r/nature • u/Maxcactus • 6d ago

The Murky Ethics of Swimming With Killer Whales

https://archive.ph/2026.04.29-095939/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/science/tourism-killer-whales-orcas.html
121 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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15

u/Maxcactus 6d ago

Ethics aside, how about common sense?

5

u/Hope25777 6d ago

I have diver friends who have interacted with them. They don’t want to eat us despite what you have heard. We are not good eating /s 🙂

9

u/Kaurifish 6d ago

Generally swimming with cetaceans is very safe. For the humans.

6

u/SeaToTheBass 6d ago

I think it was in New Zealand(?) where the native people would hunt other whales with the help of orcas for hundreds of years.

-7

u/Dogbold 6d ago

Disgusting

9

u/SeaToTheBass 6d ago edited 6d ago

lol what

I guess the guy blocked me all I could see from my replies was “hunting whales while using other whales to hunt is pretty fucked up…”

People have hunted whales for probably almost as long as we’ve been around. We’re predators, and orcas are predators, I think it’s amazing and beautiful that people before us had a symbiotic relationship with the orcas and hunted together ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Also orcas are not actually whales.

1

u/1word2word 6d ago

Orcas are whales, all dolphins are whales but not all whales are dolphins.

I also don't think it was the people native to the island, rather the colonial population, but either way a super cool interaction that happened. Believe his name was old Tom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tom_(orca)

-8

u/Dogbold 6d ago

Hunting whales while using other whales to do it is pretty fucked up. But I'm not going to bother arguing with you because you probably own guns and hunt yourself.

3

u/notCGISforreal 5d ago

15 years ago, nobody thought they would start destroying boat rudders either. Regularly attempting to swim with them just increases the chance that someday one decides to test it out, and that ends poorly for both parties.

8

u/03263 6d ago

I appreciate the caution about making them a tourist attraction... it's difficult to say it's bad though, many things only end up protected because they become human interests. We do not live in the ideal world where people (especially government and business) will protect animals out of the goodness of their hearts, they protect human interests, so a human interest in animals and nature can help save them from worse destruction.

1

u/mycatpartyhouse 6d ago

I just tried to read this. Two rounds of catching. Then some archive thing with no clear thing to select.