According to marine biologists, orca encounters with humans have been on the rise since 2020, and over the last four years an orca pod in the Strait of Gibraltar have been ramming boats, even causing some of them to sink.
Research from GT Atlantic Orca, a group that tracks orca populations, have reported nearly 700 interactions of orca attacks on ships in this area since 2020.
In 2023, there were a total of 53 boat incidents involving killer whales, and over the last four years a total of seven boats have been sunk and many more damaged.
In May 2024, a pod in the Strait of Gibraltar struck again, sinking their first yacht of the season, and within a few days many more attacks had been reported.
Another boat sinking occurred in mid-July, and both fisherman and pleasure boats owners are concerned about the possibility of more this summer.
Ayer noche: Velero Bonhomme William pide remolque tras interacción con Orcas. Posteriormente informa que se está hundiendo con vía de agua.
Nuestro centro #Tarifa moviliza salvamar Enif que rescata a las 3 personas a bordo.
Desembarca sanas y salvas #Barbate
Velero se hunde. pic.twitter.com/1fl5gJH0d1— SALVAMENTO MARÍTIMO (@salvamentogob) July 25, 2024
The main question that scientists are asking is why this is happening and what’s the reason behind the increase in incidents?
There are three main theories according to some of the world’s leading marine biologists.
The first theory is that it’s down to an orca named White Gladis, the matriarch of a pod of killer whales in the Gibraltar Strait.
🚨 | ATENCIÓN: Una orca llamada Gladis, presuntamente traumatizada tras un choque con un barco, está enseñando a otros orcas a atacar yates cerca de Gibraltar.
Ya han afectado tres embarcaciones, hundiéndose dos de ellas. pic.twitter.com/8s69sILbF7
— UHN Plus (@UHN_Plus) May 27, 2023
Scientists believe that this orca may have had a run in with boats in the past and possibly been injured by a rudder or propeller, causing her severe trauma. It is thought this caused her to start attacking boats, passing on this behaviour to her offspring and other members of the pod.
Other biologists argue that killer whales don’t seek revenge the way humans might and believe that it’s all simply one big game to them for the ‘teenage’ members of the pod, imitating one another’s behaviour.
READ ALSO: Spain’s police bust gang that faked orca attacks to smuggle drugs
They are just playing with the boat and are not interested in hurting the people on board at all, they claim. In fact, when members of the crew have abandoned the boats in life rafts, the orcas have simply ignored them and carried on ramming the boats.
Co-founder of the Andenes Whale Centre in (Norway) Hanne Strager is one biologist who believes in this theory.
He told National Geographic that there was no aggressive intent in the orcas: “When you interact regularly with animals, and you are used to reading them, you can sense an aggressive intent, and they don’t have it all”, he said.
Some believe that it could be that Gladis is simply playing too and her pod are just copying her behaviour.
The third theory proposed is that the attacks are down to declining tuna populations due to overfishing by humans.
The Association in Defence of Urban Trees, Biodiversity and the Environment (DAUBMA) of Ceuta has linked the attacks by orcas with the decline in the number of tunas in the area.
READ MORE: Scientists puzzled by killer whale boat attacks off Spain
Environmentalists have also warned that these attacks “are cause-effect of human super-predation on tuna, since the increase of orcas in coastal areas is due to uncontrolled fishing of tuna”. This is “having an impact on the orcas’ prey, with the killer whales having to teach their youngsters to hunt, so if we continue fishing in the same way, this same thing will happen,” they point out.
Essentially the orcas’ food is located in traps close to where these boats sail.
Tuna is fished in a unique way in the Strait of Gibraltar, using the ancient Almadraba method, a traditional fishing technique used to catch enormous quantities of bluefin tuna on their annual migration through the area by setting up huge nets and traps.
READ MORE: Spain’s 3,000-year-old tuna fishing tradition
Orcas, often called killer whales, are not actually whales but the largest species in the dolphin family. They are an apex predator but they’re not generally considered a danger to humans as there have been very few fatal attacks, especially in the wild.
According to the UK’s Whale and Dolphin Conversation, they got the name ‘killer whale’ from ancient sailors who observed orcas hunting and preying on large whale species, and the word orca itself derives from “Orcus”, the Roman god of death and the underworld.
Many marine biologists are against orcas being named killer whales as they believe the moniker demonises them.
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