I LOVE Orcas....have since I was a little kid in the '70's and even saw that horrible movie with Bo Derek and Richard Harris in it...they have been my favorite animal as long as I can remember.
But that documentary "Black Fish" about the abhorrent treatment and breakdown of these amazing animals in captivity, and the deaths of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau and others because of it, is still haunting to me. The sheer power of these animals relative to a human in the water is staggering. We're looking at an apex predator that has been known to take down even Great White Sharks...a social hunter of great intelligence and communicative ability with its own pod. They are beautiful, elegant and captivating and very dangerous if situations suddenly trigger even a playful interaction.
It is true that MOST Orca-human encounters in the wild are not inherently dangerous and that Orca are NOT blood-thirsty killers...but a mother and her calves is a dangerous situation because it can get unpredictably violent in a flash and there is very little hope of fending off a scared or upset female Orca in such cases...and all of that said, I would probably still want to get close enough to them to touch them and to interact with them despite the risks. Such amazing creatures and so much man has done to harm them and other wild life...depressing if you stop to think about it too long.
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