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From: Dr Ingrid Visser
_: 5
Date: 27-11-09
Time: 11:22
Hi Wade & Mark, Wow Mark, sounds like you had a magic encounter with the orca the other day! I have had lots of reports of orca doing just as you describe, and they often come in under my boat to the same position (but I have a motor boat, so it may be for a completely different reason, despite the similarities in their behaviours).
I’ve attached an image of an orca which had a kayak rudder in it’s mouth – and I have seem them do the same with yacht rudders (but harder to photograph!) and have had numerous people report encounters where the yacht was steered off course by the orca grasping the rudder in its mouth, so this one may very well have been doing that. However, typically the teeth marks look a little more ‘structured’ than the ‘artwork’ you have on your rudder – see the attached images of rays (+ one with me and the rays to give an idea of scale) and you can see the puncture marks, as well as the ‘rake’ marks (also visible in one photo and in the photo of the ray draped over the orca’s rostrum) as the teeth rake over the surface. It is not typical to have marks as just a single puncture mark, nor to have them in the ‘pattern’ that you saw and photographed on your rudder. Although the orca tongue is not smooth like their skin, I haven’t seen any marks left by their tongues, and if they did leave marks from the tongue, I would expect it to be more like a brush stroke or a like mark we ourselves would leave, rather than the circular marks you photographed. I know this doesn’t tell you what did leave the marks, but I am very sure it wasn’t orca (sorry – would have been a nice addition to your already great story!). Regardless, I hope this is of interest. Best wishes Ingrid PS, have you ruled out that this may have come from a marine snail or limpet? They have very rough tongues with mini ‘teeth’ on them and the whole thing is called a radula. They leave marks like this (although the three photos attached, which I got off the internet don’t show circles, they show ‘tracks’, I’ve seen circles, as I am sure Wade has – which might be from other molluscs who feed with a radula – anyway, just a though. ________________________ Ingrid N. Visser (Ph.D.) ingrid@orca.org.nz Orca Research Trust, P.O. Box 402043, Tutukaka, Northland, 0153, New Zealand + 64 (0)9 43 43 043 office & home + 64 (0)274 727 627 mobile www.orcaresearch.org
Limpet marks
Last changed: 27-Nov-2009