At the time this book was written, there had been no to almost no recorded attacks by wild orcas on humans (captive orcas are a different matter). As of 2023, the subtitle takes on a rather different tone.


Touching grass is not enough. I need to sink yachts with the orcas

Neiwart is Pacific Northwest journalist, and this account focuses on the highly studied Southern Resident orcas of the Salish Sea between Vancouver and Washington. Orcas are of course the exemplars of charismatic megafauna, apex predators with their dramatic coloring, physical prowess, and agility. People around the world have venerated and feared orcas. The native people of the Pacific Northwest regarded orcas as fellow-people, and their stories are full of meetings between ordinary humans and orcas who can take human form to bestow blessings, curses, and take human wives. Europeans feared and dreaded the giant porpoise, naming it after a Roman underworld god.

The story follows loops through themes. Orcas push the scientific boundaries of what counts as a person. They're definitely intelligent, with social structures based around matriarchal lines, complex group hunting behavior, and a set of calls which have language-like structures. Orcas have culture. The Salish Sea features three populations: residents, transients, and off-shore orcas, each with different hunting styles and calls, and while being genetically compatible, have not interbred for hundreds of thousands of years. And yet, orcas and humans have not figured out how to talk, and orcas themselves behave in extremely conservative ways that indicate potential limits to their cognitive flexibility.

While there are perhaps 100,000 orcas worldwide, most of those inhabit the oceans around Antarctica. The Salish Sea residents are down to about 100 members, dangerous low numbers. Orcas face many threats: marine pollution, collisions with ships, collapse of the salmon fishery, and above all else, captivity. Orcas were fantastic attractions for marine parks, worth millions of dollars in revenue, and 'orca cowboys' in the 70s captured and killed many of the Southern Residents. Orcas fare poorly in captivity, tending to survive for a few years before succumbing to psychological and physical stress, whereas they can live for up to a century in the wild. Commercial orca pens are the equivalent of human solitary confinement, and it's no wonder that captive orcas go crazy.

Of Orcas and Men is a solid introduction to modern cetology, and a call for better fieldwork on these fascinating and unique animals.