Whales are not only social with each other, they're social with humans. They
like the attention they get when they go up to a ship. Hard to say whether this makes the fault any more the whale's or any more the human's, but it's certainly no surprise to me that this sort of thing happens. If you've ever gone on a whale-watching expedition you were probably given a spiel about the Marine Wildlife Preservation Act, which mandates that you have to keep a certain distance away from any visible marine animals, and the paradoxical observation that the whales don't particularly like being protected by the MWPA, as evidenced by the fact that they frequently swim into or breach above the "safe" area, forcing the boats to actually move away from them.
The sad fact, I think, is that whale behavior is so constructed as to make them poorly adapted to the existence of mankind.
