{"id":68614,"date":"2021-03-11T02:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/a-whale-of-a-tale\/"},"modified":"2021-03-11T02:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T11:30:00","slug":"a-whale-of-a-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/a-whale-of-a-tale\/","title":{"rendered":"A whale of a tale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A routine trip to her oyster farm turned into a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with an orca for Meta Mesdag, owner of Salty Lady Seafood Co. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We were headed back to Yankee Cove and between there and Sunshine Cove at about 1:30 on Tuesday when we spotted a pod of orcas in the distance,&rdquo; Mesdag told the Juneau Empire.&ldquo;They were well off in the distance, and I stopped really shy of them. We wanted to watch them go past,&rdquo; she said.<\/p>\n<p>As she moved the engine to idle, two adult orcas made a 90-degree turn and headed straight for her boat, which was packed with passengers and equipment.<\/p>\n<p><ins><a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/aw-shucks-a-love-for-oysters-is-growing-in-juneau\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aw, shucks: A love for oysters is growing in Juneau<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;They came straight at us,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I had no idea what they were going to do. They were clearly very curious.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>To her surprise, one orca swam right up next to them, surfaced, and pulled its tail out of the water, about six inches from one of the boat&rsquo;s passengers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?height=476&#038;href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FSaltyLadySeafood%2Fvideos%2F2943170962634631%2F&#038;show_text=false&#038;width=476\" width=\"476\" height=\"476\" style=\"border:none;overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowFullScreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;A lot was going through my head,&rdquo; she said, noting that the entire episode lasted about two minutes. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never had an encounter before. I&rsquo;m wondering if it&rsquo;s going to push the boat. It felt like it was playing chicken with us. I thought it could pull someone into the water. I know they aren&rsquo;t aggressive, so I thought maybe it was just going to splash us.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>After that, the pod, which she estimates included six adults and a calf, swam off.<\/p>\n<p><ins><a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/juneau-gets-first-loca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Juneau gets first local oyster farm<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;They circled us and then carried off into the sunset,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was a really exciting and fun end to our day. It was incredible. It&rsquo;s only a three-mile run back and forth to the farm. If we had timed it differently, we would have missed it,&rdquo; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Orcas, also called killer whales, are found in all the world&rsquo;s oceans, but they are most abundant in colder waters such as those around Southeast Alaska, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations website.<\/p>\n<p>According to the site, an adult orca can grow up to 32 feet long and weigh up to 11 tons.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8226; Contact reporter Dana Zigmund at dana.zigmund@juneauempire.com or 907-308-4891. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><ins class=\"neEmbed\" data-eid=\"41912\"><\/p>\n<p><\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Salty Lady Seafoods crew enjoy an unexpected visit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":716,"featured_media":68615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[75,774],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-68614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-local-news","tag-orca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68614"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=68614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}