In the opening sequence of the BBC’s original Blue Planet series of 2001, TV’s first real look at life within the world’s oceans, a pod of orca are shown hunting a grey whale and her calf. Over and over, the killer whales jump on the calf, pushing it under the waves, determined to drown it. Once it is finally dead, after a six-hour battle, they eat only its lower jaw and tongue.
I vividly remember watching this as a 10-year-old in 2001 and thinking: I wouldn’t like to take on a killer whale. Lately, however, their attention seems to have turned uncomfortably close to home. In the past few years, a pod of orcas has been ramming boats in the waters off south-west Europe at seemingly increasing rates. From 52 such “interactions” recorded in 2020, there were 197 in 2021, 207 last year and a steady number so far this summer. In three cases, the orcas have damaged boats so badly that they have sunk.
More concerning still, this behaviour appears to be spreading between pods. Last month, an orca repeatedly rammed a yacht off the coast of Shetland, the first incident recorded in northern waters.
What’s driving this apparent antagonism isn’t known, but social media has rushed to declare it an “orca uprising” against humankind’s continual overstep into their habitat: Free Willy fights back. With sailing seen as a pastime of the 1%, the killer whales have been hailed as “anti-capitalist saboteurs” and cheered on from land with calls of “sink the rich”.
The matriarch of the pod responsible for most of the attacks, known as White Gladis, is even gaining a reputation as a crusading eco-feminist – Joan of Orca, if you will – with all the Daily Mail attention that that entails. (The paper even reported on Gladis’s recent pregnancy, noting disapprovingly that “rather than settling into motherhood, she continued her destructive endeavours” with her calf at her side.)
Of course a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek, but the alacrity with which this “us versus them” framing has sprung up – with “us” often being used to group together people who think billionaires should pay more tax, and actual sea creatures – is telling of our profound disconnection from the natural world.
Whether it’s the highly intimate view broadcast by the BBC’s Natural History Unit, or the highly ironic one cultivated on social media, we have become most accustomed to viewing non-human life through a screen. As a result, our perspective tends to be distorted. We become either over-familiar, projecting on to wild animals feelings and motives that they can’t possibly share in our quest for “relatable” content and characters; or entirely detached, as though we are just spectators of Earth’s spectacle, standing apart.
Both views centre humans as the most important form of life on the planet, but not in such a way that reckons with our overwhelmingly negative impact on it. Dr Alfredo López Fernandez of Grupo Trabajo Orca Atlántica (GTOA) told the Guardian that he believed, “human activities, even in an indirect way, are at the origin of this behaviour”. In other words, we’re not witnessing killer whales “fight back” – we are seeing their ongoing struggle to respond to changes driven by us.
In its cheery nihilism, the “orca rising” meme harks back to the “nature is healing” meme from early in the pandemic, when signs of wildlife returning to city streets emptied by lockdowns were hailed – first earnestly, then ironically – as evidence that “we are the virus” harming the world.
This persistent idea that Mother Nature herself might rise up to reject and even undo the damage done by humans appeals because it alleviates our sense of responsibility, and assuages our fears that it’s too late. But that glosses over not only the devastation that can’t be reversed, but the suffering that is currently under way.
Orcas are better placed than many species to adapt to our changing planet, what with their formidable intelligence, strong social structures and widely distributed population. Spectacular documentary footage has shown them capable of complex and collaborative problem-solving, precisely creating waves and breaking up ice floes to isolate their prey, and even using the tides to their advantage.
But the challenges increasingly facing orcas are not the sort that can be got around with teamwork, brute strength or some slick strategising with ice. Warming seas are forcing them to alter their migratory routes, diminished ecosystems are reducing their food supply, and marine traffic and noise pollution are interfering with their ability to hunt and communicate. Resident populations (which stick to coastal waters, and are often endangered) are being exposed to chemical contaminants, with deleterious effects on their health and wellbeing.
And whatever is behind the Iberian orcas’ boat-ramming, these fractious encounters speak to increasing tensions, even outright conflict, between humans and the rest of animal life. The natural world can no longer be seen as separate to the one developed by humans, never mind a guardrail against the latter’s excesses and a cure for its ills: the impacts of human activity are too far-reaching and inextricable.
As Justin Gregg, of the Dolphin Communication Project, put it, leaping to the conclusion that orcas are “out for revenge” is a “very humanlike thing to do”. The least we can do, if we’re to express solidarity with White Gladis and her “orca rising”, is be honest with ourselves about our part in her struggle.
Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist
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