Posted on 09/14/2020 7:24:29 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
Reports of orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar have left sailors and scientists confused.
Just what is causing such unusually aggressive behaviour?
When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters.
But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without steering, drifting into the Gibraltar Straits shipping lane between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate.
The pod rammed the boat for more than an hour, during which time the crew were too busy getting the sails in, readying the life raft and radioing a mayday – “Orca attack!” – to feel fear.
The moment fear kicked in, Morris says, was when she went below deck to prepare a grab bag – the stuff you take when abandoning ship. “The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they communicated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout.” It felt, she says, “totally orchestrated”.
Very unusual orca behavior The crew waited a tense hour and a half for rescue – perhaps understandably, the coastguard took time to comprehend. To say this is unusual is to massively understate it. By the time help arrived, the orcas were gone. The boat was towed to Barbate, where it was lifted to reveal the rudder missing its bottom third and outer layer, and teeth marks along the underside.
Rocío Espada works with the marine biology laboratory at the University of Seville and has observed this migratory population of orca in the Gibraltar Straits for years. She was astonished. “For killer whales to take out a piece of a fibreglass rudder is crazy,” she says. “I’ve seen these orcas grow from babies, I know their life stories, I’ve never seen or heard of attacks.“
Highly intelligent, social mammals, orcas are the largest of the dolphin family, and behave in a similar way. It is normal, she says, that orcas will follow close to the propeller. Even holding the rudder is not unheard of: “Sometimes they will bite the rudder, get dragged behind as a game.” But never with enough force to break it. This ramming, Espada says, indicates stress. The Straits is full of nets and long lines; perhaps a calf got caught.
But Morris’s was only one of several encounters between late July and August. Six days earlier, Alfonso Gomez-Jordana Martin, a 31-year-old from Alicante, was crewing a delivery boat near Barbate for the same company, Reliance Yacht Management. They were proceeding under engine when a pod of four orcas brought their 40ft Beneteau to a halt.
He filmed them – it looks more like excitement and curiosity than aggression – but even this bumping damaged the rudder. And the force increased, he says, over 50 minutes. “Once we were stopped, they came in faster: 10-15 knots, from a distance of about 25m,” he remembers. “The impact tipped the boat sideways.“
The skipper’s report to the port authority said the force “nearly dislocated the helmsman’s shoulder and spun the whole yacht through 120 degrees.“
At 11.30pm the previous night, 22 July, Beverly Harris, a retired nurse from Derbyshire, and her partner, Kevin Large, were motor-sailing their 50ft boat, Kailani, just off Barbate at eight knots, when they came to a sudden standstill. It was flat calm, pitch black.
They thought they’d hit a net. “I scrambled for a torch and was like, ‘Bloody hell, they’re orcas,’” says Harris. The couple checked their position and found the boat pointing the opposite way. They tried to correct several times, but the orcas kept spinning them back. “I had this weird sensation,” Harris says, “like they were trying to lift the boat.“
It lasted about 20 minutes, but felt longer. “We thought, ‘We’ve sailed across the Atlantic, surely we’re not going to sink now!’” Their rudder was damaged but got them to La Línea. It was a long night. “Kevin said I should get some sleep. I said, ‘Are you joking? I’m having a gin and tonic,’” recalls Harris.
While enjoying her drink, Harris could have spared a thought for Nick Giles, having a sleepless night alone after an almost identical encounter off Barbate just two and a half hours earlier. He was motor-sailing, and playing music when he heard a sudden bang “like a sledgehammer.”
The wheel was “turning with incredible force” as the vessel spun 180 degrees, dislodging the autohelm and steering cables. “The boat lifted up half a foot and I was pushed by a second whale from behind,” he says. While resetting the cables, the orca hit again, “nearly chopping off my fingers in the mechanism.” He was pushed around without steering for about 15 minutes before they left him.
So what is going on underwater? Sonar? army tests? If human activity is affecting the orcas’ behaviour, human activity must be regulated. Activities producing underwater noise should be reduced to a minimum.
Ramming is how they attack whales. They keep at it until the whale opens his mouth, then they eat its tongue.
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Good Lord.
They are looking for dinner!!!
I only ate them for the crust. That was the good part. But hey, like you said, they were cheap, and they were filling. The Ramen noodles of their day.
Don’t forget her co-cost Gilbert Gottfried. Up All Night was a quirky, offbeat, oddball variety/music video/B-movie show that fell victim to mergers, acquisitions, and general negligent homicide via the Internet. They say what’s old is new again, and I’m sure in a generation or two, something like it will come along again, but it’ll either be a direct ripoff with no legs or a poor clone of the original.
When we are in their environment. we are the slowest Potential food in the area.
Wild animals are still wild animals.
They were banging a drum and whistling in their orchestra.
“Teens”
Considering that Orcas will tip an ice flow to get a seal to slide into the water for a quick meal, who’s to say that they haven’t been successful in knocking a person off a small enough boat. Orcas are social hunters and highly intelligent. Once they learn a behavior they will perfect it. Considering all the recent waves of migrants from North Africa attempting to reach Europe who can say if the Orcas haven’t ‘disappeared’ a few rickety, improvised boats?
Theories of navy sonar and such are Al Gore fantasies. The US Navy doesn’t go banging around with active sonar in the straits, rather they would attempt to slip through their unnoticed.
Considering that Orcas will tip an ice flow to get a seal to slide into the water for a quick meal, who’s to say that they haven’t been successful in knocking a person off a small enough boat. Orcas are social hunters and highly intelligent. Once they learn a behavior they will perfect it. Considering all the recent waves of migrants from North Africa attempting to reach Europe who can say if the Orcas haven’t ‘disappeared’ a few rickety, improvised boats?
Theories of navy sonar and such are Al Gore fantasies. The US Navy doesn’t go banging around with active sonar in the straits, rather they would attempt to slip through their unnoticed.
It’s possible they were actually trying to warn the boats that there was danger, possibly great white sharks. Orcas are dolphins, protectors. Dolphins have been known to protect people from sharks on many occasions, including attacking the sharks themselves.
The moment fear kicked in, Morris says, was when she went below deck to prepare a grab bag
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had she abandon ship, the brain dead twit would have made a nice snack ...
None of the above causes.
Its the mermen revolting and using their buddies to take out targets of opportunity - mermen are aquatic offshoot of human race from one of the human races aquatic stages hundreds of thousands of years ago. Them or aliens
“We’re the only two people on earth who watched that movie.”
I saw it, but that’s not my best memory of Bo Derek.
Or maybe just piss them off more? One thing you don’t want is an angry orca!
All kidding aside, this is really weird. We have plenty of Orcas swimming up and down the California coast, and while they’re generally not as curiously gregarious as dolphins, they do occasionally match pace and check out sailboats. After several decades I’ve never seen a hint of aggression towards a boat, though you wouldn’t want to get in the water when they’re hanging around. People look way too much like seals when in the ocean, IMHO.
or maybe they’re hungry...
To them, it’s food on a tray that’s been brought to them.
What’s not to enjoy?
I loved the Veal Parmesan Banquet meals!
They don’t make them today.
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