Rogues Blog #14:
NOAA Fisheries announced yesterday (9 April) that whale-watchers and other boaters will have to stay twice as far away from killer whales in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, 200 yards vs. the current approach distance of 100 yards. This is a good thing: orcas depend on natural sonar to navigate and find food and their hearing is exceptional, even non-motorized boats that approach too close can disturb killers. But noise is only one major threat affecting orcas, the others being water pollution and a shortage of its preferred prey, Chinook salmon (affects only resident killers since the much more mysterious transients eat mammals). Click on link below for dramatic footage of transient snagging a sea lion right off the beach. Now imagine this fierce predator is not five tons, but 20x that big as the rogue killers in "Rogues." Keep a safe distance? I think so!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8446762105999535185#
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