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Crime on the Rise: Rogue Killer Whale Gangs Are Shaking Down Alaskan Fishing Boats

Crime on the Rise: Rogue Killer Whale Gangs Are Shaking Down Alaskan Fishing Boats

Crime knows no jurisdiction. It infests cities, rural communities, suburbia, the forests and even the high seas. “Wait,” you might say. “The high seas? Like pirates?” Well, yes, like pirates, but it turns out lawless buccaneers aren’t the only thing you need to watch for when sailing the bounty main. The oceans have a new terror: rogue gangs of killer whales, out to shake down Alaskan fishing vessels. 

Yes, like pirates of old, orcas are banding together in schools and plotting their cruel strike. The National Post has reports of orcas biding their time, acting natural as a clam, before slyly robbing fisherman of their halibut. Some of them get aggressive, even forcing fishing vessels back to port.

“It’s gotten completely out of control,” Alaska fisherman Jay Hebert told the Anchorage Daily News, the horror of what he’d witnessed still glittering in his eye, no doubt.

It’s happening all over Alaska, but the Bering Strait seems to have fallen on particularly hard times. (The Bering Strait separates Alaska from Russia … iiiinteresting). 

Killer whales have some of the most advanced social structures in the animal kingdom. They have languages that differ from region to region, and have even been observed developing new and unique hunting techniques, and then teaching them to others. Truly the organized criminals of the sea, this is yet another reason—as if you needed one—to NeverGoInTheWater.

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