[Paddlewise] orca diets

     On 12/3/98 Bradford R. Crain wrote:

     "I ran into a friend on the ferry to Sidney, B.C. He and his
buddy Fred were also vacationing in B.C. Fred told me of an orca
experience that I find hard to believe.
     Fred said that one day they were sitting on a beach, eating
their lunches. All of a sudden an orca came out of the water and
landed on the shore near Fred. After looking them over, the orca
reportedly slid back into the water and disappeared.
     My question is this: Is such a thing possible? Has anyone ever
     had or heard of such an experience? Fred swears it really happened."

     This story is similar in some respects to an incident involving the
     Apsley Cherry-Garard, the author of The Worst Journey on Earth, the
     definitive  story of Scott's ill-fated Antarctic polar expedition of
     1912-13(?). In the book Cherry reports that during the first summer of
     the expedition he was temporarily stranded on a small and fragile ice
     floe at the edge of the Ross Sea with a companion and some Mongolian
     ponies when a pod of Orcas eyeballed them first by "standing" in the
     water on their tails to gain elevation, then by "swimming" their upper
     bodies onto the ice floe, where they continued their observations at
     their leisure. The orcas then made what the author believed was
     feeding attack on the ponies by simultaneously rising up under the ice
     floe and smashing into it with their backs in an unsuccessful attempt
     to break it up. For Scott's team that sort of adventure was all in a
     day's work.

     Mike Vandamm
     Brookeville, Maryland USA
     mvandamm_at_email.usps.gov
***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List
Submissions:     paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net
Subscriptions:   paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net
Website:         http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/
***************************************************************************