Divers nearly DEVOURED by HUNGRY SEA BEASTS Two divers nearly relived the Jonah myth when a pair of humpback whales surfaced, jaws first, right next to them in a dining methodology that leviathan-lovers call "lunge feeding". "We were just floating around in the water, hoping to get some shots of the whales in the distance, when all of a sudden the sardines started going …
Interesting your link led to:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021015131359/http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1991/PSCF12-91Davis.html
Which tends to show that James Bartley was a real person, who toured England with his tale, which was sparked by media interest in a whale beaching ( the Gorleston whale).
It then saw print in a few minor newspapers, and then the tale was used by Pastor Harry Rimmer (I'll bet he got teased in school!) to prove the Bible was literally true science, and scientific theory the work of the Devil.
In essence, a tale oft told by a con man, and spread as gospel far and wide by someone that needed it to be true to support his beliefs.
Fascinating detective work by Edward Davis ferreting out the true tale!
But maybe the whales were doing research, like the Japanese 'researchers'. While the whales might have disliked the taste of humans, I haven't heard many reports of Japanese who don't like the taste of whales.
Yes, Gertrude, they still have 'research samples' of whale meat at the local grocery stores in Japan. I certainly saw some within the last few weeks, though I don't pay close enough attention to see if it is sometimes 'out of research'.
My understanding is that senior Japanese associate whale meat with wartime austerity, when it was the only meat they could get. The stuff apparently tastes rank. Only posh people wanting to prove how posh they are to other posh people pretend to like it. Most gets turned into pet food and cheap school-supplied meals (ie fed to people who have little choice but eat it). The latter is intended to try to generate a taste for the stuff in upcoming generations in the face of the fact that the vast majority of existing adults won't eat the stuff.
So why do they persist in killing whales for heavily subsidised pet-food? The Japanese whaling industry has a long long history dating all the way back to ... WWII austerity measures. And has a powerful political lobby group associated with it.
Would the man be able to escape from the whale's mouth? Would the whale get sick by ingesting that man?
They couldn't have been swallowed, so the whale would have eventually had to spit em out. Divers are covered in hard bits, wiggly and have a distressing tendency to generate a lot of gas so the owners of the mouths would have quickly worked out that something was amiss.
I suspect the biggest problem is the fact that the whales are moving pretty fast, and one of them actually hitting you is going to be bad news. They probably wouldn't do it deliberately (the divers are clearly too big to be food) but if you're hiding in a dense cloud of fish, the whales may not notice til it is too late.
In other news, Johnny Blubber was disagreeably surprised to find a pair of humans polluting his sardine sammy this morning.
"There were just floating there, right in the middle of my plate" Johnny declared after the incident. "It's like they were doing it on purpose."
As we all know, humans ruin the taste of sardines with their rubbery smell. Johnny tried to eat anyway, but the stench was just too much.
"I couldn't take it, I had to leave." Johnny said, disgusted. "What a waste." he added.
Whales and other cetaceans see by sonar, so they surely knew that the divers were there.
In sonar, you are translucent. So the whales can see your internal organs working. If they're intelligent enough, they probably have you pegged as a funny sort of dolphin with a hard thing on your back. If they have a sense of fun, they can see exactly how much they've startled / scared you by how much your heart speeds up.
My guess, those whales knew *exactly* what they were doing!
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