Listen to the video again. ‘Stoner’: "I could have touched him. giggles "
Woman making police report: “If we get tipped over, somebody needs to know where we are”
‘Stoner’: “Guys it’s not scary, the worst thing that can happen is we go for a swim dude.”
… “We’re not gonna die, we all know how to swim”
while being what looks like the some distance away from the shore.
…“It’s just a f*ing boat, if it get’s torn up, who cares”
Indeed, who cares dude, except for your family with children.
I get that the concerns are overblown, but if you accidentally injure the whale with your boat, it might tip it. I don’t know how far those people can swim or if they even can swim after being whacked by a panicking whale.
People should just keep a respectful distance from wildlife. Especially stuff that’s big enough to hurt you.
Baby Beluga Becky 
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I gotta believe that they were all stoned. The guy who was happy was having a good trip and the rest were not so lucky.
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Whales are pretty curious critters. They don’t need to mistake something for whale song to investigate. And those noises wouldn’t have sounded much like whale song to the whale underwater, water does weird things to sounds. Cuts the pitch, changes the distance and dirction it travels in. Especially if the sounds originate above water.
But you’re on the right track. Whales will investigate sounds above water and objects floating in it. And will even interact with people in or above water. It’s what makes whale watching remotely possible. Its also what made/makes them pretty easy to kill. They can be agressive. Particularly toothed whales and porposes. But its not too common to run into an agressive baleen whale, even in breeding season.
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have you been in a boat near whales? Look everyone’s fear was way overblown. “Stoner” more like excited father was trying to calm them. His joy/appreciation was the only reasonable reaction. The whales are a lot more careful/aware of their surrounding than you would think. they’re smart enough that they don’t want to hurt themselves on a fucking boat. No one would need to “swim” to shore. The boat isn’t going to get torn up. You were on the boat weren’t you?
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Your concern is noted. Shame on them if they allowed their sprogs to wander that boat with out the proper flotation devices. That said, people this frightened of open water, and the beasties lurking therein, should perhaps not have gotten aboard a boat at all.
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I’m very proud of all of you making fun of someone being frightened. You guys are so brave.
"Help!! I went out to see nature and there was all this nature! Shoot it quick!!__
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Obligs
NSFW - sweary!
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I find it profoundly depressing that people can get to adulthood (or a semblance thereof) so insulated and detached from the natural world. How can you buy a boat or live in Seattle or visit someone in seattle and go on a boat trip and be so absolutely fucking clueless about what lives in the sea.
I guess it does explain why some people are so frightened of everything all the time - people of different colors, other countries, strangers, animals, weather, music, video games, crime. Just basically everything. What a sad, shitty way to go through life and there’s a special place in hell for the people (politicians and the media) that feed these feelings to serve themselves
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After experiencing a whale up close, the Ahab family saw them in a different light.
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Holy shit, the deer cull issue is such a shitshow where I live. It tured into a right-left culture war, which has made the discussion into a weird referendum on your political leanings. I even saw a mournful poster lamenting how death is permanent for the deer. Really? No shit?
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I can testify through repeated personal experience that nearly everyone who lives near Puget Sound totally loses their shit whenever any of us so much as sees the faintest evidence of a whale. As in:
“OMG! Whale! Over that way! OMG! Can you see it? There, there! That’s so cool! OMG, there are two of them! No, over there! OMG!”
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I once had an absolutely ridiculous panic attack in a foot of water, so I’m not exactly one with a lot of room to criticize other people’s irrational reactions to events.
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Was it these morons?
The irony is that mola mola are common off of Boston. It’s like not recognizing a moose if you’re from Maine.
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Its more of a wealth level thing here. Middle class people are locals are more insistent on something being done. Liberals tend to be about as in favor of culls and hunting as anyone else. Though conservatives hate managed culls with hired sharpshooting cause is wastful government spending/The Majestic 12 emminent domaining your yard for the New World Order (yes).
Tourists/part time residents and carpetbaggers are opposed to any action. Alomg with a subsetbof limosine liberals and “eviromentalists” of the vegan/animal right sorts. Almost exclusively on NIMBY grounds.
The only action the State, County, and Toen government can typically slip through is to agressively issue hunting tags (it doesn’t matter what sort of tags you apply for they come as a package deal with like 20 deer tags), extend seasons, lift restrictions on taking does and fawms, and advertise heavily in sporting magazines.
It doesn’t work well. We’re pretty densly populated so most of the available hunting spots are only open to bow hunting. Bow hunting has a difficulty curve that makes it tough to get into, people are less likely to travel to bow hunt, and there are just fewer bow hunters in the world. If they’d loosen restrictions on crossbows (they’re legal to own here but banned for hunting without a medical exemption) it might help.
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My brother and I were visting friends one time in FLA and hired a guy to take us bass fishing. We saw the requisite alligators of course. On seeing a big one, the guide told us that the day before, two knuckleheads were on his boat and when they saw a big alligator, one of the guys jumped in the water and told the other guy “take my picture!”. He survived, the alligator swam off. But still…
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Did something brush up against your foot? If so then you’re justified.
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Yeah, there’s some of that too. Actually, it might explain the partisan divide because there’s a demographic skew between left-leaning and wealthier and right-leaning and middle-classer. Then we have a mysterious subset of semipermanent residents in my area called “Kollij Keedz” on a pilgrimage, here to appease an evil god called “Nollij.” And not being from the area, they also tend to see deer as cute cuddly creatures and sometimes write painfully naive op-eds to that effect.
Due to what is likely a typo… I’m not 100% sure what you’re saying, but over here when the local authorities acquire the genital fortitude to do something, they go for managed culls with sharpshooters, but the outcry is such that they’re loath to do it as much as necessary.
