Ornery Orca Steals Show During Shark Week

File photo by Dr. Brandon Southall, NMFS/OPR.

 

A killer whale apparently has had enough with all this Shark Week mumbo jumbo and gotten orcas some attention!

Off Sitka, an orca reportedly harrassed and nearly damaged a small fishing boat. Here’s the Sitka Sentinel with more:

Victor Littlefield, his 14-year-old son and two of his son’s friends were on his 33-foot aluminum boat Sunday as it lay anchored near Little Biorka Island when the boat suddenly lurched violently to one side.
    Littlefield’s first thought was that he was being attacked by a great white shark.
    “I had just watched ‘Jaws’ the day before,” he said.
    But it wasn’t a shark. It was a killer whale, which had just rammed the side of the boat. 
    The orca hit the boat several times before it grabbed the anchor line and yanked on it, moving the boat around and then swimming toward the boat and slapping the bow with its tail. 
    “I was pretty much in shock,” Littlefield said. “I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.”
    Littlefield was out fishing with his son Hunter and his two friends when the incident occurred. They had just anchored up and had landed a rockfish. 
    When the orca attacked, one of the boys was able to get some of it on video, and Littlefield posted it on the Facebook page Sitka Chatters Sunday. In the video, the black and white whale is seen swimming around his boat with the anchor line in its mouth. After Littlefield was able to clip a buoy onto the line the whale tugged it out of his hands.
    “There was some cursing,” he said. “I thought it would rip the bow down.”

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident, and it’s not the only piece of news involving killer whales going on right now as Shark Week trudges on. There’s also this: