Possible reasons for orcas ‘attacks’ on boats – 7/8/2023 – Environment

In the summer of 2022, Andrea Fantini and his crewmates were sailing towards Tangier, on the Moroccan coast, at the start of a global regatta, the Globe40 race, when one of them suddenly shouted: “Orca! Orca!”

Fantini saw a tail in the distance and then a huge orca run straight at them. “We saw the first orca arrive, then the second, then the third and then we were surrounded by orcas,” he recalls.

“There were seven orcas around us and they started attacking the helm. It was super weird and a little scary.”

Orcas are commonly known as killer whales, but they are actually part of the dolphin family and have never been known to be aggressive towards humans.

Since 2020, however, the strange new behavior of a group of them that live in the waters around the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe, has alarmed sailors, scientists and now a global audience.

Cetaceans seem to have invented a risky new game: chasing sailboats and pushing the rudders, breaking them in the process.

Last week, it was widely reported that an orca had crashed into a boat in the North Sea. A few days earlier, an orca “attacked” racing boats near the Straits of Gibraltar.

Scientists prefer to call these confrontations “interactions,” as the orcas’ intent can be playful rather than hostile (more on that later).

It’s an unprecedented phenomenon, says Alfredo López Fernández, an orca researcher with the Working Group on Atlantic Orcas (GTOA), which monitors Iberian killer whales.

Historically, there have been some reports of orcas diving under boats, or hitting them and causing them to sink.

But López says these cases tend to be isolated and tied to a specific situation: “None of them are similar to what’s happening now.”

Orcas now touch, push and even spin boats, according to an analysis of interactions reported in 2020.

López cautions that our own perception of this can be biased.

A collision, when orcas move the boat or rudder with their head and body, may actually just be something to do with “they can’t hold things with their fingers”.

A new ongoing research project by orca expert Renaud de Stephanis, which involves presenting the wild animals with dummy rudders and filming them, has revealed new insights into these encounters. What seems to be happening is that, instead of biting down on the rudders, orcas push them with their snouts until they break.

“They’re pushing, pushing, pushing – and boom! It’s a game. Imagine a child of six or seven, but weighing three tonnes. That’s it, nothing less, nothing more,” Stephanis told the BBC.

“If they wanted to destroy the boat, they would break it in 10 minutes.”

Stephanis has studied Iberian killer whales since the 1990s and is coordinator and president of Cetacean Conservation, Information and Research (Circe), a marine conservation organization.

Gambling seems to be spreading. In 2022, there were 207 interactions, data from the working group showed, compared to 197 in 2021 and 52 in 2020.

Originally, they mainly took place in and around the Strait of Gibraltar, along the coasts of Portugal, Spain and Gibraltar, but the field has widened to include the coasts of Morocco and France.

“The interactions follow the migratory routes of orcas,” says López.

Only about 35 Iberian killer whales have been identified, and the total population is estimated to be less than 50. Of those, 15 are known to be involved in boat encounters — and it’s always the same group, says López.

According to the Cruising Association, three yachts were sunk in 2022 and 2023 after interactions with orcas. As Fantini says, completely breaking the rudder can open a hole where the water enters.

And even those individuals sailing in sturdy racing boats, with supportive rudders and rescue services nearby, can find the experience daunting.

“20 minutes ago we were hit by some orcas,” said Jelmer van Beek, captain of the Dutch sailing team JAJO, in a video filmed this summer in the Atlantic Ocean west of Gibraltar during a leg of The Ocean Race.

“Three orcas came right up to us and started hitting the rudder. Impressive to see the orcas, first of all beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us and the team.”

At Fantini’s encounter during last year’s Globe40 race, the team’s underwater camera captured the orcas swimming towards the helm.

“Looks like they really have a modus operandi, a project and know what to do. They were very well organized,” he says.

As part of a project supported by Circe and the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, Renaud de Stephanis has been intensively monitoring this pod of orcas. He and his team used multiple cameras — underwater, above water and even attached to orcas — to understand exactly what’s going on between them and the dummy rudders.

“They push the rudder with their nose, and that causes the rudder to break by leverage,” he says. Detailed results have yet to be released, but he hopes to share them publicly soon.

What started this game? And what can be done to stop this?

In the fourth summer since the phenomenon began, the mystery still hasn’t been fully solved — but scientists are starting to come up with results. Here’s what we know so far.

Even before 2020, orca communities in and around the Strait of Gibraltar have developed a feeding strategy that involves swimming out to tuna fishing boats to catch fish caught off lines.

In 2020, nine orcas began to approach sailboats, pushing or hitting them and sometimes breaking the rudder. There were three “leaders” who were most involved in these interactions: an adult orca named White Gladis and two juveniles, Black Gladis and Gray Gladis.

The scientists chose a name for all the interacting killer whales: “Gladis”, based on one of the species’ ancient names, “gladiator killer whale”.

Over the years, more orcas have joined them.

According to López, the animals have always focused on sailboats, rather than advancing on all types of boats.

López warns that it’s not right to describe their behavior as attacks: “They are socially judged before we even understand what they are doing.”

In his opinion, the intent of the orcas is not hostile. “They are not showing an aggressive attitude in all this, even if they might break something,” he told the BBC via email.

“We know that it is a complex behavior, that it has nothing to do with aggression (they don’t want to eat anyone or harm humans), nor do they want revenge (orcas don’t resent it)”, detailed the expert.

Once the rudder is broken, the orcas swim away — as happened in the case of Fantini, whose boat had two rudders: “Fortunately, they only broke one. And then they left. They disappeared,” he recalls.

This leads to the trickier question: what exactly is the motivation of animals?

The working group raised two hypotheses, according to López.

One might be called the “fun or fashion hypothesis.” As López puts it, it’s the idea that orcas “invented something new and are repeating it.”

This behavior would be more typical of young orcas, he says.

In a 2021 report, the working group notes that young killer whales have occasionally been observed approaching ships, looking around, following contrails and jumping into the waves they cause.

The other might be called the “trauma hypothesis.” According to this explanation, “one or more individuals have had a bad experience and try to stop the boat to prevent it from happening again”, he says.

In López’s opinion, this second hypothesis would be more in line with the behavior of an adult orca.

“We don’t know which one is correct, and even if it’s the second one, we don’t know what the triggering event was,” he says. However, the expert raises some points that support the second explanation related to trauma.

First, White Gladis, an adult, was likely the one who initiated the interactions. At the time, in 2020, she was the only adult doing this, among a pod of young orcas.

Second, in 2021 she continued interactions even with a newborn daughter with her, which in López’s view suggests “a desire to interact even stronger than her protective maternal instinct”.

About what this traumatic experience may have been, he points out that many fishing boats put the lines on the stern of the boat, which attracts killer whales, who come to inspect the lines and catch some fish.

Cases of orcas that got entangled and injured with these lines have been recorded. It’s possible something like this happened to White Gladis, he believes.

Meanwhile, Black Gladis had injuries that may have been caused by humans, and “we know that Gray Gladis witnessed a friend get tangled in fishing lines in 2018,” López adds.

“All this makes us think that human activities are at the origin of these behaviors, even if indirectly”, points out the researcher.

What we can learn from the new habit is “that they are very smart and that we are bothering them too much”.

Lori Marino, neuroscientist, cetacean expert and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, believes the “fun” theory makes more sense.

“These are highly intelligent and curious animals, and they seem to be attracted to the bottoms of boats. Killer whales are cultural beings and often start a fad that spreads through the group.”

Such traditions include distinct types of calling, which have been described as dialects, as well as different feeding strategies.

These different behaviors “all start out as fads,” says Marino.

“The fashion, if it continues, can become part of their culture and pass from generation to generation”, says the specialist.

Orcas’ ability to work in groups helps develop complex fashions and traditions. “They can, for example, coordinate behaviors to remove a seal from an ice block or develop different patterns of defensive swimming if they are pursued by a predator… Therefore, the capacity exists”, details Marino.

“Orcas show impressive levels of organization in many other activities,” she adds.

Sailors and orca experts agree that it would be best to stop this risky fad. But how to do it?

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a surefire way to prevent or even shorten interactions.

The Atlantic Killer Whale Working Group recommends that boaters avoid killer whales by regularly checking updated maps of their movements.

Renaud de Stephanis’s main recommendation is also to avoid areas where orcas hang out, with the help of updated maps based on satellite tracking of these animals — this is starting to help reduce interactions, he says.

Sailors also tried to scare them by hitting objects when they saw the cetaceans approaching. However, that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

Trying to escape the orcas is futile. According to the working group’s 2021 report, orcas typically swim at speeds between 8 and 11 knots, but can reach speeds of up to 29 knots.

To get an idea, the boat sailed by the Dutch JAJO team was at 12 knots when the orcas attacked, and according to the crew, the animals seemed to find the speed “exhilarating”.

There is no evidence that other tricks used by some sailors, such as throwing sand at orcas to confuse them, work — and throwing things at them is not a good idea, as Iberian orcas are endangered.

Leaving the area quickly helps, according to Stephanis. This works not because it’s possible to overtake an orca, but because they’re less likely to follow the boat when it’s out of their favored area.

In Fantini’s case, the orcas stayed close for about 30 or 40 minutes. “It felt like forever,” he confesses.

The team waited until the orcas broke the rudder and left. They knew better than to try to escape.

“They were very fast. Even if you try to go as fast as you can with the boat, they will always be faster. That really wasn’t the solution.”

“Now, if I have to go there again, I don’t know what to do,” laughs Fantini.

“But I will certainly take an extra rudder.”

This text was published here; read the original version (in English) on the BBC Future website.