The Times reports that sailors off the coast of Spain and Portugal have been told to be vigilant about the possibility of attacks on boats by killer whales. A group of orcas are thought to have bashed into two yachts and put them out of action in a single day. An online report tells me that, “All the encounters with the killer whales took place between 2 and 8 nautical miles from the coast and the sailing speed ranged between 5 and 9 knots. On Monday afternoon last a Spanish lifeboat towed the 49-foot yacht Alboran Champagne to safety. They then went to sea again to rescue three crew from another boat, Cachacha, in the same area. The killer whales rammed both boats and broke the rudders.
There have been 22 incidents like this since April. Almost half of the yachts had to be towed to harbour because there were so badly damaged.
When one boat was rescued and being towed to shore, the killer whales returned to try and bite through the tow rope.
Killer whales are members of the dolphin family and they gather in waters along the Spanish and Portuguese coast every spring to feed on the annual bluefin tuna migration. This brings them into contact with leisure craft. The first attacks appear to have occurred in 2020.
At the end of 2021 they had been 100 incidents recorded of the Iberian Peninsula with 30 boats needing rescuing as the rudders had been broken.
Matt Johnson was one victim of these attacks. He sails a 35-foot yacht. He was sailing from Belfast to Almeria last October. He had just left Sesimbra, Portugal and was staying close to the shore as per the advice given. At 11:30 a group of four killer whales approached. The two young ones went for the rudder and the two larger ones rammed the boat. The boat spun around. The attack lasted for about 40 minutes. One of the orcas swam away with a piece of the rudder on its head. His boat was towed back to shore at a cost of €500 and repairs cost €12,500. He has no intention of sailing the Strait of Gibraltar or of the Portuguese coast again.
Killer whales can grow to 10 m in length and weigh 10 tons for males. They can reach 35 mph at full speed. A 30 m yacht, Lucette, was sunk by a pod of killer whales in the Pacific 200 miles west of the Galapagos. And in 1976 an Italian racing yacht was sunk by a killer whale off the coast of Brazil.
The coastguard has barred boats under 50 m from the Bay of Barbate and an area of the Galician coast.
The Times report states that “nobody knows why the orcas are harassing sailors”. Some believe it is due to a conflict related to the competition between fishing fleets and orcas for the bluefin tuna. A wildlife photographer believes that the orcas are protesting and he claims to have seen orcas scarred by improvised harpoons.
Others including some fishermen believe that the change in orca behaviour is due to human migrants from Africa who try to cross the strait every night. Apparently 335 migrants went missing last year at sea. It is believed that the orcas ram small pleasure boats and are ramming the boats containing migrants.
Ecologists and biologists dismiss these theories and say that they are simply interactions between orcas and boats and not attacks.
I think the theory of Alfredo Lopez, a biology professor at the Coordinator for the Study of Marine Mammals, has the best theory. He was speaking to the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais. He said that the orcas are not out for revenge but, “They’re just acting out as a precautionary measure”. He believes that they are not premeditated attacks in which the killer whales plan to cause damage to the boats. They attacked the boats because they feel threatened. Also, researchers say that in one incident the orcas were injured before or during their encounters. Perhaps the injuries played a part in their behaviour.
Update August 26, 2022. There some more on this story in The Times today. Apparently boats off Brittany, France have been attacked by orcas. This is well north of traditional orca waters around Spain. There’s been around six encounters a month over the summer including an assault by five orcas in August on a yacht crewed by 27-year-old Norwegian medical student. She said that the orcas kept ramming yacht in a coordinated attack. She managed to get the yacht back to port for repairs.
Another skipper reported on Facebook that “The orcas were very determined to bite us”. There is a Facebook page reporting orca attacks which has around 15,000 members. In about half the attacks the rudders of the vessels are rammed and damaged.
These killer whales are from a small group originally identified in the Strait of Gibraltar that feeds on big tuna which enter the Mediterranean at that point each spring and leave at the end of summer. Global warming has meant that they are travelling further north to get the tuna.
Scientists believe that the orcas are ramming the rudders in a game of practising tuna hunting. One scientist said: “If they wanted to breech the hulls, they could easily do it with their snouts but they only attack the rudders”.
Below are some more pages on marine wildlife.
