A pod of killer whales repeatedly collided with a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar this week, damaging it enough to require Spanish rescuers to help its four crew.
It was the latest episode in a baffling trend in the behavior of the killer whales that populate the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula that has researchers searching for a cause.
Spain’s maritime rescue service said killer whales repeatedly slammed into the Mustique, a 65-foot vessel sailing under the British flag, late on Wednesday, rendering its rudder inoperable and cracking its hull. Spanish rescue teams needed to pump out seawater before towing it to safety.
KILLER WHALES DAMAGE BOAT IN LAST ATTACK IN SPAIN
The alert reached the Spanish service via its British colleagues, who relayed the distress call, the Spanish service said. A helicopter and a rescue boat were mobilized to help the damaged boat dock at Barbate.
This was the 24th occurrence recorded by the service this year. The service did not provide data for the past year.
But the Atlantic Orca Working Group, a team of Spanish and Portuguese marine life researchers studying orcas near the Iberian Peninsula, says these incidents were first reported three years ago. In 2020, the group recorded 52 such events, some of which resulted in damaged rudders. This increased to 197 in 2021 and to 207 in 2022.
An orca swims at the Marineland animal exhibition park in the town of Antibes on the French Riviera in southeastern France on December 12, 2013. (VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images)
The killer whales appear to be targeting boats in a wide arc that covers the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula, from waters near the Strait of Gibraltar to northwest Galicia, Spain.
According to the group, these orcas are a small group of about 35 whales that spend most of the year near the Iberian coast hunting bluefin tuna. So-called Iberian orcas average between 1.5 to 16 to 21 feet in length, compared to Antarctic orcas, which can reach 29 and a half feet.
There were no reports of attacks against swimmers. Interactions on boats seem to stop once the vessel is immobilized.
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Biologist Alfredo López, from the University of Aveiro and a member of the research group, said the incidents are rare — and seductively strange.
“In none of the cases that we were able to see on video did we witness any behavior that could be considered aggressive,” López told The Associated Press by phone on Friday. “They seem calm, nothing like when they’re hunting.”
López said that while the cause of the behavioral change is unknown, his group has identified 15 individual whales that are involved in the incidents. He said 13 are young whales, which might support the hypothesis that they are playing, while two are adults, which might support a competing theory that the behavior is the result of some traumatic event with a boat.
In both cases, he said the whales are once again showing that they are social animals.
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“Orcs are animals with their own culture,” he said. “They transmit information to each other.”
