While fishing salmon commercially in Alaska I once witnessed 3 killer whales take a seal off a tide rock. They swam around the rock as the tide came in and when the seal had no room left one pushed him off and others got him. When they swam by my skiff I swear the old grey cow looked right at me. A seine skiff is about 18' long 8' wide and is powered by anything from a 653 Detroit to a 3408 Cat. Think mini tug boat really.
I also say 3 of them swimming right at our open net once. A real young one and 2 cows. The calf was in the lead as they approached and there was no time to move the net, The one cow sped up and they dove as they got close to the net and came up on the other side. I have no doubt she showed Jr what it was all about
Aonther time while fishing of an rock maybe 50 ft or so off the beach, we had the net open and I spot a small humpback coming down the beach and I hurry to pull my end of the net as far as I can off the beach and he swims by between me and the rock. Then we close up and haul our gear. Reset and I am back at rock and here he comes again. Kind of weird, but I pull off the rock, but not near as far and he swims though the gap between me and the rock and I swear he looked at me. Next time we set here he comes again.. What or why he as doing it, I still wonder about, but obviously ir interested him and he knew what we were about. I stayed on the rock and he swam by between rock and beach.
The last thing in the whole world you want in your net is a whale as they will completely trash it. Actually catching one in a Alaska seine net is extremely rare. I once saw a hump back breech coming up through a net, corks and net on him. Minutes later he swam away and the boat went into a bay to anchor up and try to put their net back together.
The nets that kill whales are high seas drift nets made of monofilament that is difficult to see in the water and are miles long and have lots of slack in them whale swims in against it and it folds around him then he ends up completely tangled in it and drowns. I fished for 12 years and never caught even a porpoise, just one baby seal who was very alive when we put him back over the side. I have seen lots of porpoise, seals, and sea lions fish our nets. The know there are fish against them so the swim along them taking what they want, Sea lions are the worst because they often just rip a big hole in the net either taking want the want or leaving when they had enough. They often just bite the guts out of the middle of them one after the other. Another boat we use to fish around actually did catch a porpoise, but I figure there must be dumb porpoises like there are dumb people.
They are mainly used for squid and their by catch is terrible. Some estimate they kill as many salmon they don't want, by accident as we do on purpose. Worst of all is when some of it gets loose. It floats on the surface catching and killing until it is to heavy to float sinks and the fish in it rot and are eating until it floats back to the top and starts killing again.
