orca vs yachts

Why are orcas attacking boats and sometimes sinking them?

After four years and hundreds of incidents, researchers remain puzzled why orcas, also known as killer whales, continue to ram boats – sinking a few of them – along the Iberian Peninsula. The most-recent incident was the sinking of a yacht on Oct. 31 in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The origin of these interactions remain a "great mystery," said Alfredo López, a University of Santiago biologist, but he does not believe the behavior is aggressive. Orcas are large dolphins, López said. And like dolphins, the events could stem from the orcas’ curious and playful behavior, such as trying to race the boats.

López, who specializes in orcas, and his team, Grupo de trabajo Orca Atlántica (GOTA) , have tracked these encounters since 2020. The team’s recent study theorizes the orcas could also be exhibiting cautionary behavior because of some previous traumatic incident.

Where have killer whales interacted with boats?

GOTA has tracked more than 350 interactions just on the Iberian Peninsula since 2020. Most have taken place along the Strait of Gibraltar, but the orcas’ mischief or self-defense may be spreading north. An incident was reported in June in the  Shetland Islands in Scotland .

GOTA defines interactions as instances when orcas react to the presence of approaching boats, such as:

• Interaction without physical contact.
• Some physical contact without damage.
• Contact that causes serious damage that could prevent the navigation of the boat.

Recent incidents when orcas attacked boats and sank them

The Oct. 31 incident occurred in the Strait of Gibraltar where a pod of orcas sank a mid-size sailing yacht named the Grazie Mamma after a 45-minute interaction,  Live Science reported . 

On June 19 an orca rammed a 7-ton yacht multiple times off the Shetland Islands in Scotland, according to an account from retired Dutch physicist Dr. Wim Rutten in the Guardian.

"Killer whales are capable of traveling large distances, so it is not out of the ordinary that an animal could travel that far," said Tara Stevens, a marine scientist at CSA Ocean Sciences Inc. "To my knowledge, this data is not available, so we cannot confirm at this time if these are the same animals." 

Including the Oct. 31 incident, orcas have sunk four boats this year. The previous sinking occured in May , off the coasts of Portugal and Spain, but whale expert Anne Gordon told USA TODAY  in May that the incidents shouldn't heighten concerns about the whales.

"Yes, they're killer whales. And yes, their job is to be predators in the ocean, but in normal circumstances there is absolutely zero threat to humans in a boat," Gordon said .

Most of the interactions have involved sailboats, but fishing boats, semi-rigid boats and motorboats haven’t gone unscathed. 

Are these the same killer whales attacking boats or unrelated incidents?

López hypothesizes that the interactions could be a self-induced behavior where you're "inventing something new and repeat it. This behavior coincides with the profile of the juveniles." He said it could also be response to an aversive situation: "One or several individuals had lived a bad experience and tried to stop the boat so as not to repeat it. This behavior coincides with the profile of adults."

"Fifteen different orcas from at least three different communities" have been identified, López said. And they are probably teaching the habit to others, or the others are mimicking the behavior. "Without a doubt orcas learn by imitation," López said.  The majority of the culprits are juveniles that touch, push and sometimes turn the vessels. He noted that adult males don't appear to be involved.

"Killer whales are incredibly intelligent animals that do learn behaviors from observation of other individuals," Stevens said. "Typically, very unique behaviors such as this are learned 'within' group, meaning individuals of the group may learn from each other and participate, but that does not necessarily mean that the behavior is shared outside the group with other individuals."

Which pods of killer whales are battering the boats?

Orcas operate in a social structure called a pod. These pods generally are a group of several generations of related orcas. Hierarchies are established within them, and they communicate and learn from one another, the study reads.

GOTA researchers have identified the individuals responsible for the interactions . One large pod is made up of three generations. It starts with grandmother Gladis Lamari, her daughter, grandchildren and a few other relatives.

Another pod comprises siblings Gladis Negra and Gladis Peque. Both have been photographed interacting with boats. Their mother, Gladis Herbille, has generally just watched her children at a distance from the boats, the study said.

A third group in the study are siblings and a cousin.

Orcas often tracking bluefin tuna

The movements of orcas depend on the location of their main food source, bluefin tuna. The migratory movements of tuna are very dynamic and predicting exactly where interactions will take place is very difficult, the report said. According to NOAA , Atlantic bluefin tuna are the largest in the tuna family and can reach a length of 13 feet and up to 2,000 pounds. They are a highly migratory species and can migrate thousands of miles across an entire ocean.

About the Iberian orcas

While they are called killer whales, orcas are actually the largest member of the dolphin family. This aquatic marine mammal family includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The Iberian orca is a subpopulation of the Atlantic orca population. These orcas are from the Strait of Gibraltar and the Gulf of Cádiz. Iberian orcas are small: 16 to 21 feet compared with Atlantic orcas that measure almost 30 feet.

Orcas in general are fast, reaching speeds up to 27.6 mph. By comparison, a 39-foot sailboat travels at about 9.2 mph.

What should you do if your boat is attacked by killer whales

The study recommended these tips to reduce the duration and intensity of the interaction.

• Stop the boat.
• Leave the rudder loose.
• Radio for help.

According to the GOTA study, most of the vessels involved in interactions are medium-sized (less than 49 feet) sailboats, with a paddle rudder, sailing at an average of 6.9 mph, under both sail and motor.

The interactions have been mostly concentrated in the spring and summer months and have been concentrated in the midday hours. They've lasted on average for 40 minutes, but several last less than 30 minutes. 

Types of rudders Iberian orcas have approached

"It is very common for dolphins to interact with the boats and approach," López said. "Before 2020, the orcas did it with frequency but they weren't classified as attacks. Now, sometimes they touch the boat and the encounter is unfairly classified as an attack. They judge socially before understanding what (orcas) do."

The Mad Scientist and the Killer Whales

By Tomas Weber

Tomas Weber

T he five animals took an hour to put the sailboat beneath the waves. At the end of October 2022, four men, each in his late twenties, set sail from western France toward Lisbon. Augustin Drion, an experienced sailor from Brittany, was one of them. He had come to lend a hand to a friend from engineering school, Elliot Boyard, who owned the 39-foot sailing vessel. From Portugal, they planned to cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean. They would cruise around the islands for a year. Then they would return home. 

He heard a crash. The boat shook, and Drion lost his balance. “What happened?” he shouted up to the others. There was banging on the hull from the outside. The crew looked over the side and saw black fins breaking the glassy surface. Five killer whales , each more than half the length of the boat, their glossy skin shining in the sunlight, were taking turns swimming into the back of the sailboat, ramming the rudder with their heads. With each crash, the boat jolted into a new direction. 

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After a while, Drion began to worry about the boat’s structural integrity. He went down into the cockpit. This time, there was water on the floor. A steady stream flowed in from a crack in the stern. The boat was quickly flooding, and it was starting to sink. Boyard put out a mayday call. The nearest vessel was 60 minutes away, and the men inflated the lifeboat. They wanted to stay on the sinking boat for as long as possible, worried that the orcas might decide to sink their life raft, too — which would be catastrophic. But the water was rising quickly, and they all crowded into the blow-up dinghy. They looked around. The killer whales had gone. A Swedish yacht arrived to pick them up. The men watched the top of the sailboat’s mast disappear beneath the swells.  

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The group of orcas that live around the Iberian Peninsula are the only killer whales that attack boats, and researchers know very little about them. There is only one scientific paper about their new hobby. The Portuguese government has advised sailors to stop moving if killer whales hit them, and wait for them to get bored — which is what Drion and Boyard did instinctively. The Spanish authorities, though, say keep going. In 2020, the Spanish government banned small sailing boats from a part of northwestern Spain. Meanwhile, the attacks are spreading. This community of orcas, documented in the Strait of Gibraltar since the Roman Empire, consists of nearly 90 animals. Some scientists believe that all of them now ram sailing boats. What triggered the behavior is unclear. One hypothesis, though, has taken off: The orcas are seeking revenge. 

The notion of killer whales with vendettas against humans — whether for injuring them with boat propellers, or for picking their tuna hunting grounds clean, or for ruining the climate, or for capturing their brothers and sisters and imprisoning them in swimming pools — took the internet by storm last summer. You can buy stickers and mugs of the Gladis orcas. “Fuck them boats.” “Eat the Rich.” “Support for Comrade Gladis.” 

But these aren’t superyachts. The orcas tend to leave fishing boats alone, too. The targets include humble craft, sailing boats of the kind you can buy for the cost of a cheap used car. For their owners and crew, many of whom are not, by sailing standards, especially wealthy, the attacks are terrifying. The most recent sinking was last October. There is no reliable way to deter them, and sailors are completely at their mercy. 

Which is why, in January 2022, the Spanish government asked Renaud de Stephanis, a 48-year-old Spanish orca expert, to figure out a solution to the problem. De Stephanis, who has a grizzled beard, shaggy hair, and bronzed aging-surfer skin, has been studying this group of orcas since the 1990s. Last December, I flew to Gibraltar, crossed the border into Spain by foot, and drove west along the coast toward a ramshackle house perched upon a cliff above the strait to spend a week with him. 

HIS HOUSE IS difficult to pinpoint in the hills above Tarifa, a hippie kite-surfing town at the southernmost tip of mainland Europe. I arrive at the door after getting lost, and a 27-year-old marine-biology intern named Maggie cracks it open. De Stephanis isn’t home right now, she says. He’s at sea. “Be careful,” de Stephanis had warned a few days earlier on Facebook: The orcas are now in the strait. Maggie isn’t sure how long he’ll be. But I can wait for him here. 

From the top of the house I can make out the cliffs of the Moroccan coast. A procession of freight ships chugs between the Pillars of Hercules, two promontories that frame the entrance to the Atlantic Ocean: one on the European side, the other in North Africa. For ancient mariners, the two pillars were a warning: Advance no farther. They marked out the edges of the known world and the start of nothingness. According to classical mythology, the Strait of Gibraltar was Hercules’ handiwork — eight miles across at its tightest point. Why would Hercules make it so narrow? To stop sea monsters from coming up into the Mediterranean, wrote Diodorus Siculus, an ancient-Greek historian. The protector of mankind had built a bottleneck for blocking civilization off from the wild.

There are three interns, and they tell me they hardly ever see de Stephanis, despite living in his little house for many months. “He has mad-scientist vibes,” one of them tells me over tapas. Some days, de Stephanis remains in his bedroom morning to night, announcing “Today doesn’t exist.” Or he waits out bad weather and rough swells in his sleeping bag in the living room with an old movie — Gladiator is his favorite. But as soon as conditions are right, he slips out onto the strait again, searching for Gladis. 

Which is what he’s doing as I wait, passing the time trying to decipher a Spanish translation of Moby Dick I find on a shelf in his office, beside crossbow darts used for extracting whale biopsies. That evening, as de Stephanis steps through the door just in time for spaghetti and meatballs, I remember I’d read he was an ex-rugby player — his cetacean obsession had followed a short professional career, and he still has the physique of a feared enforcer. His wet blue eyes are a little bloodshot. They appear to intimidate the interns, who were chattering happily until the moment he walked in. 

Nobody has died. But sailors worry it’s just a matter of time.

After dinner, de Stephanis kindles a log fire. He tells me about changing ancient seafaring routes, passages sailors had followed since before the ancient Romans. A few months earlier, he had announced that boats should avoid the deep waters in the middle of the strait where the orcas usually strike. Sailors obeyed, and today most vessels in the area hug the coast. Diverting boats seems to delight him. He stands up and starts pacing the living room. “Super fun,” he says. “I like it.” 

THE MORNING OF Jan. 10, 2023, was cloudy and calm on the Strait of Gibraltar. De Stephanis and his team of five stepped into an inflatable Zodiac and sped out of Tarifa harbor in the direction of Morocco, past the statue of Christ at the port’s entrance. It was the first day of their government-funded project to understand how to deter the killer whales. First, though, the crew had to check if they were even around.  

It was in these waters that once swam the first killer whales to ever be described in writing. “The killer whale, a creature that is the enemy of the other species and the appearance of which can be represented by no other description except that of an enormous mass of flesh with savage teeth,” wrote Pliny the Elder in A.D. 77, “charge[s] and pierce[s] other whales like warships ramming.” But in the winter, killer whales are less common in the Strait of Gibraltar. They often follow the bluefin tuna into the Atlantic, and de Stephanis didn’t expect to see them. Standing on the blow-up tube on the side of the boat, he scanned the horizon. He was not ready to begin any experiments. As far as he knew, the orcas never went for inflatable boats. 

Once in the deep water, though, two killer whales started approaching them quickly from behind. Their black-and-white faces were rhythmically emerging from the water as they swam, their eyes fixed on the boat. The pair got closer and closer, until one lifted the Zodiac out of the water with a gentle tap of its nose. It happened again. Everybody on the boat was knocked toward the bow. De Stephanis’ heart was pounding. He worried the orcas would destroy the boat on their first day of work. “I wasn’t scared,” he tells me with a smirk. “OK, I was fucking scared.” 

The killer whales played with the blow-up craft for about an hour. Sebastian Lang, a German photographer who lives in Tarifa, had come aboard for the ride. A few years earlier, Lang had been snorkeling at a nearby spot with pilot whales, long black cetaceans with bulbous foreheads that are the only animals Iberian orcas appear to fear. One of them took Lang’s arm in its mouth and swam down to the depths, delivering him back to the surface just before he passed out. As the orcas rammed the fragile inflatable, Lang zoned out again, but this time with a feeling of awe. “My brain shut off,” he tells me. “I wanted to look at them for hours and hours.”  

He tried out a pinger that played a high-pitched sound, which some sailors say repels the whales, and found it seemed to attract them instead. He played recordings of pilot whale calls — but he worried they would drive the orcas out of the strait altogether, so he stopped. He dragged decoy rudders behind the boat to see which designs they preferred, and he deployed a prototype deterrent rudder covered with soft spikes. It appeared to be effective. What he failed to prove, though, was the reason for the behavior — although what conclusive evidence of that would look like is hard to imagine. Still, de Stephanis has a theory. 

ON A BRIGHT and clear day a few months later, de Stephanis was approached by a group of orcas, including one with a deep wound gouged into his dorsal fin. It was Gladis Black. De Stephanis shows me underwater video he had taken with a GoPro attached to a stick. Beneath the boat, Gladis Black rotates into a vertical position, and presses and rubs the pointed black tip of his face against the rudder. His face and white chin are covered with scratches and scars.

Was he seeking revenge? This theory, it seemed, had originated with Alfredo López, an animal biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal. Lòpez believes that one of the orcas could have been harmed, perhaps by a fishing line, and that the behavior might be a response to injury. “Complete bullshit,” says de Stephanis, who has known Lòpez since 1999 through attending whale conferences, and has little respect for him. “I call him ‘the expert,’” he says with a mocking smile. “He’s no friend of mine.” He adds: “He knows I know that he has never seen an orca.” 

It’s worth pointing out here that de Stephanis has attracted controversy, too. He has studied the orcas at Loro Parque, Spain’s version of SeaWorld, which still keeps four animals in captivity. The conservation foundation connected to the park has also given him grant money. De Stephanis says he opposes keeping orcas in captivity: We shouldn’t capture any more, he tells me — but as long as they are there, they can be useful to biologists.

Gonzàlez tells me she doesn’t care what de Stephanis thinks of Lòpez’s work. Still, team Lòpez and team de Stephanis battle it out in Facebook comments — and just as the attacks have become a craze among the orcas, Lòpez’s trauma-and-revenge hypothesis quickly became a meme among human onlookers. “Killer whales orchestrating revenge attacks on boats,” wrote the New York Post in 2020. “Revenge of the orcas?” asked the Washington Post in May 2023.

Every orca researcher I speak to agrees that Lòpez’s hypothesis is implausible. Even Drion, whose experience with the orcas felt like an attack, compares the whales to a powerful dog playing rough with a small child. It feels scary, and it’s certainly dangerous — but to the dog, it’s just a game. 

If they wanted to sink the boat, they’d jump on it and the game is over.

“If they really wanted to sink the boat,” Drion tells me, “they would just jump on it and the game is over.”

But the attacks could still be a result of how humans have harmed killer whales, de Stephanis says. In 2010, overfishing decimated the bluefin tuna population. During that period, the orcas birthed fewer calves. With fewer siblings to play with, de Stephanis wonders, were boisterous juveniles choosing boats as their playmates instead? OK — but then why are the adults joining in? That’s not so surprising, he tells me. Humans aren’t so different. His daughter is trying to teach him TikTok dances. 

Whether or not that story holds water, de Stephanis is convinced Lòpez’s trauma-and-revenge idea is wrong. The behavior is play through and through. But as de Stephanis fills the house with chaos, shouting and blasting Independence Day at 8 a.m., I can’t shake the idea that this interpretation, that it’s nothing but horseplay, overlaps almost too neatly with what he himself seems to share with the orcas. 

 STILL, DE STEPHANIS is probably right. If the orcas do intend to destroy boats and harm people on them, they could do that easily by smashing holes in the hull — but they never do. They are obsessed only with the rudder. And the idea that the behavior developed in reaction to an injury from a fishing line, or even because of overfishing, is dubious, because the orcas very rarely, to our knowledge, attack fishing boats — for unclear reasons. More than that, though, is the fact that every killer whale scientist I speak to repeats the same thing: These creatures just don’t carry vendettas.

Orcas have “one of the most elaborated brains on the planet,” says Lori Marino, a neuroscientist, expert in whale behavior, and founder and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project. An orca’s cerebral cortex is more convoluted, more intricately folded, than a human’s — which gives them an extraordinary ability to learn, remember, think, and feel. Killer whales lead a rich emotional life, and share some complex feelings with humans, Marino says. They experience empathy, they mourn their dead, and they are probably smart enough to understand why an individual might want to harm another in vengeance — to impart a lesson, for example, or to discourage future attacks. Which makes it even more remarkable that, in the wild, orcas never do. 

In the 1960s and 1970s, when orcas in the northeastern Pacific were repeatedly terrorized by boats that kidnapped their relatives and put them into captivity, they never attacked vessels of any kind. Unlike highly intelligent terrestrial mammals, such as chimps, gorillas, or humans, there is very little evidence that wild killer whales have ever sought revenge. (Although orcas in captivity have killed trainers, those animals were probably psychologically disturbed by their environment, says Marino.) When a chimpanzee steals food, the victim often retaliates. An aggrieved macaque will settle scores, sometimes attacking a family member of the perpetrator. But orcas don’t do that. “They have adapted in a way that eliminates the need for aggression,” says Deborah Giles, a killer whale researcher at the University of Washington.  

What looks like revenge against humans, Whitehead says, is a behavior that may be a kind of culture, a way this community of orcas now strengthens its group identity. Orca obsessions can quickly turn into collective fads. Take their eating habits. Most wild animals are not fussy gourmands. But the orcas that live in the seas around Antarctica eat tiny penguins, and when they kill them, they discard everything other than the breast muscles. Orcas that eat other whales usually enjoy only the lips and the tongue and leave the rest to wash up or rot. Each community of killer whales speaks in its own dialect, and off the coast of Australia, in a place called Shark Bay, orcas adorn their noses with ornamental sponges. In the 1980s, the salmon-eating orcas of the northeastern Pacific fashioned hats from the carcasses of their prey. They wore them all summer.

Outside of humans, the complexity and stability of these cultural forms is unparalleled. Boat ramming is just the latest of these practices. But when we, another eminent cultural animal, seek to understand what killer whales are up to, we can’t help but see them through the pinhole of our own cultural practices and group dynamics. We look beneath the surface with ape eyes, and we see territoriality and retaliation where we should see cultural behaviors that have little to do with land-based violence — which results in orcas with apelike vendettas going viral. 

FOR MOST OF my stay with de Stephanis, the ocean is too rough to go out upon. On my last day, though, there’s a window of calm, and he wants to show me the orcas before I leave. I offer to drive us to the port in my rental car. He thinks I’ll probably drive too slowly, and bombs down the hill on his motorbike. At the port, we meet a man named Salva, who will control the boat while de Stephanis scans the surface for fins. We hop onto the Zodiac, motor past the Jesus statue and out into the strait, and squint into the horizon until our faces hurt. 

 We see hundreds of silvery dolphins breach and spin in the air. We see a pod of pilot whales and a languid sunfish drifting on the surface. We see a yacht in the distance between a stream of cargo ships, underway in deep water. The captain is resisting de Stephanis’ advice. “That could get him into trouble,” says de Stephanis. But the yacht will be lucky: The killer whales are nowhere to be seen. They are probably already hunting tuna in the open ocean. Perhaps, I think, they’ve abandoned their craze. Maybe they’ve even developed a new fixation. 

 I drive back to Gibraltar feeling a little deflated, and while I wait for my flight, I walk up the European Pillar of Hercules. Near the top, a sign warns me about macaques, the only wild monkeys that live on the continent, which “may behave aggressively.” For a few minutes, I watch them lounging peacefully in the sun, then turn around and fly home. 

 But two months later, the orcas, fresh from the open seas, swim back into the Strait of Gibraltar. At dusk on Feb. 4, their fad apparently now their tradition, a way of life, five individuals begin to ram the back of a large sailing boat, in rough seas six miles off the coast of Tangiers. “We saw them heading straight for us,” says the French captain. “Aggressive and lively and very fast.” 

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Why are killer whales going ‘Moby-Dick’ on yachts lately? Experts doubt it’s revenge

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The attacks started suddenly and inexplicably in the spring of 2020 — pods of endangered killer whales began ramming yachts and fishing boats in European waters, pushing some off course and imperiling others.

Since then, there have been more than 500 reports of orca encounters off the Iberian Peninsula, the most recent occurring Thursday when a trio of whales rubbed against and bumped a racing sloop in the Strait of Gibraltar.

In most cases, the financial and structural damage has ranged from minimal to moderate: Boats have been spun and pushed, and rudders have been smashed and destroyed. Three vessels have been so badly mauled, they’ve sunk.

As the encounters continue, shaky video captured by thrilled and fearful seafarers has ignited a global internet sensation, while experts have struggled to explain the behavior and its timing. The seemingly militant whales have also won over a legion of adoring fans — many transfixed by the notion that the mammals are targeting rich people and exacting revenge for all the wrongs humanity has waged on their species and their ocean home.

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Others wonder if the unusually large pods of multi-ton cetaceans now appearing off the coasts of San Francisco , Monterey and Nantucket, Mass., may soon follow suit.

Despite such rampant speculation on social media, most killer whale scientists have offered a very different interpretation. The Moby-Dick “revenge” narrative for the behavior is highly unlikely, they say.

“That just doesn’t sit right with me,” said Deborah Giles, an orca researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle and director of Wild Orca, a Washington-based conservation research organization.

She noted that despite the long history of orcas being hunted by whalers — and more recently marine parks — these top ocean predators have typically demonstrated a lack of aggression toward humans. There are no verified instances of orcas killing humans in the wild. The only deaths have occurred in marine parks and aquariums, where animals taken from the wild and forced to perform for humans in small tanks have attacked their trainers.

“So, I just don’t really see it as an agonistic activity; I just don’t see it going down like that,” said Giles, who has studied killer whales in the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound and the Salish Sea for nearly 20 years.

Instead, she thinks the animals are engaging with boats because the vessels are “either making an interesting vibration or sound, or maybe it’s the way the water moves past the keels that is intriguing to these animals.”

The scientific literature is rife with anecdotes and research showing high cognition, playfulness and sociality in the species known as Orcinus orca — and examples of what appear to be the cultural transmission of new behaviors, either via teaching or observation.

In 1987, a female orca in the Pacific waters off North America was spotted sporting a dead salmon on her head. Within weeks, individuals in two other pods also began wearing fish hats. The trend lasted a few months and fizzled out within a year.

In South Africa, the killing of white sharks appears to be growing in popularity among a resident group of killer whales in the waters near Cape Town; Giles has watched a local trend of “phocoenacide” — porpoise killing — grow among a group of whales off the San Juan Islands.

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In both cases, the behavior does not appear to be for the purpose of feeding, Giles said. The orcas do not eat the dead animals. For instance, in the case of the porpoises, the killer whales played with them — bandying them about, sometimes surfing with them, other times carrying them on the orcas’ pectoral fins — until the porpoises drowned, at which point they were abandoned, she said.

“Fads” are not unique to orcas. Other animals, including primates and other cetaceans, have also been observed to adopt new behaviors, which then spread through a social group.

Susan Perry, a biological anthropologist at UCLA, has studied a population of capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica, where she has observed and demonstrated the cultural transmission of novel behaviors, including “eye poking” — in which one monkey slips its finger “knuckle deep” between the eyelid and the bottom of another monkey’s eyeball.

But the idea that the whales’ behavior is a response to trauma has gripped many — including the researchers who most closely study this population and first documented the behavior.

In a paper published last year , a team of Portuguese and Spanish researchers suggested the behavior seen in the Strait of Gibraltar orcas could have been triggered by a variety of causes, including trauma.

Alfredo López Fernandez, a killer whale researcher with GT Orca Atlántica, a Portuguese conservation research organization, said it is impossible to know how it started, or which whale or whales may have initially instigated the attacks.

He listed several adult females as the possible original perpetrators — which then taught or showed others how to participate.

There is White Gladis, which seems to be present in most of the attacks; Gladis Negra, which was observed to have injuries in 2020, possibly from a ship strike; and Gray Gladis, which in 2018 witnessed another whale get trapped in fishing gear.

Gladis is a name given to all orcas in the pod that interact with boats; it comes from Orca gladiator, an early nickname given to these boat-jouncing killer whales.

“All of this has to make us reflect on the fact that human activities, even in an indirect way, are the origin of this behavior,” he said.

For Cal Currier’s part, he thinks the whales are entertaining themselves.

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On June 8, as the 17-year-old Palo Alto High School senior sailed through the strait with his father, James, 55, and brother, West, 19, their 30-foot sailboat was accosted and spun in circles.

The rudder was battered, and the trio had to be towed to shore in Spain. “They were playing,” Currier said.

He said that when they pulled in, they were told roughly 30 other boats were ahead of them in line for repairs; half were damaged by the killer whales. He said there were no bite marks on the rudder, and he did not sense aggression from the whales.

For Giles, the Washington killer whale researcher, her biggest concern is that the longer the whales continue this behavior, the more likely it is they’ll get injured or suffer retribution at the hands of humans.

She’s hoping authorities in the region will consider non-traumatic hazing techniques — such as instructing boats to play or make sounds that irritate the whales — to get them to stop. She said studies have shown orcas don’t like the calls of pilot whales and will generally swim away if they hear them. Loud banging sounds, such as hitting a large, metal oikomi pipe underwater, can also be effective.

“Anything that might irritate them, make them lose their interest or swim away,” Giles said.

Currier said he wasn’t too rattled by the whole experience — unlike his dad and brother, who were “scared for their lives.”

The trio have since sold the boat and intend to spend the rest of the vacation on dry land.

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Susanne Rust is an award-winning investigative reporter specializing in environmental issues. She is based in the Bay Area.

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Orcas Sink Another Boat Near Iberia, Worrying Sailors Before Summer

Two people were rescued on Sunday after orcas damaged their boat near the Strait of Gibraltar, where the animals have caused havoc in recent years.

By Isabella Kwai

Summer is on the way, meaning that the orcas are out to play near the Strait of Gibraltar — which is bad news for sailors.

Two people were rescued on Sunday after an attack by a group of orcas caused enough damage to sink their boat, according to the Spanish maritime rescue service. It was the fifth such sinking in waters off the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in recent years.

The Alboran Cognac, a sailing yacht about 50 feet long, was approached by the animals on Sunday morning, some 14 miles off Cape Spartel in Morocco, the rescue service said. Crew members onboard reported that the animals had slammed the hull, damaged the rudder and caused a leak.

A nearby oil tanker quickly maneuvered toward the boat and evacuated the two sailors, who were taken to Gibraltar, the rescue service said. The boat was left adrift, and the Moroccan authorities reported that it eventually sank.

It’s the first boat to sink in those waters this year after an orca-related mishap. A group of orcas that traverse the Strait of Gibraltar and nearby waters has plagued sailors and intrigued marine biologists , who are studying the population. Since 2020, orcas have disrupted dozens of sailing journeys in these high-traffic waters, in some cases slamming vessels hard enough to cause critical damage.

Last November, orcas slammed a yacht’s rudder for 45 minutes, causing its crew to abandon the vessel, which sank near the Tanger Med port.

The group is more likely to appear in the busy lanes around the Gulf of Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar between April and August, the Spanish government said in a news release, and sailors have spotted some of the orcas there in recent weeks.

Researchers do not know why the pod is targeting boats, but they have theorized that the behavior is a form of play for the curious apex predators. The interactions have become so frequent that they are now a multinational issue, involving scientists and officials from Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Online, anxious sailors have gathered to share advice on navigating “orca alley,” and biologists are tracking the orcas’ movements and testing methods that could deter them.

In the event of an orca encounter, the government advised in its release, boats should not stop but instead head toward shallower waters near the coast.

But the number of incidents may be declining: Researchers at the Atlantic Orca Working Group said on Monday that the number of orca interactions with boats between January and May had dropped some 40 percent, compared with that of similar periods in the past three years.

Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends. More about Isabella Kwai

Watch CBS News

Killer whales attack and sink sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar — again

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: May 14, 2024 / 4:54 PM EDT / CBS News

A sailing yacht sunk in the Strait of Gibraltar on Sunday after an unknown number of orcas  slammed into the vessel with two people on board and caused a water leak, officials said. Both crew members were rescued by a passing oil tanker, said Spain's maritime rescue service, marking the latest killer whale attack on a boat in what has become a pattern in recent years.

The incident happened at around 9 a.m. local time in the narrow strait between Spain and Morocco that has become a notorious site of human interactions with pods of killer whales that, for reasons still not fully understood, ram into boats and at times even sink them . In this case, crew members on board the SV Alboran Cognac yacht put out an emergency call for an evacuation after they encountered orcas roughly 14 miles off the coast of Cape Spartel. 

The crew members reported feeling blows to the hull of the vessel and rudder, which was damaged by the whales, the rescue service said. The agency's coordination center in Tarifa, on the Spanish side of the Strait of Gibraltar, helped arrange for their evacuation via the tanker MT Lascaux. The tanker was able to collect the crew members from the sinking yacht within the hour, and they disembarked in Gibraltar before 10:30 a.m. They abandoned the SV Alboran Cognac, which proceeded to completely disappear into the ocean.

Anyone sailing through waters from the Gulf of Cádiz in southern Spain and the Strait of Gibraltar, either in a larger motorized vessel or a personal sailing boat, is advised to avoid certain areas that the maritime rescue service marks as potentially dangerous spots for orca interactions. The greatest threats exist between May and August, when officials say that pods of killer whales are most commonly seen in those parts of the Atlantic. 

But previously recorded incidents suggest those dangers may be present at any time. Last October, a Polish boat touring company reported that a pod of orcas had managed to sink one of its yachts after repeatedly slamming into the steering fin for 45 minutes, causing it to leak. Last June, two sailing teams competing in an international race around the world reported frightening scenarios in which multiple orcas rammed into or pushed up against their boats or as they sailed west of Gibraltar. 

No one on board any of the vessels was hurt in those encounters, but the documented rise in confrontational behavior has researchers and sailors trying to determine why orcase have attempted to sink or capsize so many boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal. 

Some sailors have even resorted to blasting thrash metal music in a bid to deter the apex predators.

Reports of orcas interacting with humans have more than tripled in the last two years or so, according to the research group GTOA, which has documented hundreds of such incidents in the region since 2020. But some of the latest data points to possible changes in the orcas' etiquette, with the group reporting only 26 interactions in the Strait of Gibraltar and Bay of Biscay areas between January and May of this year. That number is 65% lower than the number of interactions recorded in the region over the same months last year, and 40% lower than the average number of interactions recorded in the same months between 2021 and 2023, according to GTOA.

• Boat Accident

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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Orcas Sink 50-Foot Yacht Off the Coast of Morocco

The vessel’s two passengers were evacuated onto an oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar. The incident marks the fifth vessel the mammals have sunk in recent years

Daily Correspondent

The boat-ramming orcas are back in action: Two people had to be rescued from a sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar after the black-and-white marine mammals damaged the vessel so badly it later sank, reporters Reuters ’ David Latona.

The incident occurred around 9 a.m. local time Sunday, some 14 miles north of Cape Spartel in northern Morocco. Passengers aboard the 50-foot Alboran Cognac felt blows to the yacht’s hull and saw that the rudder had been damaged. As water began leaking onto the ship, they contacted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Tarifa, Spain, which directed them to prepare for an emergency rescue.

About an hour later, a nearby oil tanker picked up the two crew members, who were customers of Spain-based Alboran Charter , which owns the yacht, reports the Washington Post ’s Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff.

The boat took on more water and sank soon after. It’s not clear how many orcas targeted the vessel.

The sinking of the Alboran Cognac is the latest in a string of incidents involving orcas and ships in the Strait of Gibraltar. The highly intelligent, social marine mammals made headlines last spring , when they sank a Swiss yacht called Champagne off the coast of Spain. In November, they brought down another ship , a Polish sailing yacht called the Grazie Mamma .

But the animals’ unusual behavior goes back even further: Since 2020, mariners have reported 700 interactions between orcas and ships in the Strait of Gibraltar, per Reuters. The Alboran Cognac is the fifth vessel orcas have sunk in the last three years, reports Live Science ’s Harry Baker.

Most of the incidents have been recorded in the Strait of Gibraltar, a waterway linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The strait, which is bordered by Morocco to the south and by Spain to the north, is home to a distinct—and critically endangered —subpopulation of fewer than 50 orcas .

However, last June, orcas also rammed into a ship in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway, roughly 2,000 miles away from the Strait of Gibraltar. Scientists weren’t quite sure what to make of that incident, which raised the possibility that the destructive behavior was spreading to different groups of orcas.

In the meantime, authorities are urging mariners in the Strait of Gibraltar to exercise caution this summer. Spain’s Maritime Safety and Rescue Society recommends avoiding a large area between the Gulf of Cádiz and the Strait of Gibraltar; the agency also suggests that mariners sail as close to the coast as possible, especially from May to August, when orcas are more likely to be in the region.

If sailors do encounter orcas, the agency recommends they keep the vessel moving and head toward shallower waters. People onboard the ship should remain in the middle of the vessel and not approach the sides, where they may be at risk of falling overboard.

The agency also asked mariners to notify authorities of any orca encounters and, if possible, to take photographs of the creatures for identification.

Scientists remain puzzled by the orcas’ destructive behavior. A leading hypothesis is that a female nicknamed “White Gladis” started ramming into ships after having some sort of traumatic run-in with a vessel; she may also have been pregnant when she first started targeting ships. Since orcas are social creatures, other members of White Gladis’ group may have simply followed her lead and mimicked her actions.

“The idea of revenge is a great story, but there’s no evidence for it,” said Lori Marino , a neuroscientist and the founder and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, to BBC Newsbeat ’s Shaun Dacosta last year.

Another possibility is that the orcas are curious about ships, or maybe, they’re just having fun.

“They’re probably socializing, yucking it up with each other about their adventures without realizing the terror they’re creating in their moments of joy,” said Andrew Trites , a marine mammal researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, to Business Insider ’s Erin Heger last summer.

From January to May 2024, the interactions recorded by the GT Orcas APP and @crewingservice were a total of 26. It is a 65% lower than the 2023 records and 40% less than the average. Interactions have been reduced since the wide distribution of the orcas. — Orca Ibérica GTOA (@Orca_Iberica) May 14, 2024

Orcas have also been known to temporarily exhibit other unusual behaviors, like placing dead salmon atop their heads. The boat-ramming behavior may be another, similarly short-lived fad that the Strait of Gibraltar orcas will eventually move on from.

And they may already be doing just that: Between January and May 2024, the number of reported interactions with orcas was 65 percent lower than during the same period in 2023 and 40 percent lower than the average for those months across 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to the Atlantic Orca Working Group .

Whatever the orcas’ motivations, scientists have urged onlookers to avoid assigning human emotions to the animals’ behaviors. Though the boat-ramming killer whales have given rise to internet memes and merchandise that suggests they’re plotting an “ orca uprising ,” researchers argue that the marine mammals are not acting with malicious intent.

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Sarah Kuta | READ MORE

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

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A pod of orcas has sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar

Ayana Archie

A pair of orcas swim off the west coast of Vancouver Island in 2018. Brian Gisborne/AP hide caption

A pair of orcas swim off the west coast of Vancouver Island in 2018.

For 45 minutes, the crew of the Grazie Mamma felt like they were under attack from below. A pod of orcas had zeroed in on the yacht's rudder as it made its way through the Strait of Gibraltar last week, and rammed it repeatedly, "causing major damage and leakage," according to the company that operated the boat.

Rescuers were able to save the crew and return them safely to port in Tanger-Med on the coast of Morocco. Their vessel, though, sank into the sea.

"This yacht was the most wonderful thing in maritime sailing for all of us," read a statement posted to Facebook by Morskie Mile , the Warsaw-based touring company that operated the boat. "Very good memories will be transferred to Grazie Mamma II. Love of the sea always wins and friendships remain with us."

The company said it is working to ensure its upcoming trips to the Canary Islands go on without a hitch.

Last week's incident was the latest in a string of recent "attacks" by orcas in the waters separating southern Europe and northern Africa — encounters that have left researchers scratching their heads.

Killer whales are 'attacking' sailboats near Europe's coast. Scientists don't know why

Since 2020, there have been about 500 encounters between orcas and boats, Alfredo López Fernandez, a coauthor of a 2022 study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, told NPR earlier this year. At least three boats have sunk, though there is no record of an orca killing a human in the wild.

Scientists have been trying to pinpoint the cause of the behavior.

One theory among researchers is they're just playing around. Other researchers say it may be that the whales like the feel of the rudder.

"What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," said Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research in Spain, in an interview with NPR last year. When they encounter a sailboat without its engine on, "they get kind of frustrated and that's why they break the rudder," de Stephanis said.

Another theory is that the behavior may be some sort of act of revenge due to possibly traumatic , previous encounters with fishing boats.

Revenge of the killer whales? Recent boat attacks might be driven by trauma

"I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge," Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute previously told NPR. Shields said she does not think "we can completely rule it out," even if she was not entirely convinced herself.

Deborah Giles, the science and research director at conservation group Wild Orca, says pods in other areas, such as near Washington state, have been targeted by humans, but haven't shown a pattern of ramming boats.

How wildlife officials saved a humpback whale found 'hogtied' to a 300-pound crab pot

Which underscores why researchers say it's difficult to draw any conclusions from the interactions documented to date. In an open letter published this summer, 30 scientists cautioned against "projecting narratives onto these animals," writing that "In the absence of further evidence, people should not assume they understand the animals' motivations."

Correction Nov. 7, 2023

An earlier version of this story misstated the yacht's name, Grazie Mamma, as Grazie Mamma II.

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May 16, 2024

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Orcas are attacking ships again: Here's a history of the practice

by Emily Bloch, The Philadelphia Inquirer

A pod of killer whales attacked and sank a yacht over the weekend between Spain and Morocco in the Strait of Gibraltar—and it's not the first time.

The couple on the yacht said they felt sudden blows to the hull and rudder before the boat started taking on water, according to reports. They alerted authorities and a nearby oil tanker took them onboard. The yacht was unsalvageable.

Sunday's incident is the latest in a string of attacks on yachts by orcas in recent years. A lot regarding the attacks remains a mystery to experts, including the whales' motives.

Scientists suggest it could be because the orcas feel threatened, are protecting their food supply, or are simply playing around.

Here's a timeline of the encounters.

The early 1800s

That's right, we're going way back. While this latest string of whale attacks began around 2020, records show whales attacking boats isn't a new concept at all—let us all recall "Moby Dick."

According to Graham Faiella, an author whose books recall early tales of the sea, ship attacks by the marine mammals date back to around 1820, when the Essex, a whaling ship—designed to catch whales—was pursued by a group of whales that struck the ship with their bodies. The ship sank, leaving 20 castaways.

The Essex's story was said to be an inspiration for Herman Melville's novel, along with another true story from 1850 about the Ann Alexander. Based out of New Bedford, Mass., the Ann Alexander sailed to the Pacific in 1851, when it was struck by a sperm whale the crew was trying to pursue.

One whale that was said to be "rushing at it [the boat] with tremendous violence, lifted open its enormous jaws, and taking the boat in, crushed it into fragments as small as a common-sized chair," according to an account from the whalemen—the men aboard the ship tasked with catching the whales—cited by Faiella.

The culprit whale, which was nicknamed "the monster of the deep," eventually blew a hole through the Ann Alexander's hull.

The late 1800s and early 1900s

Faiella said the whales attacking whalers and their ships continued into the late 1800s and early 1900s.

In 1871, a whale followed the King Oscar on its voyage between Tasmania and New South Wales. After three days of "peaceable companionship," the whale heel-turned, abruptly ramming the ship and causing a leak.

In 1901, the Kathleen ship set off on a whaling voyage from New Bedford toward the Brazilian coast. A single whale broke away from its pod to charge the ship and create a hole in the Kathleen.

The whalers found safety before the ship sank.

Finally, in 1904, a Danish merchant ship called Anna was voyaging from Iceland to New Brunswick, Canada, when a "frisky" whale appeared and played around the vessel. Suddenly—you can probably guess this part—"like a warship intent on ramming, [the whale] came straight at" the boat, according to a 1905 report from Wide World Magazine .

The late 1900s and early 2000s

Perhaps during a dormant period, we heard a lot less about whales attacking ships and a lot more about ships striking whales.

Reports show that collisions with motorized ships were a recognized source of whale deaths, but as noted in a report from the Society for Marine Mammalogy, little had been done to compile information on the frequency of the events.

Renaud de Stephanis, a biologist involved in investigating whale attacks, told BBC News last year that in the mid-1990s, he noticed an orca pod (a family of whales that stick together) that would steal tuna from tuna boats, teaching younger whales to do the same.

He told the BBC he believes the whales attacking boats today come from the same pod that was taking back tuna as part of a predatory self-preservation tactic prompted by overfishing.

They're bacccckkkkk.

Since 2020, a small pod of orcas in the strait of Gibraltar has been ramming vessels with their heads and biting rudders.

The movement, which was nicknamed #orcauprising and inspired plenty of memes, reportedly has occurred hundreds of times. Other instances were recorded in different locations, like when an orca rammed a boat near Shetland last year.

According to research from GT Atlantic Orca, a group that tracks whale populations, there have been nearly 700 interactions of orca attacks on ships near the strait of Gibraltar since the first report in May 2020.

An advisory from the Spanish Ministry of Transport says anyone sailing through the waters from the Gulf of Cádiz and the Strait of Gibraltar should avoid areas marked as potential danger zones for orca interactions.

The greatest threats occur from May through August, which is when officials say whale pods are most commonly seen in those parts of the Atlantic.

But, as noted by CBS, the rest of the year can still be dangerous.

2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Killer Whales Are Not Our Friends

Stop rooting for the orcas ramming boats.

In recent months, orcas in the waters off the Iberian Peninsula have taken to ramming boats. The animals have already sunk three this year and damaged several more. After one of the latest incidents , in which a catamaran lost both of its rudders, the boat’s captain suggested that the assailants have grown stealthier and more efficient : “Looks like they knew exactly what they are doing,” he said. Scientists have documented hundreds of orca-boat incidents off the Spanish-Portuguese coast since 2020, but news coverage of these attacks is blowing up right now, thanks in part to a creative new theory about why they’re happening: cetacean vengeance . Now that’s a story!

“The orcas are doing this on purpose,” Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, told LiveScience last month. “Of course, we don’t know the origin or the motivation, but defensive behavior based on trauma, as the origin of all this, gains more strength for us every day.” López Fernandez, who co-authored a 2022 paper on human-orca interactions in the Strait of Gibraltar, speculates that a specific female, known to scientists as White Gladis, may have suffered a “critical moment of agony” at the hands of humans, attacked a boat in retaliation, and then taught other whales to do the same.

Whatever the truth of this assertion, White Gladis and her kin have quickly ascended to folk-heroic status on the internet. “What the marine biologists are framing as revenge based on one traumatic experience may be a piece of a larger mobilization towards balance,” the poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs tweeted before referring to the killer whales as “revolutionary mother teachers.” Media figures and academics are expressing solidarity with their “ orca comrades ” and support for “ orca saboteurs .” One widely circulating graphic shows a pod smashing a boat from below, above the words “JOIN THE ORCA UPRISING.” (You can even purchase it in sparkly sticker form.) Yet all of this fandom and projection tends to overlook important facts: First, these orcas are likely to be playing with the boats rather than attacking them, and second, if one insists on judging killer whales in human terms, it’s plain to see they aren’t heroes but sadistic jerks.

The recent incidents, none of which has resulted in any injuries to humans, are simply the result of curiosity, Monika Wieland Shields, the co-director of the Orca Behavior Institute in Washington, told me. A juvenile may have started interacting in this way with boats, she said, and then its habit spread through the local community of killer whales. Such cultural trends have been observed before: In the Pacific Northwest, orcas have been playing with buoys and crab pots for years; in the late 1980s, one group of orcas there famously took to wearing salmon hats . Is ramming boats the new donning fish ? Shields believes that theory makes more sense than López Fernandez’s appeal to orca trauma. White Gladis shows no physical evidence of injury or trauma, Shields told me, so any “critical moment of agony” is purely speculative. Also, humans have given orcas ample reason to retaliate for hundreds of years. We’ve invaded their waters, kidnapped their young, and murdered them in droves. And yet, there is not a single documented instance of orcas killing humans in the wild. Why would they react only now?

Read: 7 reasons killer whales are evil geniuses

And though recent events may fit the story of these orcas’ being anti-colonial warriors, you can’t just anthropomorphize animals selectively. What about all the other “evidence” we have of orcas’ cruelty, or even wickedness? Scientists say they hunt and slaughter sharks by the dozen, picking out the liver from each one and leaving the rest of the carcasses to rot uneaten. Orcas kill for sport . They push, drag, and spin around live prey, including sea turtles , seabirds, and sea lions. Some go so far as to risk beaching themselves in order to snag a baby seal—not to consume, but simply to torture it to death. Once you start applying human ethical standards to apex predators, things turn dark fast.

Perhaps #orcauprising was inevitable. Humanity does have, after all, a long history of freighting cetaceans with higher meaning. Moby Dick is, among other things, a symbol of the sublime . The biblical whale—or is it a large fish?—that swallows Jonah is an instrument of divine retribution, a means of punishing the wicked in much the same way some have framed the boat-wrecking orcas. The whale 52 Blue, known as the loneliest whale in the world because she speaks in a frequency inaudible, or at least incomprehensible, to her brethren, has become a canvas for all shades of human sorrow and angst.

Orcas in particular have long been objects of both fear and sympathy, in some cases with an explicitly anti-capitalist tint. The 1993 classic Free Willy centers on a conniving park owner’s scheme to profit off of the bond between a child and a young killer whale. And more recently, the 2013 documentary Blackfish chronicles SeaWorld’s real-life exploitation of captive orcas. The “orca uprising” narrative fits neatly into this lineage. In our present era of environmental catastrophe, Shields told me, it’s appealing to think that nature might fight back, that the villains get their just deserts.

But projection and anthropomorphization are only shortcuts to a shallow sympathy. Orcas really are capable of intense grief ; they are also capable of tormenting seal pups as a hobby. They are intelligent, emotionally complex creatures. But they are not us.

Yachting World

• Digital Edition

Why have Orcas been attacking yachts? A puzzling mystery

• Elaine Bunting
• March 2, 2023

Elaine Bunting looks into the so-called 'attacks' on yachts by groups of Orcas and tries to unravel why it has been consistently happening for the last few years

Late in November last year, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s Farr 65 pilothouse cutter, Sanjula , was being sailed 10 miles west of Cape Finisterre in Spain when it was surrounded by orca whales. The collisions began immediately.

“A pod of seven to 10 orcas surrounded Sanjula and then began to barge into its rudder. This eventually broke a steering connecting rod. The engine was switched off and the boat lay hove-to while the emergency steering was rigged,” he reported. “After 10 minutes the orcas moved away, no longer finding a hove-to yacht interesting – but that is only an assumption. The boat sailed to Vigo for repairs.”

The incident was the most high profile yet of what has amounted to hundreds of interactions, or attacks, by killer whales off the coasts of Spain and Portugal since they were first reported nearly three years ago.

The incident involving Sanjula happened just a few weeks after the loss of a French Oceanis 393 , Smousse , 14 miles west of Viana do Castelo. Orcas tore Smousse ’s rudder by mouthing and shaking it, cracking the hull in the process. The four crew were forced to abandon to a liferaft, and were picked up by another yacht.

Close encounters between orcas and yachts were extremely rare occurrences until something very strange happened – in July 2020 the behaviour of a small sub-population of orcas off the coasts of Atlantic Spain and Portugal suddenly changed. They began to barge yachts seemingly aggressively, often causing serious damage to the boats’ rudders.

A towed dinghy could become a target for orca play. Photo: Jon Wright

Reports mounted up as the behaviour kept being repeated, and these incidents spread north, marking the orcas migratory route north along the Iberian peninsula to Galicia, where they feed on bluefin tuna and nurse their young. Whether these were play behaviours or attacks wasn’t clear but it involved repeated ramming of boats, and those who experienced them were terrified.

Delivery skipper Pete Green was delivering an Amel 52 from Gibraltar to the UK in 2020 when the yacht’s rudder spun uncontrollably from side to side.

“We knew there was a risk of meeting some orca so we stayed close to the Spanish coast, but we didn’t see them coming,” says Green, managing director of Halcyon Yachts. “The wheel was just suddenly spinning from left to right as they collided into the rudder.”

The crew immediately turned off all the electrics, shut down the engine, furled the sails and lay ahull. All the advice they’d seen said to sit passively in the water until the whales grew bored.

The orcas circled the Amel slowly for nearly two hours, so close at times that the crew were able to photograph and video the animals. The whole time, the orcas were bumping into the hull, the keel and hitting the rudder. “It seemed like an age before they finally left us in peace,” said Green. By the time the whales were gone, the rudder had been badly damaged.

It was not the first time Green had been on a yacht picked on by orcas. A year earlier, while close to A Coruña on the north-west corner of Spain, the Hallberg-Rassy 36 he was delivering to the UK was “rammed at least 15 times”. The yacht lost steering and had to be towed into port.

These encounters have become an established hazard along this coast. According to reports received and collated by the Cruising Association in conjunction with Grupo Trabajo Orca Atlántica, there were 102 interactions with orcas between January 2022 and January 2023, the majority of them off Cape Finisterre, west of Sines in Portugal, and in the Strait of Gibraltar. See the interactive map, which includes witness reports, at theca.org.uk/orcas/reports

Orcas chewed off this lump of rudder. Photo: Martyn & Zoe Barlow

Some of these resulted in damage, mainly to the rudder, and in a small number of cases it was serious. Some crews say they felt these were aggressive attacks, others viewed it as merely playful. The intent to barge the vessel and try to alter its course was, however, not in doubt.

A rogue group

Dr Ruth Esteban, a marine mammal researcher who works for the Madeira Whale Museum, has spent years studying the abundance, life history and social structure of orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar. The group of whales in question is a small one, she believes, just five pods comprising 28 individuals. It’s an endangered sub-population she knows well and she was both fascinated and alarmed by this bizarre evolution.

Article continues below…

Orca attacks: Rudder losses and damage as incidents escalate

The first signs that something odd was taking place came in July 2020. After the strangest start to a summer…

Whale encounter – there seems to be an increasing number of collisions with whales as yachts get faster

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“The orcas were more than used to being surrounded by vessels, sometimes hundreds of vessels at a time, but were never as far as we knew touching the vessel,” she says. “Then when 2020 arrived, after the worldwide lockdown, [this] disruptive behaviour was observed. They were reported interacting with boats and entering into contact with them, particularly sailing boats, resulting mainly in breaking the moving parts of their rudders.”

Since the incidents began, Dr Esteban has collected and reviewed videos taken on board some of the yachts that had been targeted and damaged, meticulously identifying each animal where possible and reviewing the whales’ behaviour. They were mainly juveniles, but there was at least one adult involved, the mother of one of the younger animals.

She observed that they were purposely targeting boats and trying to push them around by pushing or biting the rudder. “We could see the animals come close to the boat at the stern. Sometimes they showed up with intense bubbling. They would approach and start by observing moving parts before touching and pushing to control the movement of the boat.”

The whales mainly targeted sailing yachts under 15m, although some fishing boats, RIBs and motorboats were also attacked. In one case, they broke a yacht’s rudder in half. In another, a yacht crew endured repeated collisions for over an hour as the orcas repeatedly struck their rudder, breaking it and bending the stainless steel shaft by almost 90°. “The cost to repair was almost €21,000,” says Dr Esteban.

Orcas can live in all oceans of the world and are the second most widely distributed mammal on earth. Photo: Mike Korostelev/Getty

A group of working biologists and conservationists from organisations such as the Whale Museum of Madeira, La Rochelle university and the Portuguese Sociedade de Vida Selvagem was formed to investigate this behaviour.

Grupo Trabajo Orca Atlántica ( orcaiberica.org ) collates information on orca attacks, plots where they occur and promotes the conservation and management of the whales. It also offers advice aimed at mitigating damage to yachts or the animals themselves, the so-called orca protocol.

The behaviour, sporadic at first, has become an established set piece for the whales, and it has evolved. It has been going on now for three years, and there is no sign of this behaviour fading. It has become a natural behaviour for this population, and there is no evidence at all that they themselves are acting aggressively.

What can crews do?

If possible, avoid the areas of recent activity. The Spanish authorities set out two exclusion zones last year for vessels under 15m near A Coruña and on the approaches to Gibraltar on a stretch from Bolonia near Tarifa, to Cape Trafalgar. GT Orca Atlántica publishes a map on its website of current orca activity, valid for 24 hours, with the risk expressed in the form of traffic lights. This is based on the latest reports from boat crews and rescue services.

If targeted, GT Orca Atlántica advises stopping your yacht to make your vessel look unexciting and try to quell the whales’ prey drive. They suggest taking your hands off the wheel or disengaging the autopilot to allow the rudder to turn freely and advise crew not to shout at the animals, throw anything at them, ‘and do not let yourselves be seen excessively from overboard’.

Orcas circle a Sun Odyssey 40. Photo: Martyn & Zoe Barlow

But when faced with a pod of orcas and the prospect of hull or rudder damage, some crews have tried to scare them off. “We decided to go against protocol and bang metal tools against our metal railings and stanchions,” says a skipper who encountered the animals last summer.

“That seemed to deter them for about 10 minutes, then they returned. They carried on trying to get as close as possible to the stern again, so we started to play loud music on a portable speaker, banged pots and pans, and waved black and white striped towels off the stern. After a few minutes they left us alone, but the daylight was also dying by then and we can’t figure out if our deterrents worked or if they got bored.”

Some crews have kept bottles of diesel within reach in the cockpit just in case, ready to pour down the cockpit drains in case they are approached by orcas. The theory is that the orcas will be repelled by the mixture emerging underwater from the yacht.

Other crews have tried pouring sand into the water. Some even less humane methods have also been reported, such as crews letting off firecrackers or firing live rounds into the water. These do seem risky, and – aside from the issues of harming a protected marine species – no one can say whether any of these deterrents work.

A bubble curtain created by orcas circling beneath the surface

Three years on from the first reports of this animal behaviour, orca encounters off the Spanish and Portuguese coasts have become an accepted hazard. According to reports collected by GT Orca Atlántica, there were 239 cases of interactions with orcas between 2020 and 2021.

Social media and press reports have hugely amplified the issue. Considering the overall numbers of yachts on passage through these waters, thousands each summer, the percentage of boats affected is still small.

However, it seems unlikely this behaviour will extinct itself – its repetition proves the orcas find it self-rewarding. Are the orcas merely playing? Are they practising hunting behaviours? Are they reacting to stress or changes in food sources? Have pollutants affected them cognitively?

All these theories have been put forward, but no one knows. “Everyone is puzzled,” says Dr Esteban. “We don’t know what is going on and we do not know why they’re doing this. There have been a lot of hypotheses but none of them is based on clear evidence.”

From a yachtsman’s point of view, the reasons really don’t matter. The orcas’ behaviour has evolved, and will presumably continue until it serves no purpose. In the meantime, reported encounters will allow researchers to build up a more detailed picture of the areas of activity, types of boats targeted and successful deterrents, if any. Until then, many cruisers believe the only thing to do is to coast-hop Spain and Portugal while monitoring areas where the orca pods are reported to be hunting.

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Revenge of the orcas? Killer whales have sunk 3 boats in unusual attacks.

A spate of encounters between orcas and boats off the Iberian coast has puzzled scientists and sailors recently, as seemingly coordinated ambushes by the killer whales led to the sinking of three vessels. The reason for the attacks, according to one scientist who has studied the phenomenon, may be revenge.

The leading theory is that a female orca suffered a traumatic incident with a boat — a “critical moment of agony” — that caused her to start attacking the vessels, Alfredo López Fernandez, a marine biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, told the industry publication Live Science.

The majority of the “disruptive” interactions between orcas and boats off the Iberian Peninsula in the past few years — López Fernandez said they numbered in the hundreds — have been brief and caused minimal physical damage to the vessels, according to a report co-written by López Fernandez and published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. But on at least three occasions, including one incident this month involving a sailing yacht, the orcas have sunk the boats.

Orca vs. shark: Rare drone footage shows killer whales mauling great whites

The female orca, whom scientists named White Gladis, appears to have taught the aggressive behavior to other adult orcas, whose children have begun imitating the behavior, López Fernandez said.

In most of the interactions, the orcas strike the rudder or hull, the underbody, of the boat, according to the report, which included interviews with sailors and other witnesses to the phenomenon.

Aside from “some punctual aversive incident” that may have triggered the attacks, the report said they may be caused by factors like loss of prey or disturbances by boats. Otherwise, the report said, it may just be because of the killer whales’ “natural curiosity.”

Orcas are known to be extremely intelligent and capable of teaching one another certain behaviors, including actions that could be interpreted as violent. One episode in 2016 involving an orca drowning another’s calf left scientists “horrified” as they described a “first of its kind” observation of orcas carrying out infanticide , which has been documented in other species.

‘Fascinated and horrified’ scientists watched as a killer whale drowned another orca’s calf

Another report published in Marine Mammal Science documented orcas attacking, killing and then eating blue whales. Jeremy Goldbogen, a biologist who studies whales at Stanford University, told Stanford News the coordinated killings were “arguably one of the most dramatic and intense predator-prey interactions on the planet.” The phenomenon “astounded” scientists, one marine biologist told the New York Times.

So what should be made of the coordinated attacks on boats? The report warned that if the situation “continues or intensifies, it could become a real concern” for the safety of sailors, but also for the orcas, which are endangered in the region, because they could harm themselves by attacking the boats or be harmed by sailors trying to protect their vessels.

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Orcas have sunk another vessel off the European coast. Why won't they stop ramming boats?

The orcas are at it again: for the seventh time in four years, a pod of whales has sunk a boat after ramming it in Moroccan waters off the Strait of Gibraltar. 

The 15 metre-long yacht Alborán Cognac, which carried two people, encountered the highly social apex predators at 9am local time on Sunday, Spain's maritime rescue service said.

The passengers reported feeling sudden blows to the hull and rudder before water started to seep into the sailboat. It is not known how many orcas were involved.

After alerting rescue services, a nearby oil tanker took them onboard and carried them to Gibraltar, a British overseas territory on Spain's southern coast.

Nothing could be done to save the sailboat, which drifted and eventually sank. 

It's the latest incident in what has become a trend of hundreds of interactions between orcas and boats since the "disruptive behaviour" was first reported in the region in May 2020. 

The origin of this new behaviour has baffled scientists, though the leading theory suggests this "social fad" began as a playful manifestation of the whales' curiosity.

Where have orcas interacted with boats?

The latest data from the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), an organisation that contributes to the animals' conservation and management, shows that there have been at least 673 interactions since 2020. 

GTOA defines interactions as instances when orcas react to the presence of approaching boats with or without physical contact. 

The map below shows the highest numbers of encounters from April to May 2024 took place off Spain's southern coast in the Strait of Gibraltar (red zones), with some lesser activity in surrounding areas (yellow zones). 

A 2022 peer-reviewed study published in the Marine Mammal Science journal found the orcas in these areas preferred interacting with sailboats — both monohulls (72 per cent) and catamarans (14 per cent) — with an average length of 12 metres.

A clear pattern emerged of orcas striking their rudders, while sometimes also scraping the hulls with their teeth. Such attacks often snapped the rudder, leaving the boat unable to navigate.

"The animals bumped, pushed and turned the boats," the authors of the report said. 

Adding this week's encounter, there have been seven reported cases of orcas damaging a boat so badly that it has sunk, though the people onboard were rescued safely each time.

In June 2023, a run-in with the giant mammals in the Strait of Gibraltar forced the crew competing in The Ocean Race to drop its sails and raise a clatter in an attempt to scare the approaching orcas off. 

No-one was injured, but Team JAJO skipper Jelmer van Beek said that it had been a "scary moment".

"Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders," he said.

"Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team ... Luckily, after a few attacks, they went away."

After analysing 179 videos and photos of these types of interactions, which lasted on average 40 minutes, researchers concluded there was no reason to classify the events as intentionally hostile behaviour.

"The behaviour of orcas when interacting with boats is not identified as aggressive," they said.

"One of their main motivations has been identified as competition with boats for speed."

Still, the researchers of the study admitted they were not sure what triggered the novel behaviour in 2020.

"We are not yet certain what the origin of these interactions is, but it is still suspected that it could be a curious and playful behaviour," they wrote.

"[The behaviour] could be self-induced, or on the other hand it could be a behaviour induced by an aversive incident and therefore a precautionary behaviour."

Are the same orcas responsible for these incidents?

Out of around 49 orcas living in the Strait of Gibraltar, GTOA researchers found a total of 15 whales  from at least three different communities participated in the unusual interactions with boats between 2020 and 2022.

Most of those that engaged with greater intensity were juveniles, though it's unclear if others have since joined the group.

These giant mammals, which belong to the dolphin family, can measure up to eight metres and weigh up to six tonnes as adults.

The director of the Orca Behaviour Institute, Monika Wieland Shields, has said there is no evidence to prove the theory these whales were seeking vengeance against humans for a past trauma.

"While I'm sure it feels like an attack for the people on board, for the whales themselves, it really looks more like play behaviour," she said.

"There's something intriguing or entertaining to them about this [boat rudder] mechanism and they're just showing a lot of curiosity about it."

Ms Wieland said it's likely this new behaviour spread through the population as a kind of "social fad".

"Orcas are highly intelligent, very social animals, and with that comes a tendency to be curious about and explore your environment," she said.

"One thing that we see are these kind of fad behaviours that will appear in a certain population.

"One whale discovers something, they find it entertaining or interesting, or fun — it's some type of game. And then they will teach that to other members of their family group."

Are orcas dangerous to humans?

While orcas have earned their fearsome reputation for preying on other marine animals, there is no record of them killing humans in the wild. 

In captivity, orcas have killed four people since the 1990s, though it's unclear whether the deaths were accidental or deliberate attempts to cause harm.  

Ms Shields said she was worried the recent interactions between orcas and boats would skew people's perceptions of these mammals.

"I am concerned that people are going to react with fear, potentially injure or shoot at some of these whales," Ms Shields said.

"We really need to educate boaters about the best things that they can do to make themselves less attractive to the whales and the best case scenario would be the whales lose interest in this and move onto something less destructive."

Spain's Transport Ministry advises that whenever boats observe any changes in the behaviour of orcas — such as in their direction or speed — they should leave the area as soon as possible and avoid further disturbance to the animals.

The ministry also states every interaction between a ship and an orca must be reported to authorities.

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Orcas sank three boats off the coast of Portugal, but don't call them 'killer' just yet

Three recent incidents of orcas seemingly attacking and sinking boats off the southwestern tip of Europe are drawing intense scrutiny over whether the animals deliberately swarmed the vessels and if they are learning the aggressive behavior from one another.

Encounters between orcas, or killer whales, and boats have been increasing since 2020, though no human injuries or deaths have been reported. In most cases, the whales have not sunk the boats.

The string of incidents since 2020 prompted one scientist in Portugal to say the attacks may indicate that the whales are intending to cause damage to sailing vessels. Others, however, are more skeptical, saying that while the behavior may be coordinated, it’s not necessarily coordinated aggression.

“I think it gets taken as aggression because it’s causing damage, but I don’t think we can say that the motivation is aggressive necessarily,” said Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington state.

At least 15 interactions between orcas and boats off the Iberian coast were reported in 2020, according to a study published last June in the journal Marine Mammal Science .

In November 2020, Portugal’s National Maritime Authority issued a statement alerting sailors about “curious behavior” among juvenile killer whales. The statement said the whales may be attracted to rudders and propellers and may try to approach boats.

The subsequent sinkings have caused more alarm.

The most recent encounter occurred on May 4 off the coast of Spain. Three orcas struck the rudder and side of a sailing yacht, causing it to eventually sink, as was reported earlier this month in a German publication called Yacht .

One theory put forward by Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, suggested that the aggression started from a female orca that was perhaps struck by a boat — a traumatic experience that caused her to start ramming sailing vessels. López Fernandez, who co-authored the June 2022 study published in Marine Mammal Science, told Live Science that other orcas may have then picked up that behavior through social learning, which whales have been known to exhibit.

But Shields said orcas have not historically been known to be aggressive toward humans, even when they were being hunted and placed in captivity.

“They’ve certainly had reason to engage in that kind of behavior,” she said. “There are places where they are shot at by fishermen, they’ve watched family members be taken from their groups into captivity in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And if something was going to motivate direct aggression, I would think something like that would have done it.”

Shields added that there are no clear instances of killer whales exhibiting what could be thought of as revenge behavior against humans.

She said the recent attacks on boats are likely more consistent with what’s known as “fad” behavior, which describes novel but temporary conduct from one whale that can be mimicked by others.

“It’s kind of a new behavior or game that one whale seems to come up with, and it seems to spread throughout the population — sometimes for a matter of weeks or months, or in some cases years — but then in a lot of cases it just goes away,” she said.

In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, Shields and her colleagues have observed fad behavior among Southern Resident killer whales who started carrying dead salmon around on their heads for a time before the behavior suddenly stopped.

Shields said the behavior of orcas off the Iberian coast may also be temporary.

“This feels like the same type of thing, where one whale played with a rudder and said: ‘Hey, this is a fun game. Do you want to try it?’ And it’s the current fad for that population of orcas,” she said.

While Shields did not dismiss the trauma response theory out of hand, she said it would be difficult to confirm without more direct evidence.

“We know their brains are wired to have really complex emotions, and so I think they could be capable of something like anger or revenge,” she said. “But again, it’s just not something that we’ve seen any examples of, and we’ve given them plenty of opportunities throughout the world to want to take revenge on us for various things. And they just choose not to.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

Orcas have attacked and sunk another boat in Europe — and experts warn there could be more attacks soon

A group of orcas known to attack boats in southwest Europe have sunk a 50-foot sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar after ripping open its hull. It is the fifth time these killer whales have sent a ship to the seafloor in the last three years.

Orcas that have been terrorizing boats in southwest Europe have just sank their fifth yacht in three years. And experts have warned that more attacks are likely in the coming months after the orcas unexpectedly switched up their behavior earlier this year.

On Sunday (May 12), an unknown number of orcas ( Orcinus orca ) attacked the 49-foot-long (15 meters) sailing yacht named the Alboran Cognac in the Strait of Gibraltar — a narrow body of water between southern Spain and North Africa that separates the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. During the attack, which began at around 9 a.m. local time, the killer whales repeatedly rammed the boat's hull and rudder, Reuters reported . 

The yacht's two-person crew radioed for help and was rescued by a passing oil tanker. But the vessel's hull sustained serious damage during the attack and the yacht began to take on water, which eventually caused it to sink, Reuters reported.

The attack was likely carried out by a growing number of individuals from the Iberian subpopulation of orcas — a group of around 40 killer whales that live off the coasts of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Gibraltar — that have been attacking boats across their range since 2020. 

Most of the attacks occur between May and August each year in and around the Strait of Gibraltar. However, earlier this year, some of the highly social apex predators were spotted circling a boat in northern Spain , suggesting they have spread out much further and earlier than normal.

As a result, the Spanish authorities have warned recreational boaters to avoid sailing too far from the coast and to not stop their vessels if they are approached by orcas, according to a translated statement from Spain's Maritime Safety and Rescue Society.

Related: Orcas are learning terrifying new behaviors. Are they getting smarter?

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Since the attacks started in 2020, sailors have reported around 700 interactions with orcas in the area, ranging from circling and nudging vessels to ramming, ripping apart and sinking boats, Reuters reported.

The most recent sinking event prior to this one occurred on Halloween last year when a pod of orcas sank a sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar after a near hour-long attack . Before then, at least three other boats were sunk in the region between 2022 and early 2023. However, no humans have been injured or killed.

During attacks, the orcas' most common tactic is to damage or rip off the vessel's rudder , which makes it impossible to steer the vehicles. Researchers believe this is a learned behavior, and eye-witnesses have previously reported seeing individuals seemingly teach other orcas how to do this . As a result, the number of attacks has increased over the last few years.

— 11 ways orcas show their terrifying intelligence

— How often do orcas attack humans?

— How orcas gained their 'killer' reputation

So far, at least 15 individuals have been linked to at least one attack in the region. But researchers believe the attacks can be traced back to a single female, named White Gladis, who may have been pregnant when she started harassing the boats. However, it is unclear exactly what sparked the attacks.

There has even been a suggestion that the behavior has spread beyond the Iberian population after an orca similarly attacked a boat in Scotland in 2023. However, this was an isolated incident, which makes it hard to link it to the Iberian attacks.

Harry is a U.K.-based senior staff writer at Live Science. He studied marine biology at the University of Exeter before training to become a journalist. He covers a wide range of topics including space exploration, planetary science, space weather, climate change, animal behavior, evolution and paleontology. His feature on the upcoming solar maximum was shortlisted in the "top scoop" category at the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) Awards for Excellence in 2023. 

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Killer Whales Sunk a 50-Foot Sailing Yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar

It's just the latest in a string of orca attacks on sailboats., tori latham, tori latham's most recent stories.

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Two sailors had a whale of a time over the weekend—but only in the technical sense.

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“This was a scary moment,” the skipper Jelmer van Beek said at the time. “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team.”

While that attack didn’t result in the sinking of the ship, another sailing yacht sank near the Tanger Med port in November, The New York Times wrote. The crew of that ship had to abandon the boat after a group of orcas slammed into the rudder for a whole 45 minutes. (The whales have seemingly been targeting sailboats in particular.)

Researchers don’t know for sure why the whales have been attacking boats, but they think it may be one of the ways the orcas play, the Times said—a pretty dangerous form of amusement, albeit. Others have theorized that it’s a short-term fad among the animals, or that one orca experienced a traumatic event that made it aggressive and other whales began to mimic that behavior. The incidents have become so common in recent years that sailors trade advice online about how to maneuver in the Strait of Gibraltar area, and the Spanish government issued a release that included tips for sailors.

Tori Latham is a digital staff writer at Robb Report. She was previously a copy editor at The Atlantic, and has written for publications including The Cut and The Hollywood Reporter. When not…

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May 14, 2024

Orcas Just Sank Another Yacht

Orcas have once again attacked and sunk a boat near the Strait of Gibraltar, a behavior that has scientists stumped

By Andrea Thompson

Orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar.

Patty Tse/Alamy Stock Photo

The orcas are at it again.

A group of the highly social marine mammals, also called killer whales, attacked and sank a 50-foot-long sailing yacht on Sunday, the New York Times reported . Two people had to be rescued from the waters near the Strait of Gibraltar.

The incident was yet another in a startling spate of such attacks by orcas ( Orcinus orca ) in the area since 2020—an apparently emerging phenomenon that has researchers stumped.

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“It is a rare behavior that has only been detected in this part of the world,” said Alfredo López, an orca researcher at the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), in an interview with Scientific American last year.

In the more than 500 cases GTOA has documented of orcas reacting to boats, most often the animals have only approached the vessels. In the fraction of reports that have included physical interactions, the orcas have usually bit at a vessel’s rudder. The attacks have usually lasted less than 30 minutes, but some have gone on for up to two hours.

So far there are two main hypotheses regarding the baffling behavior. One is that it is a fad, which orcas seem to engage in just like humans do. Orcas in one Pacific Northwest group famously spent the summer of 1987 sporting dead salmon on their head, for example.

The other is that the new trend stems from past negative experiences with boats, which can strike and severely harm marine animals. The Iberian orca population is critically endangered; migration routes put its members in the path of many fishing, military and recreational vessels. But researchers caution against attributing malicious intent to animals. Deborah Giles, science and research director of the Washington State–based nonprofit conservation organization Wild Orca, previously told Scientific American that orcas in the Pacific Northwest were relentlessly pursued by humans in the 1960s and 1970s—but never attacked people or boats.

Scientists are gaining a greater awareness and understanding of the these clever predators by studying not only the boat attacks (which GTOA has said have declined overall so far this year, compared with previous ones) but also other behaviors. The first recorded instance of a group of orcas killing a blue whale was observed in 2019, and single orcas have been documented killing great white sharks . Recent research has also suggested that orcas in the Pacific Northwest should actually be recognized as two different species versus part of a single global species. It is possible that other groups that are currently considered subpopulations of that one species are also separate ones.