Historically, there have been some reports of orcas diving under boats, or slamming into them and causing them to sink. It's an unprecedented phenomenon, says Alfredo López Fernández, an orca researcher at the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), which is monitoring the Iberian orcas.
Scientists prefer to call these clashes "interactions", since the orcas' intention may be playful rather than hostile (more on this later). A few days ago an orca pod "attacked" racing boats near the Strait of Gibraltar. Last week, it was widely reported that an orca had rammed a boat in the North Sea. The cetaceans appear to have invented a risky new game: It involves chasing sailboats and pushing the rudders, breaking them in the process. Since 2020, however, the strange new behaviour of a group of them living in the waters around the Iberian Peninsula, in south-western Europe, has been baffling sailors, scientists and now a global audience. Orcas are commonly known as killer whales but are actually part of the dolphin family, and have never been known to be aggressive towards humans in the wild. "There were seven orcas all around us, and they started to attack the rudder. "We saw the first orca coming, then the second, then the third, and then we were surrounded by orcas," he recalls. In the summer of 2022, Andrea Fantini and his crew mates 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!"įantini saw a tail in the distance, and then a huge orca rushing straight towards them.
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