The footballer and sage Eric Cantona famously observed that “when the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea”.
Fishermen in the Bering Sea have acquired far larger followers, however, which do not wait for scraps but pull the main catch straight from the line.
Killer whales, hunting in pods, are chasing trawlers and robbing them of thousands of pounds of halibut and cod, according to captains in Alaska and Washington state. One compared the pods to motorcycle gangs, harassing fishing boats and impossible to outrun.
The skippers drop longlines with thousands of baited hooks, a method more environmentally sustainable than trawling with a net but which leaves the catch more exposed before it is hauled aboard.