PIRATE AND WARRIOR

Evening Star, Issue 22720, 6 August 1937, Page 7

PIRATE AND WARRIOR

THE KING KILLER WHALE TERMR OF THE DEEP Recent news dispatches from San Francisco report that the colony of large-eared seals on the Farallon Islands is being decimated by a school of king killer whales, writes George Rogers Chute in the ‘ New York Times.’ The Farollons lie about 20 miles to seaward of the Cliff House and the Golden Gate Bridge, and on clear days they are plainly visible from the shore. Because the islands have been made a bird sanctuary, not even Federal employees stationed there may possess firearms. For this reason the lighthouse keeper and wireless operator have been without means of repelling the attackers, who come in fearlessly to the very edge of the rocky shore in pursuit of the seals. Men in boats who have approached the islands have been threatened by the whales, which still maintain their blockade of the rookeries. Public concern has been aroused over the fate of the familiar frequenters of the Seal Rocks of Golden Gate, it not being commonly known that seals of various kinds, and especially the valuable fur seals of Alaska, constitute an important part of the diet of these ferocious whales. Indeed, their annual toll on American industry amounts to several million dollars. Pirate and warrior, and possessed of incredible speed, the king killer whale is the terror of the deep. Orca gladiator, his scientific name, is well chosen, since it implies his love of battle and lust for blood. Hunting in packs, he employs team work tactics and has no hesitation in assaulting the largest cretures in the sea. Other whales flee before him, and tuna, in an absolute panic of fear, have been known to go ashore and perish on the beach rather than experience death in his merciless jaws. A RAPID SWIMMER. A true whale, the killer is a mammal. Twenty to 30 feet long, streamlined to perfection, his bladk back surmounted by a slender, sickle-shaped dorsal fin that causes him to be confused with sharks, the orca roves the oceans in absolute outlawry. His slender flukes propel him at unbelievable speed, and his cavernous sharptoothed mouth enables him to rend and tear his prey. In 1825 a British syndicate, formed to exploit the fabulously rich pearling beds_ of Baja, California, sent to Mexico as its representative Lieutenant Robert Hardy, of His Majesty’s Navy. Able and vigorous, Hardy undertook a voyage of exploration, in the course of which he touched at the Island of Ducks. Going ashore with a foraging party, he found “ its rocky coast was covered so thickly with seal, young and old, that there was scarcely room to land and their howls were most discordant and loud.” The mariners killed a number of the seals for oil and skins, and were rightly surprised that “ they suffered themselves to be killed almost without an effort to save themselves,” Hardy reported. “Nor did our approach drive them into the sea. I was a little astonished at this circumstance, till the captain told me that there were the largest sharks he had ever seen swimming around the coast, and that they picked up every seal who was bold enough to quit the shore.”

Not sharks, but killer whales. Hardy did not realise the fact, hut at the time of his visit the seals actually were in a state of siege. Had it been otherwise he never could have killed them with clubs, for the Mexican sea lion is as intelligent and wary as a coyote. The fact that they chose to remain ashore, there to be clubbed to death by men, is eloquent of the horror in which these animals hold the killer whale. Tho dread of their lives is the coming of the orca. Singly or in hundreds he establishes a starvation-blockade and maintains patrol until the time when, racked with famine, some frenzied seal makes a break for the water, freedom and food. That is tho moment awaited! The orca streaks down upon the fugitive, kills it, consumes it, and resumes patrol. At the western end of the strand at Laguna (Beach, California, the shore makes out in a headland off which lies a cluster of up-jutting rocks whereon a colony of seals has a haulingground. Normally these animals are shy and on being approached too closely they dive into the sea and disappear. A few summers ago, however, they reversed the procedure and stampeded the bathers from the beach. On a fine afternoon, when the water was full of swimmers, the seals suddenly set up an unaccountable racket, plunged into the sea, swam furiously towards the bathers and made such a threatening charge that panic swept the beach.

But the seals did not falter. They came right in on the beach and continued until a wide belt of sand separated them from the water’s edge. One of their number, in an obvious frenzy of fright, fled barking across the entire beach, up the steps of a. cottage, on to the porch, and climbed upon a lounge before considering himself safe. The people, of course, were amazed. And when, a few moments later the curved dorsals of several orcas sliced the surfacce as the whales rose to blow, tho baffled observers exclaimed: “Ah’ blackfishl” * ’ ENEMY OF THE TUNA. Down in tropical waters, where the tuna ships from San Pedro and San Diego work, the killer is recognised as tho arch enemy of the tunas. He raids the tuna banks in packs, breaks up the schools, kills and -scatters the fish in ail directions. All this in addition to the numbers he consumes—four or five fifty or sixty pounders at a meal. But the extent of this damage is obscure. Although well known to be real, it is difficult to estimate. The money loss resulting from the orca’s preying on the fur seal herd of Alaska is much more apparent. The United -States Bureau of Fisheries, which has m charge the fur seals and their rookeries on the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea, has reported frequently on the orca depredations. Despite the depredations, the fur seals increasd from 123,600 in 1911 to 1,690,000 in 1936. Even at the present low price of skins these animals are worth £6 each, or £10,140,000 for the herd. is this high-priced food that the orca is consuming. Of the killer’s damage to the tuna industry there exists no estimate, and because _ the large-eared seals of the California and Mexican coasts support no industry, they, too. are omitted from the equation. But because San Francisco’s famous Seal Bocks and the largo-eared seal caves of La Jolla attract many travellers, the orca’s present ravaging of the Farallon rookeries has aroused public indignation, whereas the yearly slaughter of perhaps 250,000 valuable fur seals goes unnoticed.