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Study explains why Orcas are attacking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar

13 June 2023 5 minutes

Orca shadowing a fishing boat in the Strait of Gibraltar

Experts say an orca known as ‘White Gladis’ may be attacking and damaging vessels after being traumatised by a boat injury, triggering a behavioural change that other orcas are imitating

By Victoria Heath

A 2022 study has shed light on the reasons why orcas (killer whales) have been attacking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar, with researchers theorising that the incidents began after a vessel injured a female orca named White Gladis .

Since the attacks began in 2020, three boats have been sunk and more than 250 damaged by a group of orcas, with the animals appearing to deliberately target the vessels’ rudders.

Of the 35 killer whales in the region, 15 are reported to have been involved in the highly unusual interactions, which experts think began after White Gladis’ behaviour altered in a ‘defensive’ fashion after she suffered a ‘critical moment of agony’ involving a boat collision or illegal fishing entrapment – leading to other orcas damaging passing vessels in response.

A study published in June 2022 in the journal Marine Mammal Science has found that assaults by the orcas are directed mainly at sailing boats. There is a clear pattern of orcas striking the rudders, with spade rudders the most targeted and damaged type, and then losing interest once the boat has successfully stopped.

The general movement of the orcas involved in the incidents was from the Strait of Gibraltar to Galicia in northern Spain, with at least one of the groups returning to southern Portugal.

Understanding why orcas are damaging boats

After analysing over 47 testimonies, 110 pictures, and 69 videos, the study theorises some motivations that the orcas had to interact with vessels: a ‘punctual aversive incident’ such as collision with a vessel; the natural curiosity of the animals; or pressures already identified for killer whales such as prey depletion, boat disturbance and interaction with fisheries.

The study also considered how orcas – which are known to possess high cognitive abilities – are easily able to reproduce behaviour via social learning. In previous studies, the use and transmission of hunting techniques have been investigated in this particular subpopulation of orcas, leading to concerns from researchers that more orcas will eventually learn this new behaviour, aggravating the situation.

But co-author of the recent study, Alfredo López Fernandez , a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and representative of the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica (Atlantic Orca Working Group), said it isn’t as simple as White Gladis ‘teaching’ other orcas to retaliate in the wake of her boat injury.

‘We do not interpret that the orcas are teaching the young, although the behaviour has spread to the young vertically, simply by imitation, and later horizontally among them, because they consider it something important in their lives,’ López Fernandez said.

The orcas’ unusual behaviour could also be seen as a ‘fad’ – a temporary behaviour started by one orca and picked up by others before being abandoned.

Two orcas in sea, Lofoten Islands, Norway

According to Lòpez, it appears that orcas believe that the behaviour is advantageous , despite the risks associated with swimming near operating boats. Since these interactions first appeared in 2020, 4 orcas have died , although the deaths cannot be directly linked to the orcas’ encounters with boats.

The timeline of orca incidents

‘The reports of interactions have been continuous since 2020 in places where orcas are found, either in Galicia or in the Strait,’ said Lòpez-Fernadez.

Initially, the interactions baffled both researchers and recreational boat users. Rocío Espada, one of the study’s co-authors, who works with the marine biology laboratory at University of Seville and has observed orcas for years in the Strait of Gibraltar, explained her initial reaction to the orcas’ new behaviour.

‘For killer whales to take out a piece of a fibreglass rudder is crazy,’ Espada said in a 2020 interview with the Guardian . ‘I’ve seen these orcas grow from babies, I know their life stories, I’ve never seen or heard of attacks.’

One of the first reported attacks by orcas on a boat in the Strait of Gibraltar was in July 2020, when orcas rammed the hull of a boat that researcher Victoria Morris was crewing for over an hour, leaving the vessel without steering. In the same year, couple Beverly Harris and Kevin Large were motor-sailing their 50ft boat when orcas began to spin the vessel.

The latest of the three sinkings occurred on 4 May, when German skipper Werner Schaufelberger’s boat was so severely damaged by the orcas that it sank while being towed to safety by the Spanish coastguard.

In June, British sailor Iain Hamilton was marooned for several days after the rudder of his boat, the Butey of Clyde, was destroyed by five orcas off the coast of Gibraltar.

The difficult life led by Gibraltar orcas

A 2011 census of recorded 39 individuals in the Gibraltar orca subpopulation, which today, with 35 members, is classed as Critcally Endangered by the IUCN Red List of threatened species due to a number of factors, including pollution, fishing, food scarcity and sustained injuries.

Orcas are drawn to the area due to the presence of bluefin tuna, a fish also highly-prized by humans, leading to a complex interaction between fishers, orca and tuna. The interaction is often dangerous to the orcas, which are known to ‘steal’ fish from drop lines, resulting while in serious hook injuries to their dorsal fins.

The narrow Strait of Gibraltar is also both a major shipping route and huge draw for whale-watching tours due to the presence of the orcas – leading to the constant threat of boat strikes from the heavy marine traffic.

The future of Gibraltar orcas

The researchers behind the 2022 study into why killer whales are attacking boat traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar are concerned of the potential impact that this behaviour may have on both orcas and mariners.

‘If this situation continues or intensifies, it could become a real concern for the mariners’ safety and a conservation issue for this endangered subpopulation of killer whales,’ the researchers wrote.

‘There is an urgent need to conduct dedicated research that would help better understand the behaviour of the animals and implement mitigation measures.’

The complete study, ‘ Killer whales of the Strait of Gibraltar, an endangered subpopulation showing a disruptive behavior ,’ by Ruth Esteban , Alfredo López et al is published in Marine Mammal Science

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Orcas sink another boat in Strait of Gibraltar off Morocco

For years, the region’s killer whales have been bumping, biting and, in some cases, sinking boats. but many scientists caution not to ascribe motive to the animals..

The orcas have done it again.

On Oct. 31, a pod of killer whales swarmed a Polish yacht sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar. For 45 minutes, the orcas hit the vessel’s rudder and damaged the boat, according to the company that operated it. Despite rescue efforts, the yacht never made it back to shore, sinking near the entrance of the Moroccan port of Tanger Med.

“The crew is safe, unharmed and sound,” the Polish tour company Morskie Mile wrote in a Facebook post describing the demise of its boat.

Since 2020, orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Iberian Peninsula have been bumping and biting boats — oftentimes, yachts — in dozens of incidents that have frightened mariners and confounded scientists.

A recent spate of killer whales sinking boats delighted online observers who anthropomorphize the marine mammals and hail them as working-class heroes.

Are the orcas really out to get us? What to know about recent attacks.

Fishing vessels and motorboats have all had their run-ins with orcas in the region, though sailboats appear to be the most popular target, according to a 2022 study . The tour agency Morskie Mile did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

No one is quite sure what is prompting the orcas to go after vessels — whether the whales are simply being playful, or had a bad run-in with a boat in the past, prompting the aggressive behavior.

Some scientists say the incidents should not be called “attacks” at all, since the whale’s motives are unknown. Perpetuating the idea that whales are out for revenge, they fear, may lead to retaliation by boaters.

“We urge the media and public to avoid projecting narratives onto these animals,” a group of more than 30 scientists wrote in an open letter this summer. “In the absence of further evidence, people should not assume they understand the animals’ motivations.”

What we do know is that orcas are highly intelligent marine mammals that appear to learn from one another. Usually, that learned behavior is a hunting strategy, such as corralling and eating massive blue whales .

Other times, it is something stranger, such as when orcas near Seattle were observed “wearing” dead salmon as hats. Orcas, it turns out, can be victims of cultural fads, too.

One other thing is clear: Killer whales normally don’t hurt people. And humans are a bigger threat to them than they are to us.

Getting entangled in fishing gear or struck by speeding boats is a threat for all whales. With perhaps fewer than 40 individuals left , the orca population off the coasts of Spain, Portugal and Morocco is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

May 24, 2023

Why Has a Group of Orcas Suddenly Started Attacking Boats?

Killer whales in a group near Spain and Portugal may be teaching one another to mess with small boats. They sank their third vessel earlier this month

By Stephanie Pappas

A group of three orcas swimming together in the Strait of Gibraltar

A group of three orcas, also known as killer whales, are seen swimming in the Strait of Gibraltar. Individuals in the critically endangered subpopulation have been attacking boats off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

Malcolm Schuyl/Alamy Stock Photo

A trio of orcas attacked a boat in the Strait of Gibraltar earlier this month, damaging it so badly that it sank soon afterward.

The May 4 incident was the third time killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) have sunk a vessel off the coasts of Portugal and Spain in the past three years. The subpopulation of orcas in this region began harassing boats, most often by biting at their rudder, in 2020. Almost 20 percent of these attacks caused enough damage to disable the vessels, says Alfredo López, an orca researcher at the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), which monitors the Iberian killer whale population. “It is a rare behavior that has only been detected in this part of the world,” he says.

Researchers aren’t sure why the orcas are going after the watercraft. There are two hypotheses, according to López. One is that the killer whales have invented a new fad, something that subpopulations of these members of the dolphin family are known to do. Much as in humans, orca fads are often spearheaded by juveniles, López says. Alternatively, the attacks may be a response to a bad past experience involving a boat.

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The first known incident occurred in May 2020 in the Strait of Gibraltar, an area with heavy boat traffic. Since then GTOA has recorded 505 cases of orcas reacting to boats. Sometimes they simply approached the vessels, and only a fraction of cases involved physical contact, López says. In a study published in June 2022 in Marine Mammal Science , he and his colleagues cataloged 49 instances of orca-boat contact in 2020 alone. The vast majority of the attacks were on sailboats or catamarans, with a handful involving fishing boats and motorboats. The average length of the vessels was 12 meters (39 feet). For comparison, a full-grown orca can be 9.2 meters (30 feet) long.

The researchers found that the orcas preferentially attack the boats’ rudder, sometimes scraping the hull with their teeth. Such attacks often snap the rudder, leaving the boat unable to navigate. In three cases, the animals damaged a boat so badly that it sank: In July 2022 they sank a sailboat with five people onboard. In November 2022 they caused a sailboat carrying four to go down. And finally, in this month’s attack, the Swiss sailing yacht Champagne had to be abandoned, and the vessel sank while it was towed to shore. In all cases, the people onboard were rescued safely.

In 2020 researchers observed nine different individual killer whales attacking boats; it’s unclear if others have since joined in. The attacks tended to come from two separate groups: a trio of juveniles occasionally joined by a fourth and a mixed-aged group consisting of an adult female named White Gladis, two of her young offspring and two of her sisters. Because White Gladis was the only adult involved in the initial incidents, the researchers speculate that she may have become entangled in a fishing line at some point, giving her a bad association with boats. Other adult orcas in the region have injuries consistent with boat collisions or entanglement, López says. “All this has to make us reflect on the fact that human activities, even in an indirect way, are at the origin of this behavior,” he says.

The safe rescue of everyone involved, however, suggests to Deborah Giles that these orcas don’t have malevolent motivations against humans. Giles, science and research director of the Washington State–based nonprofit conservation organization Wild Orca, points out that humans relentlessly harassed killer whales off the coasts of Washington and Oregon in the 1960s and 1970s, capturing young orcas and taking them away for display at marine parks. “These are animals that, every single one of them, had been captured at one point or another—most whales multiple times. And these are whales that saw their babies being taken away from them and put on trucks and driven away, never to be seen again,” Giles says. “And yet these whales never attacked boats, never attacked humans.”

Though it’s possible that the orcas around the Iberian Peninsula could be reacting to a bad experience with a boat, Giles says, it’s pure speculation to attribute that motivation to the animals. The behavior does seem to be learned, she says, but could simply be a fad without much rhyme or reason—to the human mind, anyway. Famously, some members of the Southern Resident orcas that cruise Washington’s Puget Sound each summer and fall spent the summer of 1987 wearing dead salmon on their head. There was no apparent reason for salmon hats to come in vogue in orca circles, but the behavior spread and persisted for a few months before disappearing again. “We’re not going to know what’s happening with this population,” Giles says, referring to the Iberian orcas.

The Iberian orca attacks typically last less than 30 minutes, but they can sometimes go on for up to two hours, according to the 2022 study. In the case of the Champagne, two juvenile killer whales went after the rudder while an adult repeatedly rammed the boat, crew members told the German magazine Yacht . The attack lasted 90 minutes.

The Iberian orca subpopulation is considered critically endangered, with only 39 animals the last time a full census was conducted in 2011. A 2014 study found that this subpopulation follows the migration of their key prey , Atlantic bluefin tuna—a route that puts them in close contact with human fishing, military activities and recreational boating. Maritime authorities recommend that boaters in the area slow down and try to stay away from orcas, López says, but there is no guaranteed way to avoid the animals. He and his colleagues fear the boat attacks will come back and bite the orcas, either because boaters will lash out or because the attacks are dangerous to the animals themselves. “They run a great risk of getting hurt,” López says.

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Orcas Sink Fourth Boat Off Iberia, Unnerving Sailors

Orcas caused enough damage to sink a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar last week. A small pod has been slamming boats in recent years, worrying skippers charting routes closer to shore.

By Isabella Kwai

The yacht Grazie Mamma II carried its crew along the coastlines and archipelagos of the Mediterranean. Its last adventure was off the coast of Morocco last week, when it encountered a pod of orcas.

The marine animals slammed the yacht’s rudder for 45 minutes, causing major damage and a leak, according to Morskie Mile , the boat’s Polish operators. The crew escaped, and rescuers and the Moroccan Navy tried to tow the yacht to safety, but it sank near the port of Tanger Med, the operator said on its website.

The account of the sinking is adding to the worries of many sailors along the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where marine biologists are studying a puzzling phenomenon: Orcas are jostling and ramming boats in interactions that have disrupted dozens of voyages and caused at least four boats in the past two years to sink.

The largest of the dolphin family, orcas are playful apex predators that hunt sharks, whales and other prey but are generally amiable to humans in the wild . The orcas hunting in the Strait of Gibraltar are considered to be endangered , and researchers have noticed an upsurge of unusual behavior since 2020: A small group of the marine animals have been battering boats in the busy routes around Portugal, Spain and Morocco.

While most interactions occur in the waters of southwestern Europe and North Africa, an orca also reportedly rammed a yacht some 2,000 miles north off the coast of Scotland, according to The Guardian.

“Orcas are complex, intelligent, highly social,” Erich Hoyt, a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation and author of “Orca: The Whale Called Killer,” said. “We’re still at the early stages of trying to understand this behavior.”

Researchers have pushed back at the idea that orcas are attacking vessels. Instead, they theorize that the rudders of boats have become a plaything for curious young orcas and that the behavior has become a learned fad spreading through the population. Another hypothesis, according to biologists who published a study on the population last June, is that the ramming is an “adverse behavior” because of a bad experience between an orca and a boat — though researchers tend to favor the first.

It is unclear what will stop the ramming, whether it’s playful or otherwise, a point that has left anxious skippers traveling these parts sharing advice in Facebook groups dedicated to tracking such interactions .

“It’s been an interesting summer hiding in shallow waters,” said Greg Blackburn, a skipper based in Gibraltar. Orcas slammed into a boat he was commanding in May and chewed at the rudder, he said, though the vessel was able to return to shore.

The encounter left an impression: On a recent trip to Barcelona, Mr. Blackburn had to pass through a patch where orcas had been sighted the week before. “I genuinely felt sick for about three hours,” he said, “just watching the horizon constantly for a fin to pop up.”

Conservationists, maritime rescue groups and yacht clubs are partnering to navigate the challenge of preserving an endangered population and helping sailors avoid calamity. The Cruising Association, a club supporting sailors, has recommended safety protocols for orca encounters, such as disconnecting the boat’s autopilot and staying quiet. Skippers have offered one another anecdotal advice to deter attacks, including throwing sand into the water and banging loudly on the boat.

Before leaving shore, seagoers can also consult digital platforms that now track reported orca sightings and interactions in the region. This can help them avoid the animals, or chart a route closer to shore, said Bruno Díaz López, a biologist and the director of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute based in Galicia, Spain.

“We suggested the boats stay in shallow waters,” he said, adding that they had noticed more boats changing their journeys. “Maybe the trip takes longer, yes. But it is worth it.”

Mr. Blackburn, the skipper, said he had heard of people resorting to throwing firecrackers into the sea to try to scare the animals away, adding that the boats served as people’s homes on the ocean. “At the end of the day, if you’re protecting your home what are you going to do?”

But the ocean is the orcas’ home, and conservationists say scaring the animals is not a solution.

“It is not about winning a battle, because this is not a war,” Mr. López said. “We need to be respectful.”

Isabella Kwai is a breaking news reporter in the London bureau. She joined The Times in 2017 as part of the Australia bureau. More about Isabella Kwai

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Killer queen? It has been reported that the Gibraltar boat interaction was instigated by a ‘pod matriarch’.

The orca uprising: whales are ramming boats – but are they inspired by revenge, grief or memory?

A pod in the strait of Gibraltar has sunk three boats and damaged dozens of others, and their story has captivated the world. What explains this unprecedented behaviour?

W hat’s going on with the #orcauprising? You’ve probably gathered the basics: orcas are “attacking” yachts . To be strictly factual, since 2020, a small pod of orcas in the strait of Gibraltar has been interacting with sailing boats in a new way: ramming vessels, pressing their bodies and heads into the hulls and biting, even snapping off, the rudders. Over three years, more than 500 interactions have been recorded, three boats sunk and dozens of others damaged. Last month, the first instance of this behaviour was recorded in another place, when an orca rammed a boat near Shetland . “What I felt [was] most frightening was the very loud breathing of the animal,” said the Dutch yachtsman targeted, Dr Wim Rutten, who had been fishing for mackerel. “Maybe he just wanted to play. Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line.”

An orca with prominent ribs – visibly undernourished – nudges a boat in the strait of Gibraltar.

There are two fascinating things about this. First, of course, what are the orcas doing? But the second is about another species entirely: us. Why do we like this story so much? Because we do: people – including me – love the idea of orcas attacking boats. Browsing through orca memes, there’s an orca as the sickle in the hammer and sickle , with the headline “eat the rich”, and a Soviet-style graphic of a heroic orca emerging under a superyacht . “What if we kissed while watching the orcas take back the ocean,” reads one tweet with 1m views, while a much-used image of an arm holding a microphone up to a captive orca has been repurposed endlessly to highly entertaining effect – I like one where it’s “singing” a bespoke version of the Meredith Brooks classic : “I’m a bitch / I’m an orca / Sinking yachts /Just off Majorca [sic] / I’m a sinner I’m a whale / Imma hit you with my tail.” We’re taking great pleasure in projecting extremely human narratives and motivations on orcas. But how wrong is that, and why does it appeal?

The first question is easier to answer, or rather not to answer: we don’t know what they’re doing or why. “What I think is most exciting about this is that actually, we don’t know at all,” says Tom Mustill, a biologist and film-maker, who wrote How to Speak Whale , after a humpback whale landed on his kayak (the jaw-dropping footage is on YouTube ). “When we step outside our rush to project, it’s actually very reflective of where we’re at with cetacean sciences: we’re starting to understand that they’re so complicated and nuanced, and that individuals are very different from one another.” Even if we’re in the conscious incompetence phase of learning about orca behaviour, there are expert theories. “It could be a curious and playful behaviour,” suggests the 2021 report from the Grupo Trabajo Orca Atlántica (GTOA, or Atlantic Orca Working Group) , a partnership of Spanish and Portuguese scientists.

That’s a popular hypothesis that Philip Hoare , the author of Leviathan and Albert and the Whale , broadly supports. Hoare experienced his own orca interaction in Sri Lanka, when a small pod head-butted and charged his boat: “I have never been so excited and so fearful in my life,” he tells me. “They’re tremendously powerful, incredibly intelligent, incredibly well organised; if that species wanted to do anything with us in the ocean, they could.” There are no reported instances of wild orcas killing people, but, says Mustill: “If killer whales wanted to start attacking people, disabling small vessels is a very strange way of going about that. They could just start eating swimmers all over the place.”

Orcas nudge rudder of yacht near Gibraltar – video

There are alternative theories. The fibreglass hulls of sailing boats might just feel nice – and orcas enjoy the sensory feedback: some Canadian pods seem to enjoy rubbing themselves on smooth pebbles ( you can watch them on a webcam ); or it might just be a trend. As Mustill explains, a number of observed orca fads are not obviously examples of “adaptive” behaviour (meaning “useful”) – most famously the one for wearing salmon as hats . They’ve also mimicked sea lions , and some pods engage in “greeting ceremonies”, described as like “a killer whale mosh pit” . Social learning – from each other – is well documented in orca culture and, yes, “culture” is how behavioural science describes it. “These are cultural beings,” says Barbara J King, professor emerita of anthropology at the College of William & Mary, Virginia, and author of Animals’ Best Friends . “The networks of individuals in orca societies, which are led by females, are highly attuned to each other’s behaviour, so traditions evolve over time that become, in some cases, cross-generational.”

A humpback whale crashs on to Tom Mustill and Charlotte Kinloch’s kayak in California.

But how about revenge, as many of the memes suggest? The Atlantic Orca Working Group 2021 report also suggested the interactions might be responding to individual orcas’ experiences: “A behaviour induced by an aversive incident, and therefore a precautionary behaviour.” Given a single “matriarch” orca, “White Gladis”, appears to have started these interactions , it has been suggested a prior injury or entanglement could have led her to act. Does that make it revenge? King doesn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. “If we’re talking about capacity, it’s not outside the realm of reasonable expectation and it would not necessarily be anthropomorphic,” she says, though, “I’m not suggesting this in support of an ‘uprising’ at all.” King has worked extensively on animal grief: her Ted talk on one orca, Tahlequah, who in 2018 carried her dead calf for 17 days and 1,000 miles , has had 3.5m views. “I don’t believe grief is a human emotion; I feel the same way about joy and sorrow. So what about revenge?” She points to narratives around elephants perpetrating destructive acts , which has also been presented as possible retribution for poor treatment. “Both orcas and elephants have the memory capacity and the intelligence to put these things together.” Some primates, she says, also use “kin-redirected aggression: where if a monkey is attacked, that monkey within a short period of time redirects aggression to the relatives of the opponent.”

Orcas, Hoare says, will have a clear sense of what humans have done to their environment. As demonstrated by the actions of White Gladis , orca society is matriarchal, and females can live to 100: “They will have a memory, almost a generational memory, of a time when the ocean was not dominated by human beings; when there were not seismic surveys, steam engines then diesel engines, military sonar … The most important thing for them is sound: there will be individual whales that remember when the sea was not that noisy.”

So they know what we’ve done and we know what we’ve done too. I think one of the reasons the #orcauprising resonates is our sense of collective guilt or, as Mustill puts it, “We feel like there’s something deeply unfair happening in the ocean.” From films such as Free Willy to Blackfish , we have become aware of how grotesque the idea of keeping captive orcas is, and we’re ever-more conscious of the degraded state of our seas. Hoare says pictures of the Iberian whales suggest they are in poor condition, with ribs showing on one of the most widely used pictures. “They’re skinny. They are signifiers of this massively impacted environment.” As Grimes tweeted : “We deserve to have our boats rammed, frankly.”

King is frustrated that our response has been typified by the silliness of social media posts. “If people truly believe that this is about orcas responding to human harms, then why isn’t the response not just this jokey ‘orca uprising’?” she asks. “Why isn’t this the moment that people say: ‘Whatever the orcas are doing, I recognise anthropogenic harms. This is an opportunity for me: I’m going to stop eating their prey; I’m going to support ocean restoration; I’m going to support the idea of marine sanctuaries for captive orcas’?”

But fitting their behaviour to a narrative that suits us is entirely in keeping with our perennial misunderstanding of cetaceans. Hoare sees these interactions and our reaction to them as representative of how, over our shared history, “whales have had to change according to what we want them to be.” We’ve always imposed a narrative on whales, he explains, from their appearance in creation myths and religious texts, coupled with a view of whales as terrifying monsters, reinforced by Moby-Dick . The “utter and absolute depredation of whale populations” of the early 20th century was eventually countered by the early conservation movement and, crucially, bio-acoustician Roger Payne’s Songs of the Humpback Whale , shifting our perception of them from monstrous killers to mystical barnacled angels that sing. We see them, as Mustill says, as “incredible, empathic, beautiful”, which is also an oversimplification. A friend, he says, was recently rhapsodising about orcas. “I said: ‘You know they also toy with sea turtles and, like other cetaceans, they do infanticide?” Both Hoare and Mustill note that their rebranding from “killer whale” to “orca” was not particularly popular with scientists, as it was an accurate name for consummate predators. “Maybe they’d like to be thought of as killer whales?” says Mustill. “I’ve seen them hunting and they do these things which look like celebrations – they’re active, they leap out of the water and make a lot of noise splashing. It’s not necessarily a shameful thing to kill.”

An orca swims close to a sailing boat during an hour long ‘attack’ off the coast of Morocco in May.

One very human-coloured notion is the idea that orcas aren’t just taking back the ocean but are somehow fomenting revolution, since the yachts they are ramming are so intimately associated with the ultra-wealthy. White Gladis has been called “a communist orca”. As one post reads : “The orcas have done more for the working class than our elected officials ever have”; another captions the famous John Cusack boombox scene from Say Anything : “Me standing outside the yacht club playing orca sounds.” It’s silly, but so appealing. “I must admit it’s very attractive,” says Hoare, though he emphasises that he doesn’t want to see anyone hurt. “I love it too,” says Mustill. “We see something intrinsically fair in these giant, clever, enigmatic killers righting a wrong.” There’s also a sense of wish fulfilment. “It speaks to our feeling of powerlessness,” says Mustill. “We’ve not been going out sinking billionaires’ yachts, even though we could.”

“The killer whales are not our friends” read the headline on a much-memeified recent Atlantic article (“Jacob Stern [the author] will be the first to go in the orca revolution” as one tweeter put it ). But, if they’re not friends, what are they to us? What are we to them? Could we be allies? Mustill recalls a strange and wonderful story from 19th-century New South Wales in Australia, where orcas assisted a family of whalers, who were hunting baleen whales, in return for a share of the catch (the tongue) for more than 40 years. “They’re very interested in us,” says Hoare. “Every whale I’ve met, and I’ve met thousands, they’re all interested in us. Because they know there’s nothing out there in their ocean – other than other whales – that is like us. We’re talking about all this now; there’s an equivalent conversation going on in orca society. Orca are podcasting. Literally podcasting. I’ll copyright that joke!” He sends me a 10-second recording of sound captured during his own interaction with the orca pod in Sri Lanka – a complex soundscape of clicks, rasps and squeaks that gives me goosebumps. “If you could only translate that, everything that has been written about this would be rendered defunct. We’ll all be proved wrong.”

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Killer whales 'tear bits off boat' in 'scary' hour-long attack off Spanish coast

The sea mammals, which can grow up to eight metres long, broke the rudder and pieced the hull of the yacht Mustique as it sailed for Gibraltar.

Friday 26 May 2023 17:56, UK

Orcas severely damaged a yacht off the coast of southern Spain - the latest in one of a number of killer whale attacks on vessels in the area.

The pod broke the rudder and pierced the hull of the Mustique while it was on its way to Gibraltar in the early hours of Thursday.

The damage forced its crew of four to contact Spanish authorities for help, a spokesman for the maritime rescue service said.

The service deployed a rapid-response vessel and a helicopter carrying a bilge pump to assist the 20-metre (66 feet) vessel, which was sailing under a British flag.

British sailor April Boyes was aboard the Mustique and shared photographs and video of the damage done by the orcas to her Instagram account.

In one of the videos, she can be heard saying, "it's like they are biting it apart".

She later said: "What started off as a seemingly unique encounter ended with orcas breaking off our rudder from the boat, then proceeding to tear bits off the boat for an hour.

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Killer whales sink yacht after 45-minute attack, Polish tour company says

By Emily Mae Czachor

November 6, 2023 / 9:58 AM EST / CBS News

A group of orcas managed to sink a yacht off the coast of Morocco last week, after its 45-minute attack on the vessel caused irreparable damage, a Polish tour company said.

The incident happened Tuesday, Oct. 31, as a crew with the boat touring group sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar. The narrow waterway bridges the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, which separates the southern tip of Europe from northern Africa.

A pod of orcas, colloquially called killer whales, approached the yacht and "hit the steering fin for 45 minutes, causing major damage and leakage," the tour agency Morskie Mile, which is based in Warsaw and operated the yacht, wrote on Facebook in a translated post.

Although its captain and crew were assisted by a search-and-rescue team as well as the Moroccan Navy, the yacht could not be salvaged. It sank near the entrance to the port of Tanger-Med, a major complex of ports some 30 miles northeast of Tangier along the Strait of Gibraltar. None of the crew members were harmed, said the Polish tour agency, adding that those on board the sunken yacht were already safe and in Spain by the time their Facebook post went live.

"This yacht was the most wonderful thing in maritime sailing for all of us. Longtime friendships formed on board," wrote Morskie Mile. The company said it was involved in other upcoming cruises in the Canary Islands and would work to make sure those boat trips went ahead as planned.

Last week's incident in the Strait of Gibraltar was not the first of its kind. Reported attacks by killer whales that seem to be trying deliberately to capsize boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal have more than tripled over the last two years, according to data released in the spring by the research group GTOA, which studies orcas around Gibraltar.

"Nobody knows why this is happening," Andrew W. Trites, professor and director of Marine Mammal Research at the University of British Columbia, told CBS News in May. "My idea, or what anyone would give you, is informed speculation. It is a total mystery, unprecedented."

GTOA recorded 52 maritime interactions with orcas between the Strait of Gibraltar and Galicia, a coastal province in northwestern Spain, between July and November 2020. The incidents picked up in the years that followed, with 197 interactions recorded in 2021 and 207 recorded in 2022, GTOA said, noting that the interactions mainly affected sailboats.

Then, in June of this year, one of two sailing teams involved in an international race around the world reported a frightening confrontation involving multiple orcas as they traveled through the Atlantic Ocean to the west of Gibraltar. The teams, which were competing in The Ocean Race, said the orcas did not damage their boats or harm crews, but recalled the sea creatures pushing up against and, in one instance, ramming into one of the boats. The orcas also nudged and bit the rudders, one crew member said.

Caitlin O'Kane and Kerry Breen contributed to this report.

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 threw a yacht around 'like a rag doll' and ripped off both rudders, the latest example of a killer-whale attack

A pod of orcas attacked a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar, ripping off both of its rudders.
The sailor said it felt as though the orcas were throwing the yacht around "like a rag doll."
There have been 20 incidents of orca attacks in the Strait of Gibraltar in the past month alone.

A British sailor had the rudders of his yacht ripped off by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar, the latest of several killer-whale incidents in the area in recent weeks.

Iain Hamilton is now marooned in Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory on Spain's south coast, after a pod of five orcas attacked his yacht, he told BBC Radio 4's "Today" program on Monday.

He said he was sailing 20 miles west off the coast when he noticed a fin near his boat, followed by a series of increasingly jerky bumps.

"There was a very large whale pushing along the back of the boat, trying to bite the rudder," he told BBC Radio 4, adding that the big orca, along with four smaller killer whales, repeatedly bumped against the yacht.

"Then one of them managed to take off the rudder," he said.

Hamilton said it was "quite concerning" to be left with only one rudder, but the situation turned from bad to worse when the second rudder was torn off.

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Gladis the killer whale and her gang of orcas, out for revenge in Gibraltar

Killer whales could be learning unusual behaviour from ‘traumatised’ matriarch named ‘white gladis’, andy gregory writes, article bookmarked.

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A whale swims next to a boat in the Strait of Gibraltar,

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A British sailor’s boat was the latest victim in a spate of orca attacks on vessels near Gibraltar , as an expert suggested a “traumatised” killer whale may be inadvertently teaching others to target them.

There have been 20 incidents this month alone between the highly social apex predators and small vessels sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar, according to the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), with dozens of orca attacks on ships recorded on Spanish and Portuguese coasts this year.

In the early hours of Thursday, a group of orcas broke the rudder and pierced the hull of a boat after ramming into the Mustique on its way to Gibraltar, prompting its crew of four to contact Spanish authorities for help, a spokesperson for the maritime rescue service said.

April Boyes said she was ‘feeling grateful for the coastguard’ after the ‘scary experience’

The service deployed a rapid-response vessel and a helicopter carrying a bilge pump to assist the 20-metre (66ft) vessel, which was sailing under a British flag, a spokesperson for the maritime rescue service said. The Mustique was towed to the port of Barbate, in the province of Cadiz, for repairs.

Posting footage of the ordeal on Instagram, British sailor April Boyes, aged 31, said: “What started off as a seemingly unique encounter ended with orcas breaking off our rudder from the boat, then proceeding to tear bits off the boat for an hour.

“The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side,” he said. “The two little orcas copied the bigger one’s technique and, with a slight run-up, came darting towards the boat. Mainly on the rudder, but also the keel.”

The boat was severely damaged during Thursday’s encounter

Just two days previously, on 2 May, six orcas rammed the hull of a Bavaria 46 cruiser yacht in an encounter lasting an hour near Tangier, reportedly causing thousands of pounds of damage.

Business consultant Janet Morris and photographer Stephen Bidwell, a couple from Cambridgeshire, both aged 58, were on board for a sailing course when they heard a shout of “orcas”.

“We were sitting ducks,” Ms Morris told The Daily Telegraph , while Mr Bidwell said: “I kept reminding myself we had a 22-tonne boat made of steel, but seeing three of them coming at once, quickly and at pace with their fins out of the water, was daunting.”

“A clearly larger matriarch was definitely around and was almost supervising,” he added, speculating that it was White Gladis.

The first orca encounter in the area occurred in May 2020, since when more than 500 have been recorded, according to the GTOA research group.

Those on board were forced to remove water from the boat damaged on Thursday

Most interactions have been harmless, with orcas only touching an estimated one in every 100 boats passing through the area, according to biologist Alfredo Lopez Fernandez, of the GTOA and University of Aveiro, who said that three vessels have sunk so far.

Experts believe White Gladis may have suffered a “critical moment of agony”, such as colliding with a boat or becoming entrapped during illegal fishing, which altered her behaviour in a “defensive” fashion.

“That traumatised orca is the one that started this behaviour of physical contact with boats,” Dr Lopez Fernandez told Live Science.

“We do not interpret that the orcas are teaching the young, although the behaviour has spread to the young vertically, simply by imitation, and later horizontally among them, because they consider it something important in their lives,” he said.

The behaviour has baffled scientists , with some initially suggesting it could be related to the harmful scarcity of food facing the mammals, or the disruptive resumption of business-as-usual nautical activities in the wake of the pandemic, while others have suggested it could be playful behaviour.

Dolphins and orcas found to use ‘Kim Kardashian-like voice register’ to catch prey
‘Like a sledgehammer’: Killer whales perplex scientists by ramming sailing boats on Spanish coast

Although known as killer whales , endangered orcas are part of the dolphin family. They can measure up to eight metres and weigh up to six tonnes as adults.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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Orcas sink another yacht near Gibraltar in relentless 45-minute attack

Killer whales have sunk yet another boat in southwestern Europe , marking the fourth such incident in the region in the last two years.

The latest attack saw a pod of orcas target a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar for about 45 minutes, Polish cruise company Morskie Mile said in a Facebook post on 31 October.

The boat’s operator said the relentless attack focused on the yacht’s steering fin and caused extensive damage and leakage.

“Despite attempts to bring the yacht to the port by the captain, crew and rescuers from the SAR (Search and Rescue), port tugs and the Moroccan Navy, the unit sunk near the entrance to the port of Tanger Med,” the company said, while adding that the crew was “safe, unharmed, and sound”.

The attack is the latest reported case of killer whales targetting boats in Gibraltar – a phenomenon that has intrigued animal behaviour scientists.

Cases of orcas harassing boats passing by in the Strait of Gibraltar, which runs between Spain and Morocco and connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, began being reported in 2020.

The strange behaviour has perplexed scientists, with some theorising that the killer whales may be teaching each other to attack boats passing by in the region.

Researchers have floated a number of theories to explain the behaviour of the aquatic mammals.

These explanations range from food scarcity and the disruptive resumption of post-pandemic nautical activities to playful interactions.

There have been documented cases of “play behaviour” among different orca populations as some killer whales in previous studies were shown to “harass” porpoises .

Researchers suspect these were likely orchestrated by orcas as a form of social play to bond, communicate or simply for fun among themselves, and that the behaviour would provide benefits such as improved group coordination and teamwork.

But scientists have also begun to investigate whether the Gibraltar attacks are linked to past trauma.

Whatever the orcas’ motivation, such incidents have highlighted the more widespread concerns of scientists around the impact of human nautical activity on intelligent marine mammals .

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Why are orcas attacking boats and sometimes sinking them?

Killer whales are interacting with boats and may be teaching others to mimic the behavior.

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."

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Why are killer whales attacking boats? Expert Q&A

by Luke Rendell, The Conversation

Orcas living off Europe's Iberian coast recently struck and sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar. Scientists suspect that this is the third vessel this subpopulation of killer whales has capsized since May 2020, when a female orca believed to be the originator of this behavior suffered a traumatic encounter with a boat.

In most reported cases, orcas are biting, bending and breaking off the rudders of sailboats. So how did they learn to imitate this behavior—and why? We asked Dr. Luke Rendell, who researches learning, behavior and communication among marine mammals at the University of St Andrews.

Why do you think orcas appear to be attacking boats off the Iberian coast?

Any answer that I (or anyone else, really) give to this question is speculation—we just don't know enough about killer whale motivations to be certain. The puzzle for biologists is to understand how this behavior developed.

The lack of obvious fitness-enhancing rewards (like food, for example) means this is unlikely to have evolved because it enabled the whales to better survive in their environment. That is what we would call an adaptive trait: it confers a direct evolutionary benefit by helping the animal find food, mate, or successfully raise offspring.

But I can say what this behavior looks like. There are multiple accounts of single and groups of orcas developing idiosyncratic and not obviously adaptive habits. These range from one group engaging in what seemed like a short-term fad of carrying dead salmon on their heads, to another vocally mimicking sea lions (there may be an adaptive outcome to convincing sea lions that you are a sea lion too, not a voracious predator, but there's no evidence of this occurring).

There are other kinds of behavior that do appear to bring rewards—for example, captive orcas learning to regurgitate fish to use as bait for gulls, which they apparently prefer to eat over the fish. But the origin and spread of these boat attacks currently fits very well with the characterization of a temporary fad, and it remains to be seen how long it persists.

If instead there is an adaptive explanation, my hunch is it has to do with curiosity sometimes leading to important innovations around food sources, which can then be shared.

How do you suspect this behavior is being transmitted among killer whales in the region?

This behavior probably started with individual orcas, but would appear to spread through social learning. We recently published a paper on a similar fad-like behavior in bottlenose dolphins , where we identified the dolphin that promoted a tail-walking behavior it had acquired during a temporary period of captivity.

This is pretty similar to the account of an academic journal on the recent yacht sinking, in that a specific individual was identified as the potential source. This orca was prompted to engage in the behavior due to a past trauma—perhaps being struck by a boat rudder, according to the account.

The precise reason is very hard to know for sure, but we do know the behavior has spread through her group. And it's difficult to explain that dynamic without involving some kind of social learning—the spread of information.

Is there evidence of killer whales behaving this way in the past?

I have experienced orcas swimming very close to our boat in the waters near St Vincent, in the eastern Caribbean, during a research survey. Our vessel, like those involved in these interactions, was about the size of a large whale (a humpback, for instance). Maybe they were investigating us, but it never escalated to any kind of physical interaction.

My impression was that they were interested in the boat's propeller, and the currents it created—they came so close on one occasion that we had to take the engine out of gear to prevent an injury. So, approaching boats is not novel. Damaging them in such a determined way is, however, not something I have ever heard orcas do before.

It is, of course, known to happen in other species—notably sperm whales , giving rise to the story of Moby Dick: a combination of accounts of a white whale off the South American coast dubbed "Mocha Dick," and the account of the whaler Essex, sunk by a large sperm whale in equatorial waters.

The subpopulation of orcas responsible for these attacks is critically endangered. Do you think the group's conservation status is relevant in some way?

I don't think it's particularly relevant to the origin and spread of the behavior, but it is highly relevant to how we should manage this population.

If these killer whales continue attacking boats, it will make protecting them harder. Not only does interacting with revolving propellers increase the risk of injury to these animals, it also threatens people—from the injuring of crews to the sinking of vessels—which will create political pressure for something to be done.

Of course, small vessel operators do not need to navigate the areas along the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal where these interactions with orcas have been happening. Preventing them from doing so would solve the problem—but for many boat operators and owners, this is their shortest route, while heading offshore makes for riskier passages. A loss of tourism revenue if these vessels stop will add to pressure for a permanent solution.

It is possible that some will call for these orcas to be controlled, up to and including having them killed if they continue to threaten human life and livelihoods. This poses significant ethical questions about our relationship with these animals.

Should we, as the species that ultimately holds the greatest power, vacate small, vulnerable vessels from the orcas' habitat as part of a shifting relationship to the sea, which we know is deteriorating as a result of our actions? Or should we confer on ourselves the right to navigate as we please and control any nonhuman animals that impede it, up to and including culling them?

Historically, the latter view would almost certainly have prevailed, and perhaps it will here. But it is a question which society, rather than scientists, must answer, and it will be telling which way the relevant authorities ultimately turn.

Reports indicate a 'traumatised' victim of a boat collision initiated the behavior. Are notions of solidarity and self-defense among killer whales outlandish?

I regard this as plausible speculation. The authors of the recent paper cast it as one of a number of assumptions about how the behavior might have developed, with generally increased pressure on their habitat and the idea of natural curiosity as other options (the latter is what I think is most likely).

Notions of collective self-defense in cetaceans (aquatic mammals including whales, dolphins and porpoises) are far from outlandish. We have accounts of sperm whales rising to each other's defense when orcas attack, for example. Solidarity is a more subjective issue, and we don't have access to the internal mental states of these animals to really understand whether this is going on.

I can, however, point to a different cetacean: humpback whales apparently aid other species, notably seals, that are under attack from orcas. The scientist who led the description of this behavior, Robert Pitman , said he regards it as "inadvertent altruism" based on a simple rule of thumb : "When you hear a killer whale attack, go break it up."

These accounts raise interesting questions about the motivations behind orcas attacking boats that we cannot yet answer. It is not impossible that these orcas perceive their own common aggressor in us—but it is also entirely possible they have no such concept.

Provided by The Conversation

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

Scott Neuman

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast. Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast.

Scientists and sailors say orcas, also known as killer whales, are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast, with one skipper who's been pursued by the marine mammals on two separate occasions suggesting that their tactics are becoming more stealthy.

Delivery skipper Dan Kriz, who had to be towed into port after orcas destroyed the rudder on a boat he was on in 2020, had an almost identical experience in April.

"My first reaction was, 'Please! Not again,'" Kriz told Newsweek .

Unlike last time, the orcas made a stealthier approach without the characteristic squeaks they normally use to communicate, he says. They made quick work of the two rudders on the catamaran Kriz was delivering. "Looks like they knew exactly what they are doing. They didn't touch anything else," he said.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Catamaran Guru (@catamaranguru)

Most marine scientists have characterized hundreds of encounters between boats and orcas that have sunk at least three vessels and damaged dozens of others over the years as a "fad," implying that the animals will eventually lose interest and resort to more typical behavior.

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

But if that's the case, there are few signs this behavior is going out of style anytime soon. According to a June 2022 study published in the journal Marine Mammal Science , orcas have stepped up the frequency of their interactions with sailing vessels in and around the Strait of Gibraltar, the busy waterway that links the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean.

Some researchers think it's merely playful behavior

As NPR first reported last August, many scientists who study orca behavior believe these incidents — in which often one or more of the marine mammals knock off large chunks of a sailboat's rudder — are not meant as attacks, but merely represent playful behavior.

One hypothesis put forward by Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research, a research group based in Spain, is that orcas like the feel of a boat's rudder.

"What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," de Stephanis told NPR last year. "So, when they encounter a sailboat that isn't running its engine, they get kind of frustrated and that's why they break the rudder."

A picture taken on May 31 shows the rudder of a vessel damaged by killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar and taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

In another recent encounter, Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht that his vessel, Champagne, was approached by "two smaller and one larger orca" off Gibraltar.

"The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side," he said.

The Spanish coast guard rescued Schaufelberger and his crew, towing Champagne to the Spanish port of Barbate, but the vessel sank before reaching safety.

The encounters could be a response to past trauma

Since 2020, there have been more than 500 encounters between yachts and orcas in the area, according to one of the study's co-authors, Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and a representative of the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica , or Atlantic Orca Working Group.

López Fernandez believes that a female known as White Gladis, who leads the group of around 40 animals, may have had a traumatizing encounter with a boat or a fishing net. In an act of revenge, she is teaching her pod-mates how to carry out revenge attacks with her encouragement, researchers believe.

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31.

"The orcas are doing this on purpose, 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 told Live Science .

It's an intriguing possibility, says Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute .

"I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge," she says. "I don't think we can completely rule it out."

However, Shields is not ready to sign on to the "revenge" hypothesis just yet. She says that despite humans having "given a lot of opportunities for orcas to respond to us in an aggressive manner," there are no other examples of them doing so.

Deborah Giles, the science and research director at Wild Orca, a conservation group based in Washington state, is also skeptical of the hypothesis. She points out that killer whale populations in waters off Washington "were highly targeted" in the past as a source for aquariums. She says seal bombs, small charges that fishers throw into the water in an effort to scare sea lions away from their nets, were dropped in their path while helicopters and boats herded them into coves.

"The pod never attacked boats after that," she says. "It just doesn't ring true to me."

Shields says it's important to remember that whatever the motive is for the behavior of the orcas off the Iberian coast, it isn't being transmitted to pods in other parts of the world.

"We've had folks here in Washington [asking] 'is it safe to go out in the water here with these orcas?'" she says. "While this is kind of an ongoing situation in that specific place, I don't think there's any reason to think it's going to start spreading to other populations of orcas."

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

A group of killer whales partially above the waterline in the ocean.

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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.

Between 20 and 24 killer whales were spotted near the Farallon Islands, possibly a meeting of six or seven different orca families, or matrilines, celebrating the spoils of a good hunt, Pierson said. May 7, 2023.

Two dozen killer whales spotted celebrating a hunt off the San Francisco coast

The unusually large group spotted near the Farallon Islands was possibly a meeting of six or seven families.

June 7, 2023

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.

HEMET, CALIF. - SEP 6, 2022. A firefighter battles the Fairview fire along Batista Road near Hemet on Tuesday, Sep. 6, 2022. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

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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.

People living near the Martinez Refining Company in Martinez are under a health advisory from the Contra Costa Health Services to not eat food grown in their gardens until they have tested or replaced their soil due to a refinery accidentally release of dust containing heavy metals in November. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)

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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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Huntington Beach, CA - February 08: Joined by his parents Torrey and Janae Peterson, not pictured, Desmond Peterson, 7, of Long Beach, views the carcass of a gray whale found in the Bolsa Chica State Beach tidal inlet in Huntington Beach, CA, on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024. The 30-foot decomposing gray whale was likely washed ashore by the storms.in Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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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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Rogue orcas are thriving on the high seas—and they’re eating big whales

A fourth type of Pacific killer whale may live miles offshore from California and Oregon, preying on whales, other dolphins, and sea turtles.

A dorsal fin pokes out of the water on a foggy day.

Most orcas tend to stick to coastlines, from the Antarctic dwellers that make waves to knock seals off ice floes to the liver-extracting brothers around Cape Town . But now, scientists have found what could be a brand-new population of killer whales: Animals that ply the high seas, hunting large whales and other sizable prey.

These open-ocean denizens have been spotted at numerous locations far from Oregon and California, many of them well beyond the continental shelf, where waters can reach depths of 15,000 feet, according to a recent study in Aquatic Mammals .

“There haven’t been any real studies, at least in the North Pacific, looking at killer whales in the open ocean,” says study leader Josh McInnes , a master’s candidate at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.

“It was kind of a shock when … we saw animals that were out in this open ocean habitat and were completely different from the other ecotypes we know.”

Killer whales in the Pacific are grouped into three ecotypes: Residents, which live close to shore and eat salmon and other fish; offshores, which live farther out and also eat fish; and transients, also called Bigg’s, the only orcas previously known to eat mammals. (See 13 fantastic photos of orcas.)

Scientists could not match the 49 whales in the new study with any known orcas through photos and descriptions, which are based on their unique dorsal fins and saddle patches, the gray or white pattern on an orca's back.

This means the animals are either a subgroup of the transient ecotype or an entirely unique population, says McInnes, who is also a research associate with the Pacific Wildlife Foundation.

The team could also differentiate the population, dubbed the oceanics, from other known orcas due to scars or bite marks from the parasitic cookie-cutter shark, which only occur in the deep ocean.

An graphic in shades of blue from dark to light, the box shows the characteristics and common locations for different types of animals.

Beyond individual variations, the oceanics don't look like other known ecotypes, for example sporting a large gray saddle patch or no saddle patch at all.

“The open ocean doesn’t support a lot of large predators; it’s often described as a giant desert, so we weren’t expecting to find so many different animals, so we’re excited to carry on more research,” McInnes says.

“We really just don't know yet what is happening with the killer whales in the open ocean. This is the mystery behind what we hope to do next.”

Following the prey

Our knowledge of orcas living in the open ocean is limited, as it’s difficult to find the widely distributed animals in a boat.

Yet the recent paper, a mixture of literature review and new observations, discovered nine instances in which marine mammal researchers, fishermen, and tourists observed whales in the northern Pacific Ocean between 1997 and 2021.

In the first documented incident, researchers watched a large pod of killer whales attack a herd of nine adult female sperm whales, managing to separate one from the pack and kill it. Other pods also hunted and ate an elephant seal, a pygmy sperm whale, a Risso’s dolphin, and a leatherback sea turtle.

With detailed records from each such encounter, the researchers plotted geo-referenced locations, determined water depth, and compared photos in databases to determine that the 49 whales sighted could potentially be a new ecotype.

It’s possible that this new population formed as prey drew them farther from shore.

A whale splashes as it comes down from a jump in water.

“Mammal-eating killer whales are doing well, and their numbers are increasing as seal and other whale populations have rebounded since whaling and sealing became illegal,” says Robert Pitman , a marine ecologist at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, who wasn’t involved in the study.

While prey overall is less abundant in deep-sea waters, killer whales may still find that habitat is more appealing than competing with the larger populations of resident whales closer to shore, he says. (Watch video: sperm whales vs. orcas.)

To this end, McInnes and colleagues hope this study will spark efforts to document the new whale population through genetic sampling, satellite tagging, acoustic tracking, further photo identification, and additional field observation.

Climate change is affecting some populations of killer whales , such as those in Antarctica, which depend on seals that live on the rapidly decreasing ice. On the U.S. West Coast, a decline in salmon has reduced a population off Puget Sound , Washington.

Worldwide, however, the species is thriving, and coming more into contact with people in coastal areas. Orcas ramming and even sinking boats off Spain made headlines in 2023, with some people rooting for the animals as fighting back against human domination .

“Killer whales are probably the most widely distributed vertebrate on the planet. They are everywhere,” Pitman says.

With many tourist cruises available worldwide, he encourages everyone to put seeing a killer whale, whose males can reach lengths of 27 feet, on their bucket list.

“This is the biggest apex predator we have on the planet today. We haven't seen anything like it since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.”

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Cover Media - Raw

RAW VIDEO: Sperm Whales Thwart Killer Whale Attack With Poo-Clear Deterrent

Posted: March 22, 2024 | Last updated: March 22, 2024

Credit: Mark Jackman/MACHI YOSHIDA/Naturaliste Charters/Cover Images A group of sperm whales off Western Australia's southern coast unleashed an unusual defence on an attacking orca pod - a "cloud of diarrhoea". Their poo-clear deterrent thwarted the orcas’ hunt at the Bremer Canyon, a marine life hotspot about 50 kilometres off the coast, on Tuesday (19March2024). Jennah Tucker, a marine biologist with whale watching group Naturaliste Charters, whose boat filmed the incident, said that watchers thought they initially could see blood in the water - but later confirmed the whales had defecated to stop their attackers. “What was originally thought to have been a bubble of blood exploding on the surface, has since been confirmed as faeces. Sperm whales are known to defecate when threatened, referred to as emergency or defensive defection,” she said. “The cloud of diarrhoea created when the whale waves its tail through its poo acts to deter predators and in this case, seemed to work! Given their faeces appear reddish in colour, due to their diet consisting of 90% squid, it’s no surprise it was easily mistaken for blood.” To defend themselves the sperm whales tightly huddled in a circular formation, heads to the centre and fanning their tails out. Then a massive dark bubble rose to the surface. The whales’ disgusting defence mechanism was successful in warding off the attack from the killer whales. Orca attacks on sperm whales are rare even without witnessing the unusual response. “Historically, it was thought that sperm whales, due to their size, herding behaviour and strong toothed jaws were not vulnerable to killer whale predation,” Tucker added. “However, killer whales have since been known to attack sperm whales, often targeting females and calves rather than males, which are typically more aggressive.”

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IMAGES

Terrifying moment 30 KILLER WHALES attack British yacht near Gibraltar
Killer whales learn to sink yachts off Gibraltar
Killer whales (Orcas) damage 36ft sailboat near Gibraltar (06.2021
Why are orcas attacking boats? Gladis the killer whale, out for revenge
Terrifying moment 30 KILLER WHALES attack British yacht near Gibraltar
Terrifying moment 30 KILLER WHALES attack British yacht near Gibraltar

COMMENTS

Why killer whales won't stop ramming boats in Spain
01:17 - Source: CNN. CNN —. When Daniel Kriz saw a pair of killer whales underneath his boat while crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in April, he thought: "Not again.". For Kriz, a veteran ...
Study explains why Orcas are attacking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar
A 2022 study has shed light on the reasons why orcas (killer whales) have been attacking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar, with researchers theorising that the incidents began after a vessel injured a female orca named White Gladis . Since the attacks began in 2020, three boats have been sunk and more than 250 damaged by a group of orcas, with ...
A pod of orcas sinks a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar : NPR
A pod of orcas has sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar. 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 ...
Orcas sink another boat in Strait of Gibraltar off Morocco
On Oct. 31, a pod of killer whales swarmed a Polish yacht sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar. For 45 minutes, the orcas hit the vessel's rudder and damaged the boat, according to the company ...
Why Has a Group of Orcas Suddenly Started Attacking Boats?
A trio of orcas attacked a boat in the Strait of Gibraltar earlier this month, damaging it so badly that it sank soon afterward. The May 4 incident was the third time killer whales (Orcinus orca ...
Orcas Sink Fourth Boat Off Iberia, Unnerving Sailors
Orcas caused enough damage to sink a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar last week. A small pod has been slamming boats in recent years, worrying skippers charting routes closer to shore. An orca ...
The orca uprising: whales are ramming boats
There are no reported instances of wild orcas killing people, but, says Mustill: "If killer whales wanted to start attacking people, disabling small vessels is a very strange way of going about ...
Killer whales are 'attacking' sailboats near Europe's coast. Scientists
Scientists don't know why. An orca pod seen in the Strait of Gibraltar in 2021. Ester Kristine Storkson was asleep on her father's small yacht earlier this month, sailing off the coast of France ...
Killer whales learn to sink yachts off Gibraltar
A vengeful killer whale called Gladis is teaching gangs of orcas to attack yachts around Gibraltar, and has already struck three boats - sinking two of them. It may read like something out of Moby ...
Killer whales 'tear bits off boat' in 'scary' hour-long attack off
The sea mammals, which can grow up to eight metres long, broke the rudder and pieced the hull of the yacht Mustique as it sailed for Gibraltar. Friday 26 May 2023 17:56, UK
Killer whales sink yacht after 45-minute attack, Polish tour company
A group of orcas managed to sink a yacht off the coast of Morocco last week, after its 45-minute attack on the vessel caused irreparable damage, a Polish tour company said. The incident happened ...
Orca attack map: killer whales have rammed boats in these locations
In the Strait of Gibraltar, one individual orca has been named by scientists as the main culprit for the attacks. White Gladis and her pod have been ramming boats in the area for the past few ...
Orcas threw a yacht around 'like a rag doll' and ripped off both
Jun 6, 2023, 3:55 AM PDT. A pod or orcas, or killer whales, with a baby orca among them. Getty Images. A pod of orcas attacked a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar, ripping off both of its rudders ...
Orcas sink another yacht in relentless 45-minute attack
Killer whales have sunk yet another boat in southwestern Europe, marking the fourth such incident in the region in the last two years. The latest attack saw a pod of orcas target a yacht in the ...
Gladis the killer whale and her gang of orcas out for revenge
A British sailor's boat was the latest victim in a spate of orca attacks on vessels near Gibraltar, as an expert suggested a "traumatised" killer whale may be inadvertently teaching others ...
Killer whales sink another boat near Gibraltar in relentless 45-minute
Killer whales have sunk yet another boat in southwestern Europe, marking the fourth such incident in the region in the last two years.. The latest attack saw a pod of orcas target a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar for about 45 minutes, Polish cruise company Morskie Mile said in a Facebook post on 31 October.. The boat's operator said the relentless attack focused on the yacht's steering ...
Orcas sink another yacht near Gibraltar in relentless 45-minute attack
Killer whales have sunk yet another boat in southwestern Europe, marking the fourth such incident in the region in the last two years.. The latest attack saw a pod of orcas target a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar for about 45 minutes, Polish cruise company Morskie Mile said in a Facebook post on 31 October.. The boat's operator said the relentless attack focused on the yacht's steering ...
Why are orcas attacking boats and sometimes sinking them?
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 ...
Why are killer whales attacking boats? Expert Q&A
Orcas living off Europe's Iberian coast recently struck and sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar. Scientists suspect that this is the third vessel this subpopulation of killer whales has ...
Killer whales attack yacht off the coast of Morocco
A vengeful killer whale called Gladis is leading gangs of orcas into battle with yachts around Gibraltar and has already sunk three boats in Europe.It may re...
Killer whale 'attacks' on boats might be driven by past trauma : NPR
Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast.
Why are killer whales suddenly going 'Moby-Dick' on yachts?
Why are killer whales going 'Moby-Dick' on yachts lately? Experts doubt it's revenge. An unusually large group of killer whales was spotted off the coast of San Francisco on May 7. The ...
Rogue orcas are thriving on the high seas—and they're eating big whales
A fourth type of Pacific killer whale may live miles offshore from California and Oregon, preying on whales, other dolphins, and sea turtles. There may be a fourth type of Pacific killer whale ...
Incredible footage shows pod of killer whales circle blue shark ...
One British couple were subjected to a terrifying 90-minute onslaught by six of the creatures aboard their cruiser yacht off Gibraltar in May ... Killer whales can reach up to 32 feet and weigh ...
Solitary killer whale devours shark in two minutes to defy group ...
Orcas, also known as killer whales, are renowned for working in groups. Together they attack sea lions, seals and in recent times even sailboats and private yachts. However, teamwork is not for ...
RAW VIDEO: Sperm Whales Thwart Killer Whale Attack With Poo-Clear ...
The whales' disgusting defence mechanism was successful in warding off the attack from the killer whales. Orca attacks on sperm whales are rare even without witnessing the unusual response.