Orcas Sink Yet Another Yacht in Latest Boat Attack
The latest attack marks the fifth boat sunk by orcas since 2020.
The orcas are back at it once again. Over the weekend, an unknown number of orcas were responsible for sinking yet another yacht in Moroccan waters in the strait of Gibraltar.
According to Spain’s maritime rescue service, per The Guardian, the incident occurred around 9 a.m. on Sunday when the 49-foot-long vessel carrying two people, Alboran Cognac, encountered the pod of mammals, also known as killer whales. The yacht's passengers said that they experienced "sudden blows to the hull and rudder" and that not long after, the ship began to take on water.
Thankfully, there was an oil tanker in the area, which came to aid the passengers, who had alerted rescue services. The tanker took them onboard and transported them to Gibraltar, while the inoperable yacht remained adrift and eventually sank.
There have been over 700 interactions between orcas and vessels recorded in waters off the Iberian Peninsula since 2020, with damage to at least 250 boats. This latest incident is the fifth boat that has sunk in as many years, with the last time being in November 2023 when a pod of orcas took down the Polish yacht Grazie Mamma II passing through the Strait of Gibraltar.
Marine wildlife experts believe that a single subpopulation of about 15 orcas designated "Gladis" have been responsible for the attacks, but a motive is still unclear.
One popular theory that has made the rounds online since last May is that the attacks may have stemmed from one "traumatized" orca that had had a run-in with a boat or illegal fishing entrapment, and subsequently taught the behavior to others. However, not all experts believe that this is the case.
"The idea of revenge is a great story, but there's no evidence for it," neuroscientist and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project Lori Marino told the BBC last June. "There's never been a case of an orca harming a human being in the wild. If they really wanted to do damage and harm the people on the boat they could easily do that."
Marino said that the more likely scenario is that the boat attacks started off as playful behavior, and that the social, highly intelligent apex predators simply emulated the behavior.
"We're talking about very intelligent beings, and we know that they are social learners," she explained. "It gets passed down... it may be something that's fun for them, and they're gonna keep doing it."
University of Aveiro biologist Alfredo López Fernandez, a representative for the Atlantic Orca Working Group who first floated the idea of a traumatized orca, advises sailors to be prepared when sailing in areas prone to orcas attacks and to avoid sailing at night or approaching the coast whenever possible.