orca flipping yachts

Orcas have sunk 3 boats in Europe and appear to be teaching others to do the same. But why?

Scientists think a traumatized orca initiated the assault on boats after a "critical moment of agony" and that the behavior is spreading among the population through social learning.

Orcas have attacked and sunk a third boat off the Iberian coast of Europe, and experts now believe the behavior is being copied by the rest of the population.

Three orcas ( Orcinus orca ), also known as killer whales, struck the yacht on the night of May 4 in the Strait of Gibraltar, off the coast of Spain, and pierced the rudder. "There were two smaller and one larger orca," skipper Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht . "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." 

Schaufelberger said he saw the smaller orcas imitate the larger one. "The two little orcas observed the bigger one's technique and, with a slight run-up, they too slammed into the boat." Spanish coast guards rescued the crew and towed the boat to Barbate, but it sank at the port entrance.

Two days earlier, a pod of six orcas assailed another sailboat navigating the strait. Greg Blackburn, who was aboard the vessel, looked on as a mother orca appeared to teach her calf how to charge into the rudder. "It was definitely some form of education, teaching going on," Blackburn told 9news .

Reports of aggressive encounters with orcas off the Iberian coast began in May 2020 and are becoming more frequent, according to a study published June 2022 in the journal Marine Mammal Science . Assaults seem to be mainly directed at sailing boats and follow a clear pattern, with orcas approaching from the stern to strike the rudder, then losing interest once they have successfully stopped the boat.

"The reports of interactions have been continuous since 2020 in places where orcas are found, either in Galicia or in the Strait," said co-author Alfredo López Fernandez , a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and representative of the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica, or Atlantic Orca Working Group.

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Most encounters have been harmless, López Fernandez told Live Science in an email. "In more than 500 interaction events recorded since 2020 there are three sunken ships. We estimate that killer whales only touch one ship out of every hundred that sail through a location."

The spike in aggression towards boats is a recent phenomenon, López Fernandez said. Researchers think that a traumatic event may have triggered a change in the behavior of one orca, which the rest of the population has learned to imitate.

"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 said. 

Experts suspect that a female orca they call White Gladis suffered a "critical moment of agony" — a collision with a boat or entrapment during illegal fishing — that flipped a behavioral switch. "That traumatized orca is the one that started this behavior of physical contact with the boat," López Fernandez said.

Orcas are social creatures that can easily learn and reproduce behaviors performed by others, according to the 2022 study. In the majority of reported cases , orcas have made a beeline for a boat's rudder and either bitten, bent or broken it.

"We do not interpret that the orcas are teaching the young, although the behavior 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.

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Orcas appear to perceive the behavior as advantageous, despite the risk they run by slamming into moving boat structures, López Fernandez added. Since the abnormal interactions began in 2020, four orcas belonging to a subpopulation living in Iberian waters have died, although their deaths cannot be directly linked to encounters with boats.

The unusual behavior could also be playful or what researchers call a "fad" — a behavior initiated by one or two individuals and temporarily picked up by others before it’s abandoned. "They are incredibly curious and playful animals and so this might be more of a play thing as opposed to an aggressive thing," Deborah Giles , an orca researcher at the University of Washington and at the non-profit Wild Orca, told Live Science.

As the number of incidents grows, there is increased concern both for sailors and for the Iberian orca subpopulation, which is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN Red List . The last census, in 2011, recorded just 39 Iberian orcas, according to the 2022 study. "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. 

Sascha is a U.K.-based trainee staff writer at Live Science. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Southampton in England and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and the health website Zoe. Besides writing, she enjoys playing tennis, bread-making and browsing second-hand shops for hidden gems.

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Orcas sank three boats off the coast of Portugal, but don't call them 'killer' just yet

Three recent incidents of orcas seemingly attacking and sinking boats off the southwestern tip of Europe are drawing intense scrutiny over whether the animals deliberately swarmed the vessels and if they are learning the aggressive behavior from one another.

Encounters between orcas, or killer whales, and boats have been increasing since 2020, though no human injuries or deaths have been reported. In most cases, the whales have not sunk the boats.

The string of incidents since 2020 prompted one scientist in Portugal to say the attacks may indicate that the whales are intending to cause damage to sailing vessels. Others, however, are more skeptical, saying that while the behavior may be coordinated, it’s not necessarily coordinated aggression.

“I think it gets taken as aggression because it’s causing damage, but I don’t think we can say that the motivation is aggressive necessarily,” said Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington state.

At least 15 interactions between orcas and boats off the Iberian coast were reported in 2020, according to a study published last June in the journal Marine Mammal Science .

In November 2020, Portugal’s National Maritime Authority issued a statement alerting sailors about “curious behavior” among juvenile killer whales. The statement said the whales may be attracted to rudders and propellers and may try to approach boats.

The subsequent sinkings have caused more alarm.

The most recent encounter occurred on May 4 off the coast of Spain. Three orcas struck the rudder and side of a sailing yacht, causing it to eventually sink, as was reported earlier this month in a German publication called Yacht .

One theory put forward by Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, suggested that the aggression started from a female orca that was perhaps struck by a boat — a traumatic experience that caused her to start ramming sailing vessels. López Fernandez, who co-authored the June 2022 study published in Marine Mammal Science, told Live Science that other orcas may have then picked up that behavior through social learning, which whales have been known to exhibit.

But Shields said orcas have not historically been known to be aggressive toward humans, even when they were being hunted and placed in captivity.

“They’ve certainly had reason to engage in that kind of behavior,” she said. “There are places where they are shot at by fishermen, they’ve watched family members be taken from their groups into captivity in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And if something was going to motivate direct aggression, I would think something like that would have done it.”

Shields added that there are no clear instances of killer whales exhibiting what could be thought of as revenge behavior against humans.

She said the recent attacks on boats are likely more consistent with what’s known as “fad” behavior, which describes novel but temporary conduct from one whale that can be mimicked by others.

“It’s kind of a new behavior or game that one whale seems to come up with, and it seems to spread throughout the population — sometimes for a matter of weeks or months, or in some cases years — but then in a lot of cases it just goes away,” she said.

In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, Shields and her colleagues have observed fad behavior among Southern Resident killer whales who started carrying dead salmon around on their heads for a time before the behavior suddenly stopped.

Shields said the behavior of orcas off the Iberian coast may also be temporary.

“This feels like the same type of thing, where one whale played with a rudder and said: ‘Hey, this is a fun game. Do you want to try it?’ And it’s the current fad for that population of orcas,” she said.

While Shields did not dismiss the trauma response theory out of hand, she said it would be difficult to confirm without more direct evidence.

“We know their brains are wired to have really complex emotions, and so I think they could be capable of something like anger or revenge,” she said. “But again, it’s just not something that we’ve seen any examples of, and we’ve given them plenty of opportunities throughout the world to want to take revenge on us for various things. And they just choose not to.”

Denise Chow is a science and space reporter for NBC News.

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, 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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Orcas have sunk another vessel off the European coast. Why won't they stop ramming boats?

By Audrey Courty

Topic: Whales

A group of three orcas repeatedly hit the rudder of a race boat in June 2023. ( Supplied: The Ocean Race )

The orcas are at it again: for the seventh time in four years, a pod of whales has sunk a boat after ramming it in Moroccan waters off the Strait of Gibraltar. 

The 15 metre-long yacht Alborán Cognac, which carried two people, encountered the highly social apex predators at 9am local time on Sunday, Spain's maritime rescue service said.

The passengers reported feeling sudden blows to the hull and rudder before water started to seep into the sailboat. It is not known how many orcas were involved.

After alerting rescue services, a nearby oil tanker took them onboard and carried them to Gibraltar, a British overseas territory on Spain's southern coast.

Nothing could be done to save the sailboat, which drifted and eventually sank. 

It's the latest incident in what has become a trend of hundreds of interactions between orcas and boats since the "disruptive behaviour" was first reported in the region in May 2020. 

The origin of this new behaviour has baffled scientists, though the leading theory suggests this "social fad" began as a playful manifestation of the whales' curiosity.

Where have orcas interacted with boats?

The latest data from the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), an organisation that contributes to the animals' conservation and management, shows that there have been at least 673 interactions since 2020. 

GTOA defines interactions as instances when orcas react to the presence of approaching boats with or without physical contact. 

The map below shows the highest numbers of encounters from April to May 2024 took place off Spain's southern coast in the Strait of Gibraltar (red zones), with some lesser activity in surrounding areas (yellow zones). 

The majority of reported encounters with orcas in April and May 2024 took place around the Strait of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco. ( Supplied: GTOA )

A 2022 peer-reviewed study published in the Marine Mammal Science journal found the orcas in these areas preferred interacting with sailboats — both monohulls (72 per cent) and catamarans (14 per cent) — with an average length of 12 metres.

A clear pattern emerged of orcas striking their rudders, while sometimes also scraping the hulls with their teeth. Such attacks often snapped the rudder, leaving the boat unable to navigate.

"The animals bumped, pushed and turned the boats," the authors of the report said. 

Adding this week's encounter, there have been seven reported cases of orcas damaging a boat so badly that it has sunk, though the people onboard were rescued safely each time.

In June 2023, a run-in with the giant mammals in the Strait of Gibraltar forced the crew competing in The Ocean Race to drop its sails and raise a clatter in an attempt to scare the approaching orcas off. 

No-one was injured, but Team JAJO skipper Jelmer van Beek said that it had been a "scary moment".

"Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders," he said.

"Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team ... Luckily, after a few attacks, they went away."

After analysing 179 videos and photos of these types of interactions, which lasted on average 40 minutes, researchers concluded there was no reason to classify the events as intentionally hostile behaviour.

"The behaviour of orcas when interacting with boats is not identified as aggressive," they said.

"One of their main motivations has been identified as competition with boats for speed."

Still, the researchers of the study admitted they were not sure what triggered the novel behaviour in 2020.

"We are not yet certain what the origin of these interactions is, but it is still suspected that it could be a curious and playful behaviour," they wrote.

"[The behaviour] could be self-induced, or on the other hand it could be a behaviour induced by an aversive incident and therefore a precautionary behaviour."

Are the same orcas responsible for these incidents?

Out of around 49 orcas living in the Strait of Gibraltar, GTOA researchers found a total of 15 whales  from at least three different communities participated in the unusual interactions with boats between 2020 and 2022.

Most of those that engaged with greater intensity were juveniles, though it's unclear if others have since joined the group.

These giant mammals, which belong to the dolphin family, can measure up to eight metres and weigh up to six tonnes as adults.

The director of the Orca Behaviour Institute, Monika Wieland Shields, has said there is no evidence to prove the theory these whales were seeking vengeance against humans for a past trauma.

"While I'm sure it feels like an attack for the people on board, for the whales themselves, it really looks more like play behaviour," she said.

"There's something intriguing or entertaining to them about this [boat rudder] mechanism and they're just showing a lot of curiosity about it."

Ms Wieland said it's likely this new behaviour spread through the population as a kind of "social fad".

"Orcas are highly intelligent, very social animals, and with that comes a tendency to be curious about and explore your environment," she said.

"One thing that we see are these kind of fad behaviours that will appear in a certain population.

"One whale discovers something, they find it entertaining or interesting, or fun — it's some type of game. And then they will teach that to other members of their family group."

Are orcas dangerous to humans?

While orcas have earned their fearsome reputation for preying on other marine animals, there is no record of them killing humans in the wild. 

In captivity, orcas have killed four people since the 1990s, though it's unclear whether the deaths were accidental or deliberate attempts to cause harm.  

Ms Shields said she was worried the recent interactions between orcas and boats would skew people's perceptions of these mammals.

"I am concerned that people are going to react with fear, potentially injure or shoot at some of these whales," Ms Shields said.

"We really need to educate boaters about the best things that they can do to make themselves less attractive to the whales and the best case scenario would be the whales lose interest in this and move onto something less destructive."

Spain's Transport Ministry advises that whenever boats observe any changes in the behaviour of orcas — such as in their direction or speed — they should leave the area as soon as possible and avoid further disturbance to the animals.

The ministry also states every interaction between a ship and an orca must be reported to authorities.

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Orcas Sank 3 Boats in Southern Europe in the Last Year, Scientists Say

A small group of orcas is ramming into sailboats in waters off the Iberian Peninsula. Researchers say they do not know what is driving the unusual behavior toward boats.

By Isabella Kwai

Hours into a journey to Portugal from Morocco, the crew of a 46-foot sailing cruiser noticed something was wrong with the rudder. Then, someone shouted what they saw slicing through the choppy waves: “Orcas! Orcas!”

The orcas kept pace with the boat, slamming into its side and chewing at the rudder, according to its skipper, a photographer onboard and video of the encounter. For about an hour, the crew signaled their predicament to the Spanish Coast Guard and tried to stay calm.

“There was nothing we could do,” said Stephen Bidwell, the photographer, who was two days into a weeklong sailing course with his partner when the ramming began. “You’re in awe at the same time as you are nervous.”

The skipper, Gregory Blackburn, said he wrestled for control of the boat as the orcas banged into it, interfering with the rudder. “It’s a reminder of where we are in the food chain and the natural world,” he said.

Eventually the boat managed to motor back to Tangier, Morocco. But marine scientists took note of the episode, on May 2, and said it continued a puzzling pattern of behavior by a small group of orcas off the Iberian Peninsula’s western coast. The orcas, according to the researchers, have caused three boats to sink since last summer and disrupted the trips of dozens of others.

Wild orcas, although apex predators that hunt sharks and whales , are not generally considered dangerous to humans . The animals, the largest of the dolphin family , have been known to touch, bump and follow boats, but ramming them is unusual, marine scientists say. A small group of orcas, numbering about 15, started to batter boats around Spain in 2020, with researchers calling the behavior uncommon and its motivations unclear.

“We know that it is a complex behavior that has nothing to do with aggression,” said Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal who worked on a study published last June on the subject. The orcas show no sign of wanting to hurt humans, he said.

In most sightings, the orcas do not change their behavior or make physical contact, according to the Atlantic Orca Working Group , which began tracking direct interactions — as well as sightings — in 2020.

Since an initial surge that year, orcas have been documented approaching or reacting to vessels about 500 times, causing physical damage about 20 percent of the time, in the high-trafficked seas near Morocco, Portugal and Spain, the group said.

The orcas off the Iberian coast are considered an endangered population : The group arrives in waters near the Strait of Gibraltar every spring from waters deeper and farther north up the coast to hunt tuna. But while they are a usual sight, scientists do not know how to stop the small group’s recent behavior, which has left sailors worried about safety and ship damage, and which has caught the attention of the Spanish and the Portuguese authorities.

“Every week there is an incident,” said Bruno Díaz López, a biologist and the director of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute who was not involved in last year’s research. “We really don’t know the reason.”

In the most recent example, orcas battered a sailboat off the coast of Spain, causing it to sink in the early hours of May 5. The Spanish authorities quickly arrived, and the four people onboard were rescued “in good humor,” said Christoph Winterhalter, the president of the Swiss company that was operating the boat, Hoz Hochseezentrum International.

The University of Aveiro biologist, Dr. López Fernandez, said that it was possible that the three boats sank over the past year because they were vulnerable to leaks or not equipped to endure the damage. (“The condition of the boat was very good,” Mr. Winterhalter said of the one his company had chartered.)

The small group of orcas, including only two adults, were responsible for a majority of the interactions with boats, which number some 200 a year and range from the North African coast to France, according to Dr. López Fernandez.

Researchers do not know what is behind the behavior. Some have speculated that it is an “aversive behavior” that could have started after an incident between an animal and a boat, like an entanglement in fishing line, or an invented behavior from young orcas that is being repeated.

Those remain only theories, though Dr. López Fernandez said it appeared that the behavior might be passing between local animals.

“We know that orcas share their culture with their young and with their peers,” he said, adding that they learned from imitation. But because the behavior has been observed only in this particular subpopulation of orcas, he said that it was unlikely to pass onto distinct orca groups that populate waters around the world.

Given the lack of evidence and the presence of young orcas in the group, other scientists expressed skepticism that the behavior stemmed from a boat incident and believed that the animals may simply be playing.

“They’re getting some sort of reward or thrill from it,” said Erich Hoyt, an orca expert and research fellow with Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a wildlife charity. “Play is part of being a predator.”

Scientists say that aside from having sailors avoid the area, they do not know how to stop orcas from bothering sailboats, which tend to be quieter than most vessels and therefore more attractive to the animals.

It has also left conservationists worried about how humans will treat the orca population, especially as sailors in the region express growing frustration with the animals.

“I hope that they stop doing it as quickly as they started, because it’s actually imposing a risk on themselves,” said Hanne Strager, a marine biologist and the author of “ The Killer Whale Journals ,” adding that it was putting pressure on an already vulnerable species.

Mr. Bidwell, the photographer, said the episode would not stop him and his partner from booking another sailing trip in June, though perhaps with some changes. “Maybe we don’t go that same route,” he said.

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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Daily briefing: Why orcas are attacking boats in Spain

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Why orcas are attacking boats in Spain

Orcas ( Orcinus orca ) have sunk three boats off the Iberian coast of Europe , and the behaviour seems to be spreading. Biologists first noted the trend in 2020. They suspect that it is a defensive behaviour, which originated with a female orca nicknamed White Gladis after it experienced an unknown trauma. Iberian orcas are critically endangered, and only 39 were recorded in the last census, in 2011.

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Reference: Marine Mammal Science paper

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Orcas are ramming into boats, but experts warn against calling it revenge on humans

Orca behaviour must be separated from human behaviour, researcher says.

Social Sharing

A strange new phenomenon involving sea mammals has captured the public's imagination — and theories that orcas are intentionally targeting humans as an act of revenge have swarmed social media. 

This narrative of an "orca-uprising" stems from our tendency to project human psychology onto intelligent wild animals, according to Justin Gregg, a senior researcher for the Dolphin Communication Project and author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity .

"I think we always want to sort of see their behaviour as human-like, which is why people think of it as revenge, because that's a very human-like thing to do," he told The Current guest host, Susan Ormiston.

"We think of other animals as little people, but they live their own complicated lives, which are fundamentally different."

Pods of orcas began toying with yachts in 2020, ramming them, spinning them, and in some cases terrifying those on board. This behaviour is gaining momentum off the southwest coast of Europe and experts believe it's being passed from orca to orca.

Orcas have snapped the rudders of some boats in half and caused at least three sailing vessels to sink, according to the Atlantic Orca Working Group . Their risky behaviour was reported in the North Sea, near Scotland's Shetland Islands, for the first time at the end of June.

In the last three years, there have been more than 400 reports  published by Atlantic Orca Working Group of orcas reacting to boats off the coasts of Portugal and Spain, and near the Strait of Gibraltar. Of the cases dating back to 2022, 142 were categorized as "orca interactions," where an animal touched a boat, and 283 were considered "uneventful passages." 

But yachts have been around for centuries, so why the sudden pique of interest?

Gregg's theory: "It's probably just a random fluke."

For them, snapping off a killer rudder is not really a big deal. It'd be like us snapping a Pop-Tart in half. - Justin Gregg

Trendy new game or violent attack?

Like any fad, Gregg predicts the orcas will emulate this behaviour for a while, but eventually it will fizzle out. When he first clicked on one of the viral "orca attack" videos, he said he was surprised at how "not violent" the encounter was.

"They're sort of lazily swimming up toward the rudder, and they sort of bump against it and it snaps in half," said Gregg. 

"They're enormous animals. So for them, snapping off a killer rudder is not really a big deal. It'd be like us snapping a Pop-Tart in half."

• Video 'Scary moment' as orcas disrupt ocean boat race in latest display of puzzling behaviour
• Orcas ramming boats near Spain no cause for concern in N.L. waters, says expert

Deborah Giles, the science and research director at conservation group Wild Orca, suspects the orcas are simply having a bit of fun, playing with the yachts like enormous bathtub toys. 

"They're interacting with the keels that stick down into the water," she said.

Giles prefers the term "interacting" over "ramming" because the latter implies aggression, and she says orcas have never been known to be hostile or aggressive towards humans in the wild. 

"[They're] just downright curious," she said, likening these interactions to a cat rubbing up against a person's leg. 

"I've literally seen body-surfing killer whales in the wake of these large ships. They're curious animals and they like interacting with their environment."

Mistaking playfulness for violence

Giles is concerned about the possibility of harmful deterrents being used to stop the orcas from damaging expensive vessels. 

She points to the Portuguese government's efforts to minimize these interactions in harmless ways. 

One of the non-lethal deterrents they're currently testing involves oil pipes. When hung from the sides of boats and banged on, these eight foot steel pipes are meant to make a sound the orcas actively avoid because it reminds them of being deterred from a spill area.

• New baby orca spotted with endangered pod off Vancouver Island
• #teamorca gains First Nations support in North America

Another approach people can use if faced with orca-boat contact, said Giles, is stop the forward motion of the boat by turning off the motor or lowering the sails. This will cause the orcas to lose interest and swim away.

"Hopefully enough time goes by where they're just not getting that positive reinforcement from whatever it is that they're liking with this interaction," said Giles.

Gregg said he fears people might start hating orcas if they don't understand the reality of the situation. 

"Hopefully people realize that they are not dangerous and that this behaviour is most likely just play," he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Magan Carty is an associate producer for CBC Radio in Toronto. They've worked for a variety of network programs including The Current, As It Happens, Spark and IDEAS. Magan possesses a deep love of storytelling and comes from a performance background, with over 10 years of experience across Canada as an actor. You can reach them at [email protected]

Produced by Magan Carty, Niza Lyapa Nondo and Willow Smith

Watch CBS News

Boat captain twice ambushed by pod of orcas says "they knew exactly what they are doing"

By Li Cohen

June 12, 2023 / 8:07 AM EDT / CBS News

Orcas are making headlines as incidents of killer whales ambushing boats seem to be becoming more prevalent. For one boat captain, it's even happened twice – with the second time seemingly more targeted. 

Dan Kriz told Newsweek that the first time his boat was confronted by a pod of killer whales was in 2020, when he and his crew were delivering a yacht through the Strait of Gibraltar, which runs between Spain and Morocco. While anecdotes of orca ambushes have only recently started rising in popularity, he says he was on one of the first boats that experienced the "very unusual" behavior.

"I was surrounded with a pack of eight orcas, pushing the boat around for about an hour," Kriz said, adding that the ship's rudder was so damaged that they had to be towed to the nearest marina. 

Then in April, it happened again near the Canary Islands, he said. At first, Kriz thought they had been hit with a wave, but when they felt a sudden force again, he realized they weren't just feeling the wrath of the water. 

"My first reaction was, 'Please! Not again,'" Kraz told Newsweek. "There is not much one can do. They are very powerful and smart." 

Video of the encounter shows orcas "biting off both rudders," with one of the whales seen swimming around with a piece of rudder in its mouth, he said. 

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

This time around, the orcas seemed to be more stealthy in their approach – and even seemed to know exactly what to do to prevent the boat from traveling any farther, Kriz said.

"First time, we could hear them communicating under the boat," he told Newsweek. "This time, they were quiet, and it didn't take them that long to destroy both rudders. ... Looks like they knew exactly what they are doing. They didn't touch anything else." 

The attack on the rudders lasted about 15 minutes. But when the crew started to head for Spain's coast, they came back. 

"Suddenly, one big adult orca started chasing us. In a couple of minutes, she was under the boat, and that was when we realized there was still a little piece of fiberglass left and she wanted to finish the job," Kriz said. "After that, we didn't see them anymore."

Kriz is just one of several people to experience encounters with orcas off the coasts of Portugal and Spain in recent months. In the past two years, orca research group GTOA found that incidents have more than tripled, with 52 interactions in 2020 and 207 in 2022. 

Biologist and wildlife conservationist Jeff Corwin previously told CBS News the behavior "highlights the incredible intelligence " of the whales. 

"What we're seeing is adapted behavior. We're learning about how they actually learn from their environment and then take those skill sets and share them and teach them to other whales," he said. 

He said there are two main theories about why this is happening: One, that it's a type of "play" or "sport" for the whales, or two, that it's the result of a "negative experience, a traumatic event" after years of boats hitting and injuring whales. 

But the truth behind  why killer whales have been ramming into boats remains a mystery.

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

Killer whales are the only species of whale that seem to be attacking boats in this region, and while the reason why is unclear, Trites said something is positively reinforcing the behavior among them.

Caitlin O'Kane contributed to this report.

• Environment
• Boat Accident

Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news.

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Why orcas keep sinking boats

Scientists have some theories why killer whales have seriously damaged boats about a dozen times this year off the coast of Spain and Portugal

In the early morning Thursday, killer whales smashed into a sailboat off the southern coast of Spain, puncturing its hull and damaging its rudder. Spanish authorities raced to save the sinking vessel, according to Reuters , but it was in such disrepair it had to be towed ashore.

It wasn’t the first attack by an orca, or killer whale, off the coast of Spain and Portugal this year. And it may not be the last time one chews a rudder or crashes into a hull. Normally, killer whales aren’t considered dangerous to humans. But pods of killer whales have done serious damage to boats in the region about a dozen times already this year, according to the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica, or GTOA, a research group studying the region’s killer whales, part of a rise in attacks first observed in 2020.

Stories and videos of the attacks widely shared on social media have turned the orca into a meme. After the marine mammals struck some fancy yachts, some observers are calling the strikes concentrated around the Strait of Gibraltar, where the whales congregate in the spring and summer, an act of anti-capitalist solidarity from “orca comrades” and “orca saboteurs.” For others, the series of strikes is eerily similar to a scene in James Cameron’s latest “Avatar” movie , “The Way of the Water.”

So what is happening? The scientists studying the whales themselves aren’t entirely sure, either. But they have two leading ideas:

Theory No. 1: The orcas are playing around

Closely related to bottlenose dolphins, orcas are highly intelligent and curious marine mammals. Using a series of underwater pulses and whistles, the whales communicate with such sophistication that pods form their own dialects and parents teach their young hunting methods that are passed along for generations.

After learning a new behavior, juvenile orcas often keep repeating it ad nauseam. (In that way, they are a lot like human youngsters.) Playing around is just a part of learning how to be an apex predator.

That matches the pattern of attacks whale scientists have witnessed this year, according to Alfredo López Fernandez, a researcher at the University of Aveiro in Portugal working with GTOA.

In this case, the behavior is “self-induced,” López Fernandez said, and not caused directly by some outside (i.e., human) provocation. “Which means that they invent something new and repeat it,” he added.

But there’s another potential motivation that sounds straight out of “Moby Dick.”

Theory No. 2: The orcas want vengeance

Orcas off the Iberian Coast like to follow fishing vessels to snag bluefin tuna before fishermen can reel them in, putting the aquatic mammals at risk of being struck or entangled. Scientists have seen killer whales in those waters with fishing lines hanging from their bodies.

So it is possible, López Fernandez said, an orca had a bad run-in with a boat in the past, and is now teaching other killer whales how to attack vessels as well. The team suspects a female adult named White Gladis may be the one doing so.

López Fernandez emphasized we don’t have enough information to know the real reason behind the attacks yet. Even assuming the second theory is true, “we don’t know what that triggering stimulus could have been,” he said.

With only 39 orcas counted in 2011, the Iberian orca subpopulation is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The impact that entanglements and boat strikes are having on all sorts of whales and dolphins around the world underscores that humans are a bigger threat to them than they are to us.

“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,” López Fernandez said.

Rash of killer whale rammings on boats has some wondering: How do you stop an orca?

Not attacks, just playful teenagers: a multinational group of orca experts provides tips and ideas to prevent curious orcas from ramming vessels.

Since 2020, more than 673, boats, expensive yachts, fishing boats and motorboats have been victims of a group of playful orcas ramming –  and in some cases sinking vessels in the crystalline waters off the coast of Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco.

What originally appeared to be attacks , now seem more likely to be a bunch of bored teenage orcas looking for something to do, said cetacean expert Alexandre Zerbini.

A multinational group of orca experts, sponsored by the governments of Spain and Portugal, met in February and released a report   outlining  the behaviors and what might be done to stop it.

What should be done to avoid orca interactions?

The workshop participants suggest mariners avoid areas where the Iberian killer whales are likely to be hunting their preferred prey – bluefin tuna – from May through August. They should also keep their boats closer to shore in shallow areas and move at least a mile away from any orcas who begin to interact with their boats. If possible, they should head toward shore to make rescue faster, should it be necessary.

Boaters are already following the experts' suggestions in areas where the killer whales are interacting with their vessels and the results are encouraging.

Now that vessels are fleeing immediately, rescues are down 80%, from May 2023 through May 2024, said Renaud de Stephanis. De Stephanis has been studying orca behavior for more than 25 years and is president of CIRCE (Conservación, Información y Estudio sobre Cetáceos), an organization dedicated to preserving marine life.

During that same period, interactions (when an orca touches a vessel) have declined by 70%, he said.

Experts caution that more time will be needed to see if the incidents are indeed declining but are hopeful.

Devices suggested to deter the orcas from interacting with the boats

During the session in February, the group of experts also discussed devices or boat modifications to deter the orcas from interacting with the rudders.

De Stephanis says he's testing a rudder with an altered surface and appearance. The experimental device appears promising, particularly in limiting the number of rudders orcas target.

"The device features .5 inch conical protrusions on the hull and keel of sailboats," de Stephanis said. "The theory is that these protrusions alter the orcas' perception of the rudder, deterring them from attacking it."

The flowing pieces behind the rudder create the appearance of a jellyfish, which orcas detest and they avoid it, de Stephanis added.

While results were promising, testing halted in 2023 because Portuguese officials said they were concerned about potentially harming the orcas.

"This concern is unfounded," said de Stephanis. "Orcas have excellent underwater vision, but to avoid problems, we stopped temporarily." De Stephanis began retesting the device in June in collaboration with the National Fisheries Research Institute in Morocco. "We are now testing the device with two rudders one with the device and one without. We have 15 cameras underwater and what we find is that they approach the boat but that don't approach the rudder with the device," he said.

De Stephanis says he is seeking a patent on the device to keep it free for others to use. "I have a plan to patent it so no one can sell it and anyone can use it for free," he said.

Another possible deterrent called a hukilau, looks like a hanging torpedo-shaped weight in the water. The device has been effective in deterring whales from coming near fishing boats in Polynesia, but the group of orca experts agreed more tests are needed before it could be tried in the areas near the Strait of Gibraltar where many of the incidents have occurred.

Pingers, also known as Acoustic Deterrent Devices, are another potential deterrent for cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), but they don't appear to have a long-lasting impact on orcas.

When scientists tested pingers on orcas, the whales became familiar with the devices in less than five days, rendering them ineffective as deterrents, said de Stephanis.

"The same occurs with dolphins," de Stephanis said. "In our observations, it's evident that when we activate pingers in the water, dolphins still approach the boats. We can clearly see that they continue to come closer in all instances."

While de Stephanis believes rudder modification is the best deterrent, the group's only official recommendation has been to avoid areas where the Iberian killer whales might be and stay in shallow waters.

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A pod of orcas has sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar

Ayana Archie

A pair of orcas swim off the west coast of Vancouver Island in 2018. Brian Gisborne/AP hide caption

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 under attack from below. A pod of orcas had zeroed in on the yacht's rudder as it made its way through the Strait of Gibraltar last week, and rammed it repeatedly, "causing major damage and leakage," according to the company that operated the boat.

Rescuers were able to save the crew and return them safely to port in Tanger-Med on the coast of Morocco. Their vessel, though, sank into the sea.

"This yacht was the most wonderful thing in maritime sailing for all of us," read a statement posted to Facebook by Morskie Mile , the Warsaw-based touring company that operated the boat. "Very good memories will be transferred to Grazie Mamma II. Love of the sea always wins and friendships remain with us."

The company said it is working to ensure its upcoming trips to the Canary Islands go on without a hitch.

Last week's incident was the latest in a string of recent "attacks" by orcas in the waters separating southern Europe and northern Africa — encounters that have left researchers scratching their heads.

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

Since 2020, there have been about 500 encounters between orcas and boats, Alfredo López Fernandez, a coauthor of a 2022 study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, told NPR earlier this year. At least three boats have sunk, though there is no record of an orca killing a human in the wild.

Scientists have been trying to pinpoint the cause of the behavior.

One theory among researchers is they're just playing around. Other researchers say it may be that the whales like the feel of the rudder.

"What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," said Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research in Spain, in an interview with NPR last year. When they encounter a sailboat without its engine on, "they get kind of frustrated and that's why they break the rudder," de Stephanis said.

Another theory is that the behavior may be some sort of act of revenge due to possibly traumatic , previous encounters with fishing boats.

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

"I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge," Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute previously told NPR. Shields said she does not think "we can completely rule it out," even if she was not entirely convinced herself.

Deborah Giles, the science and research director at conservation group Wild Orca, says pods in other areas, such as near Washington state, have been targeted by humans, but haven't shown a pattern of ramming boats.

How wildlife officials saved a humpback whale found 'hogtied' to a 300-pound crab pot

Which underscores why researchers say it's difficult to draw any conclusions from the interactions documented to date. In an open letter published this summer, 30 scientists cautioned against "projecting narratives onto these animals," writing that "In the absence of further evidence, people should not assume they understand the animals' motivations."

Correction Nov. 7, 2023

An earlier version of this story misstated the yacht's name, Grazie Mamma, as Grazie Mamma II.

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After Second Death This Year, Russian Aquarium Renounces Use of Captured Orcas

In the wake of two young captive orcas dying so far this year at the Moskvarium Aquarium in Moscow, the facility has admitted that keeping captured whales in concrete tanks is fundamentally unworkable. 

On June 23rd, the aquarium announced that Nord, a 16-year-old male orca, who was captured in 2013, had died of an acute peptic ulcer.

Photo of Nord by Oxana Federova

Only five months earlier, on January 8th, it posted that Narnia, a 17-year-old female orca taken from the ocean several years ago had died of an acute volvulus (the abnormal twisting of a portion of the gastrointestinal tract).

Naya, a 12-year-old female, is now the one remaining orca at the aquarium.

These latest two deaths are part of a worldwide pattern of illness and death that characterizes the lives of captive orcas – whether wild-caught or captive-born – in concrete tanks. In the wild, male orcas live to an average age of 30 (maximum 50-60 years) and females live to an average age of 46 (maximum 80-90). Most captive orcas do not live beyond their early 20s.

Following the passing of Nord, the Moskvarium admitted publicly that it is impossible to close the gap between what orcas need to thrive and what life in a tank is like for them. It is impossible to close the gap between what orcas need to thrive and what life in a tank is like for them

“Despite the high level of competence of the center’s experts … it is extremely difficult to approximate the artificial conditions for keeping large marine mammals to natural,” it wrote in a statement. The facility has called for a “complete ban on catching marine mammals for educational and cultural purposes.”

The Moskvarium notes that its Center for Oceanography and Marine Biology took part in the development of a law that comes into effect in Russia in September 2024 and provides for a complete ban on “the capture of marine mammals for cultural and educational purposes.”

Photo of Narnia by Moskvarium

The decision to end catching orcas and other marine mammals for entertainment is certainly laudable but it does not ban the breeding of these animals in captivity. Science tells us that captive-born orcas have just as poor, if not poorer, well-being in the tanks as those who were born in the ocean.

The aquarium also notes that in 2019, its experts participated in the rescue and return to the ocean of the 97 orcas and beluga whales who were being held at the infamous “whale jail” near Vladivostok after being captured for sale to entertainment parks in China. (The Whale Sanctuary Project also worked with the Russian government and with Russian animal protection groups. See our posts on Whale Aid Russia.)

The question now is what will happen to Naya, the remaining orca at the Moskvarium who is being kept under conditions that, for a highly social and intelligent mammal, are inhumane. The stress of being the sole individual in a highly artificial environment after experiencing the deaths of two other orcas could lead to her demise, too.

Just as the Miami Seaquarium is now working with the nonprofit Friends of Toki toward transferring its lone orca Tokitae to a sanctuary environment, the Whale Sanctuary Project and our colleagues in the wildlife sanctuary community stand ready to work with the Moskvarium toward determining what are the next best steps for Naya to ensure that she has the highest possible quality of life so that she doesn’t follow the same path as Narnia and Nord.

Title photo of orca Nord by Moskvarium.

© 2024 The Whale Sanctuary Project. All Rights Reserved.

• WILDLIFE WATCH

Time running out for orcas, belugas trapped in icy 'whale jail'

Russian video footage shows that the animals, likely bound for aquariums, are languishing in freezing waters and legal limbo.

The video shows a bird’s eye view: dozens of wild beluga whales and orcas trapped in frozen seawater.

Eleven killer whales (also known as orcas ) and 87 belugas languish in several rectangular sea pens in Srednyaya Bay in Russia’s Far East. Four Russian firms that supply marine animals to aquariums caught them over the course of several months in the summer of 2018. Their plight made headlines in November, when a drone captured aerial video footage of the facility, leading the media to label it the “whale jail.”

That month, regional authorities opened an investigation into the alleged illegal capture of the marine mammals. Russia’s Prosecutor General warns that selling them to aquariums in other countries, such as China, would be illegal. ( Read more about Russian orcas in Chinese marine parks. )

One of 87 beluga whales swims in a sea pen at the holding facility in Russia's Srednyaya Bay.

The animals now appear to be suffering tremendously, says Dmitry Lisitsyn , head of Sakhalin Environment Watch , an NGO based on Sakhalin Island, also on the Far East coast. Authorities invited Lisitsyn, marine mammal researchers, and veterinarians to visit the facility on January 18 and 19 to assess the animals’ health.

Lisitsyn says 15 of the belugas are babies who likely hadn’t yet been weaned off their mothers’ milk when they were captured. All the belugas seem to be in distress, he says. He explains that workers at the facility regularly break up ice as it forms in the pens so the animals can surface, which they must do to breathe and stay alive. The belugas are “used to living in ice,” he says. “But they’re not used to being held in a 12-by-10-meter [space] with men crashing shovels over their heads.”

It’s even worse for the orcas, Lisitsyn says. Although they’re conditioned to live in cold water, he says, they typically migrate south during the winter. He captured video showing several orcas with skin lesions on and around their dorsal fins. Lisitsyn and marine scientists who reviewed the footage say that the lesions could be frostbite from exposure to prolonged cold, a fungal or bacterial infection stemming from the stagnant water, or both.

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Veterinarian Tatyana Denisenko, a professor at the Moscow-based Academy of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology, who visited the facility with Lisitsyn, took samples from the water and from the orcas’ lesions. “The skin of most of the 11 killer whales is thickly seeded with various microorganisms,” she says. She says this suggests that food left in the pens may be rotting and infecting the orcas’ skin.

Denisenko, Lisitsyn, and others are particularly concerned about one young orca named Kirill, who had been acting very lethargically and exhibited extensive skin lesions. Lisitsyn says he fears for Kirill's survival.

TRAPPED IN LEGAL LIMBO

The fate of these animals is in the balance. Authorities might seize them for rehabilitation and release back into the wild. Or they may rule that the companies that caught them did not act illegally and are free to sell the animals to aquariums. But Russian aquariums don’t have the capacity to take the orcas, and it’s illegal to export them abroad, says Dmitry Glazov, who serves as deputy chair of Russia’s Moscow-based Marine Mammal Council , an NGO that unites scientists in the field to study the conservation of marine mammals.

Elven killer whales captured from the wild also are confined to sea pens. The skin of most is "thickly seeded with various microorganisms," says a veterinarian who was allowed access and took samples.

The third possibility: The animals will die.

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Lisitsyn and others allege that the belugas and orcas were sourced illegally and that the central government must act to save them. On February 1, three NGOs, including Sakhalin Watch, filed a lawsuit against three Russian government agencies, alleging that under Russian law, they’re obligated to confiscate illegally sourced wild animals and return them to their natural habitat. “The state is the rightful owner of the animals and must seize these animals and let them back into the wild,” Lisitsyn says.

One of the four companies that claims ownership of the animals, Bely Kit, says that it caught the orcas and belugas legally. Anton Pekarsky, a lawyer for the company, confirmed Bely Kit’s plans “to deliver the animals to aquariums in Russia and abroad” this year. It would not release them into the wild unless ordered by a court, he wrote in an email. Two of the other companies, Afalina and Oceanarium DV, told local media that they also complied with the law. The fourth company, Sochi Dolphinarium, did not respond to a request for comment.

Whether Russian authorities are actively pursuing an investigation is uncertain. Oxana Fedorova, head of Save Dolphins, a Moscow-based cetacean welfare group, says the case has passed from agency to agency and is now under the jurisdiction of the Investigative Committee of the Khabarovsk Region, a local government agency responsible for pursuing criminal cases. “From the legal point of view, it’s completely unclear what is happening” with the animals, says Glazov.

John Ford , a professor of zoology and orca expert at the University of British Columbia, in Canada, reviewed the footage taken by Lisitsyn. He says that with proper medical screening and careful treatment to restore the orcas to health, they could be returned to the wild. If released together near Srednyaya Bay, he says, “they’d likely form their own social group, at least in the short term, and the younger animals could benefit from the hunting skills of the older individuals.” (Lisitsyn says the same applies to the belugas.)

But, says Ford, “the longer these killer whales are held in this substandard facility, the more difficult it will be to adapt back to a life in the wild.”

Related Topics

• ANIMAL WELFARE
• WILDLIFE CRIME
• ORCA (KILLER WHALE)
• BELUGA WHALE
• ANIMAL CRUELTY

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