[ScubaDiver]

Watching the Woman That Swims With Killer Whales on BBC 2 was amazing - we have so much to learn about Orca and like many species conservation measures are needed and sometimes help when they strand or become lost inshore. Ingrid has also been working with the Orca Coalition in Holland to help secure the release and rehabilitation of a young Orca who became lost in the North Sea off the Dutch coast. This orca is called Morgan.

The Dutch government gave permission for her to be rescued and placed in the care of a Dutch dolphinarium to build her strength back up and look to rehabilitate her. While she received medical attention no steps were taken to attempt her introduction back to the wild. In fact the opposite - the Dolphinarium decided she was unable to look after her self and planned to send her to a Tenerife dolphinarium to join the performing orcas they have on loan from Sea World.

A number of international orca scientists believe she can be returned to the wild in a staged plan and at the very least live in sea pen. The Orca Coalition and Free Morgan group are fighting to have her released from the Dolphinarium to return to the wild. The staged release plan includes as a first step a move to a sea pen in Holland which is larger and deeper than the pool at the Dolfinarium or Tenerife, training to fish again, transported to Norway where she is originally from and sightings of her likely clan or pod have been made, socialisation with pods and reintroduction. This could last a number of years and the release plan can be halted at any point with the sea pen as a fall back.

Already the Orca Coalition have won an important legal case in Amsterdam which suspended her CITES export license to Tenerife and the court directed the Dutch Ministry to properly evaluate the case and negotiations have now started to ensure the Ministry consider the other options apart from her move to Tenerife promoted by the Dolphinarium. Please see www.orcacoalition.org for the information on supporting the legal case and www.freemorgan.nl for information on the independent health report and the release plan.

[Deimos]

Very interesting and I will be responding when I get a bit more time.

Might I suggest anybody responding adds comments to the other version of the thread in "Wildlife Issues" to avoid disjointed discussions http://www.discoverwildlife.com/forum/morgan-the-orca-release-her-back-to-norwegian-waters-t11530.html.

Ian

[Thylacine]

Just seen it on iplayer - this was the one about the NZer, Dr Ingrid Visser and her diving with Orcas.

To be honest, I was amazed that they didn't seem more "on the ball" ...maybe this was the journalist's spin so it is not nec accurate. Even before the programme, I'd have bet that huge oceanic creatures like orca won't stay soley in NZ waters. Great whites go between Oz and South Africa and also California and Hawaii so it would have surprised me if the NZ orcas had stayed put - but an immingrant arrived - there is no doubt some movement between neighboring populations. Plus all top ocean predators are always full of toxic pollutants - Yes NZ is less polluted than Northern Hemisphere and levels were less but still present. I bet even the Antarctic ones are affected.

Ingrid was hampered severely by not being able to do necropsies but she's got to think laterally - cookie cutter sharks were mentioned in the film.... so mimic them - get a crossbow with a cookie cutter tipped bolt and fire it at the orca's flanks = immediate punch biopsy so you'll get all the nec. genetic information AND critical blubber live sample from an orca for toxicology (Some other scientists have done this elsewhere with whales I think). They'll recover OK. So you'll annoy a few orcas so that they're less friendly thereafter but the gains will be there scientifically...

Yes, she's got bottle swimming with these brutes. I guess these are the fish specialists type of orcas - it never said - can't see why they don't take young sealions too. People swim with these type of orcas in Norway too. There was for a while on YouTube a video sequence of a spectator volunteering to swim with a captive orcas somewhere like SeaWorld and the orca gets aggressive and badly savages the woman's leg. And remember the 3x mankilling orca in a Californian (or Florida?) SeaWorld. So still takes a lot of guts to do this.

Mike Rutzen still beats this though with his great white free swimming - that is truly crazy.

[Thylacine]

Just found this on Orca classification:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_ne ... 828570.stm

So we've Bs and Cs in UK waters and the NZ ones are Cs too

[Hawk_Eye]

I don't think there's been a recorded event of a wild Orca attacking a person. I've heard of captive ones attacking and killing their trainers - wasn't there one last year? - but wild Orca don't seem inclined to attack divers or kayakers.

[Hawk_Eye]

Having done a bit of Binging (rather than googling ) I've found some information on Orca attacks. Apparently the only well-documented one was in 1972 when a surfer was apparently bitten by an Orca and required 100 stitches. There are however numerous attacks on trainers at Seaworld type places listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attacks_on_humans
There is a recorded attack on a human by a pilot whale (see bottom of the page on this link) http://www.pilot-whales.org/www/en/huma ... EBYEP_DI=2
It would seem that those who have been attacked have probably behaved in a way that the animal deems wrong or aggressive or playful. In "Ocean Giants" the dolphin scientist said to Doug and Didier not to turn stomach up to the dolphins because they would see it as aggression or mating behaviour.
It's the way we act or think we should act toward these animals that usually brings about these event. Complacency ultimately is the root issue in many attacks of "friendly" species. A species may be quite docile, even friendly on the whole but that doesn't apply to an individual. A human family may be fairly laid back as a group but each individual will have a different temperament and will tolerate certain things to different degrees just as many other animals will.