orca sailboat race

Jimmy Golen, Associated Press Jimmy Golen, Associated Press

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Orcas disrupt sailing race near Spain in latest display of inexplicably bold behavior

A pod of killer whales bumped one of the boats in an endurance sailing race as it approached the Strait of Gibraltar, the latest encounter in what researchers say is a  growing trend of sometimes-aggressive interactions  with Iberian orcas.

The 15-minute run-in with at least three of the giant mammals forced the crew competing in The Ocean Race on Thursday 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 in a video posted on The Ocean Race website that it was “a scary moment.”

“Twenty minutes ago, we got hit by some orcas,” he said in the video. “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team.”

Team JAJO was approaching the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea on a leg from the Netherlands to Italy when at least three orcas approached the VO65 class sloop. Video taken by the crew showed one of the killer whales appeared to be nuzzling the rudder; another video showed one of them running its nose into the hull.

Scientists have noted increasing reports of orcas, which average from 16-21 feet (5-6½ meters) and weigh more than 8,000 pounds (3,600 kilograms), bumping or damaging boats off the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula in the past four years.

The behavior defies easy explanation. A team of marine life researchers who study killer whales off Spain and Portugal has identified 15 individual orcas involved in the encounters — 13 of them young, supporting the hypothesis that they are playing. The fact that two are adults could support the competing and more sensational theory that they are responding to some traumatic event with a boat.

READ MORE: What the grieving mother orca tells us about how animals experience death

The sailors were warned of the hazard.

“We knew that there was a possibility of an orca attack this leg,” Team JAJO on-board reporter Brend Schuil said. “So we had already spoken about what to do if the situation would occur.”

Schuil said there was a call for all hands on deck and the sails were dropped to slow the boat from a racing speed of 12 knots. The crew made noises to to scare the orcas off, but not before it had fallen from second to fourth on the leg from The Hague to Genoa, where it is expected to arrive this weekend.

“They seemed more aggressive/playful when we were sailing at speed. Once we slowed down they also started to be less aggressive in their attacks,” he said. “Everyone is OK on board and the animals are also OK.”

The Ocean Race involves two classes of sailboats at sea for weeks at a time, with the IMOCA 60 boats competing in a six-month, 32,000-nautical mile (37,000-mile, 59,000-km) circumnavigation of the globe. Boats have already contended with a  giant seaweed flotilla , catastrophic equipment failure, and a collision that knocked the leader out of the decisive seventh leg.

Although the race course navigates around exclusion zones to protect known marine habitats, there have been previous encounters with whales in The Ocean Race and other high-speed regattas.

However, they usually involve the boats crashing into the animals, and not the other way around.

One of the boats in the around-the-world portion of this year’s Ocean Race triggered its hazard alarm after hitting what they suspected was a whale off the coast of Newfoundland in May; two crew members were injured in the collision. At the beginning of the 2013 America’s Cup on San Francisco Bay, a whale was reported in the bay and organizers were prepared to delay a race if it wandered onto the course. In 2022, the start of SailGP’s $1 million, winner-take-all Season 2 championship race on the same area of San Francisco Bay was delayed when a whale was spotted on the course.

In 2005, the first South African yacht to challenge for the America’s Cup hit a whale with its 12-foot keel during training near Cape Town, stopping the 75-foot sloop dead in the water, injuring two crewmembers and snapping off both steering wheels.

AP Sports Writer Bernie Wilson contributed to this story.

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Group of orcas attack and sink vessels off Iberian Peninsula

World Jun 14

'Scary moment' as orcas disrupt ocean boat race in latest display of puzzling behaviour

Crew forced to drop sails in 15-minute encounter near strait of gibralter.

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A pod of killer whales bumped one of the boats in an endurance sailing race as it approached the Strait of Gibraltar, the latest encounter in what researchers say is a growing trend of aggressive interactions with Iberian orcas.

The 15-minute run-in with at least three of the giant mammals forced the crew competing in The Ocean Race on Thursday 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 in a video posted on The Ocean Race website that it was "a scary moment."

"Twenty minutes ago, we got hit by some orcas," he said in the video. "Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team."

Team JAJO was approaching the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea on a leg from the Netherlands to Italy when at least three orcas approached the VO65 class sloop. Video taken by the crew showed one of the killer whales appeared to be nuzzling the rudder; another video showed one of them running its nose into the hull.

• Video Orcas are ramming boats off the Spanish coast, puzzling experts
• Inbreeding is hampering population growth for orcas, study finds

Scientists have noted increasing reports of orcas bumping or damaging boats off the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula in the past four years. The mammals average from 5-6 1/2 metres) and weigh more than 3,600 kilograms.

The behaviour defies easy explanation. A team of marine life researchers who study killer whales off Spain and Portugal has identified 15 individual orcas involved in the encounters — 13 of them young, supporting the hypothesis that they are playing. The fact that two are adults could support the competing and more sensational theory that they are responding to some traumatic event with a boat.

"We knew that there was a possibility of an orca attack this leg," on-board reporter Brend Schuil said. "So we had already spoken about what to do if the situation would occur."

Schuil said there was a call for all hands on deck and the sails were dropped to slow the boat from a racing speed of 12 knots. The crew made noises to to scare the orcas off.

WATCH | Aggressive orcas damage boat off southern Spain:

Aggressive killer whales damage boat off coast of southern Spain

"They seemed more aggressive/playful when we were sailing at speed. Once we slowed down they also started to be less aggressive in their attacks," he said. "Everyone is OK on board and the animals are also OK."

The Ocean Race involves two classes of sailboats at sea for weeks at a time, with the IMOCA 60 boats competing in a six-month, 32,000-nautical mile (37,000-mile, 59,000-km) circumnavigation of the globe. The race is on its final leg, from The Hague to Genoa, where it is expected to arrive later this week.

Boats have already contended with a giant seaweed flotilla, catastrophic equipment failure, and a collision that knocked the leader out of the decisive seventh leg. One of the boats in the around-the-world portion of the race triggered its hazard alarm after hitting what they suspected was a whale off the coast of Newfoundland; two crew members were injured in the collision.

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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.

Watch CBS News

Killer whales attack and sink sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar — again

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: May 14, 2024 / 4:54 PM EDT / CBS News

A sailing yacht sunk in the Strait of Gibraltar on Sunday after an unknown number of orcas  slammed into the vessel with two people on board and caused a water leak, officials said. Both crew members were rescued by a passing oil tanker, said Spain's maritime rescue service, marking the latest killer whale attack on a boat in what has become a pattern in recent years.

The incident happened at around 9 a.m. local time in the narrow strait between Spain and Morocco that has become a notorious site of human interactions with pods of killer whales that, for reasons still not fully understood, ram into boats and at times even sink them . In this case, crew members on board the SV Alboran Cognac yacht put out an emergency call for an evacuation after they encountered orcas roughly 14 miles off the coast of Cape Spartel. 

The crew members reported feeling blows to the hull of the vessel and rudder, which was damaged by the whales, the rescue service said. The agency's coordination center in Tarifa, on the Spanish side of the Strait of Gibraltar, helped arrange for their evacuation via the tanker MT Lascaux. The tanker was able to collect the crew members from the sinking yacht within the hour, and they disembarked in Gibraltar before 10:30 a.m. They abandoned the SV Alboran Cognac, which proceeded to completely disappear into the ocean.

Anyone sailing through waters from the Gulf of Cádiz in southern Spain and the Strait of Gibraltar, either in a larger motorized vessel or a personal sailing boat, is advised to avoid certain areas that the maritime rescue service marks as potentially dangerous spots for orca interactions. The greatest threats exist between May and August, when officials say that pods of killer whales are most commonly seen in those parts of the Atlantic. 

But previously recorded incidents suggest those dangers may be present at any time. Last October, a Polish boat touring company reported that a pod of orcas had managed to sink one of its yachts after repeatedly slamming into the steering fin for 45 minutes, causing it to leak. Last June, two sailing teams competing in an international race around the world reported frightening scenarios in which multiple orcas rammed into or pushed up against their boats or as they sailed west of Gibraltar. 

No one on board any of the vessels was hurt in those encounters, but the documented rise in confrontational behavior has researchers and sailors trying to determine why orcase have attempted to sink or capsize so many boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal. 

Some sailors have even resorted to blasting thrash metal music in a bid to deter the apex predators.

Reports of orcas interacting with humans have more than tripled in the last two years or so, according to the research group GTOA, which has documented hundreds of such incidents in the region since 2020. But some of the latest data points to possible changes in the orcas' etiquette, with the group reporting only 26 interactions in the Strait of Gibraltar and Bay of Biscay areas between January and May of this year. That number is 65% lower than the number of interactions recorded in the region over the same months last year, and 40% lower than the average number of interactions recorded in the same months between 2021 and 2023, according to GTOA.

• Boat Accident

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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WATCH: Orca yacht sinking – Sailor shares details of two-hour orca encounter which sank his yacht off Spain

• Katy Stickland
• July 30, 2024

Robert Powell and his crew were five miles off the Spanish coast in 40m of water when orcas disabled the yacht's rudder before ramming the hull, causing it to crack; the boat sank shortly afterwards

Robert Powell, the skipper of the Beneteau 393 Clipper, Bonhomme William , had researched details of any orca encounter in the Strait of Gibraltar before leaving Vilamoura in the Algarve bound for the Greek islands.

After checking the numerous orca Facebook groups, such as Orca Attack Reports, and believing the orcas were now heading north, following the migrating tuna, he felt now would be a good time to sail his yacht to the Greek islands with crew.

“I’d looked at all of the orca sites and there hadn’t been any sightings, but there are so many sites now that do orca alerts, but I looked at the ones I follow and there seemed to be no sightings of orcas in the area where I was due to sail. I felt it was safe to sail the route I had chosen, which was in around 40m of water.

“I know the advice is to hug the coast in around 20m of water but that would have added days to the journey. I assessed the risk, and I had sailed across the Bay of Cadiz at this time of year before and I thought it was worth the risk,” said Powell.

Bonhomme William left Portugal on 23 July 2024,

Bonhomme William tooks 30 minutes to sink following the orca encounter. Credit: Robert Powell

By the following evening, the yacht was off Punta Camarinal in the Strait of Gibraltar.

” I went up on deck, and all of a sudden, I heard a crunch, and it sounded like I’d hit a rock. It was like a really loud scraping noise and there was a real big shudder on the boat. I thought I’d hit a container or a fishing net or something submerged. I was probably about five miles out so it was unlikely to be a rock and there was nothing on the charts.

I took the boat off auto and just took the wheel for a sec. And as I took the wheel, I felt the rudder go, and I heard the noise again. I thought, Geez, that’s not a rock. I thought maybe a rope had wrapped around the prop, but then I looked off the back of the boat, and there were two fairly young orcas, not quite fully grown.”

Article continues below…

Why have Orcas been attacking yachts? A puzzling mystery

Late in November last year, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s Farr 65 pilothouse cutter, Sanjula, was being sailed 10 miles west of…

Orca attacks: Rudder losses and damage as incidents escalate

The first signs that something odd was taking place came in July 2020. After the strangest start to a summer…

This was the start of a two-and-a-half hour orca encounter which resulted in the sinking of Bonhomme William .

Powell said he followed the orca encounter advice: he let go of the wheel, tried to outrun the orcas and put the boat in reverse, all to no avail.

“They just didn’t let up. One of them had the rudder in its mouth, it was like it was trying to wrench it off, and then I spotted a third orca which came in and banged against the rudder as well. I know there is advice to completely stop the boat but I didn’t feel comfortable with that, although it wasn’t long before we couldn’t go anywhere because the rudder was broken.”

Orcas have been interacting with small yachts off the Iberian Peninsula since 2020. Photo: Martyn & Zoe Barlow

Powell said he threw pingers and firecrackers into the water.

“They took no notice whatsoever,” said Powell. “After 40 minutes of trying to outrun them, putting the boat in reverse, they had disabled the rudder. That is when I saw two very big orcas sitting off the boat, around 10-15m away from the other three. I decided to put out a Mayday because, at that moment, I felt I was in a bit of trouble.”

As he was trying to contact the Spanish Coastguard, one of the larger orcas crashed into the boat.

“There were five of them just slamming into the side of the boat and one of them was hitting the keel as well; I could feel the shudder through the boat. I was concerned about taking on water so I checked the bilges and the keel bolts; there was no sign of water. By now, we knew that a rescue vessel was being sent, but we had no ETA as to when it would arrive,” explained Powell.

The orcas continued to hit the boat’s hull until it cracked amidships.

“I saw water coming in from the starboard side of the boat, but I couldn’t pinpoint the source, which I believe was behind the cooking and fridge unit on the boat. From the photos I took, you can see the damage to the stern and around the rudder which is to be expected from where they were smashing it. I am no expert, but I think the orca just used their bulk to crack the hull.”

Rudders are often targeted by the orcas. Photo: Martyn & Zoe Barlow

Powell said he believes one of the large orcas was White Gladis, known locally for being involved in encounters with boats.

The crew of Bonhomme William had already deployed their liferaft , as well as the boat’s tender with its outboard engine; the Spanish Coastguard advised them not to get into either the liferaft or tender if orca were still in the area and to “stay on the boat for as long as possible”.

By the time the Spanish rescue boat had arrived, the yacht was already half-submerged.

“The captain of the boat asked permission to come onboard to see if he could save the boat, but he said there was just too much water to pump; she could not be saved. I saw the orca when I first spotted the rescue boat and then didn’t see them again. I can only assume the loud engine noise meant they cleared off.”

The crew were then safely transferred to Barbate.

Powell said he was surprised by the ferocity of the orca encounter, although he said the Coastguard were less surprised.

“ There are a lot of people who want to protect the killer whales and I understand that. I don’t want to hurt a killer whale; they are beautiful creatures. It’s just unfortunate that we’ve got this current battle between sailing boats and nature,” he said.

Robert Powell started sailing four years ago and spent much of the summer working on Bonhomme William before his planned voyage to Greece. Credit: Robert Powell

Powell says in hindsight he would not have done the voyage. He would also have stopped the boat immediately and turned everything off as soon as the orca encounter began.

“I am no longer convinced there is a so-called orca season. The information I got originally was the orcas sit in the Strait waiting for the tuna to run, which is normally in June. The orca then chase them north which is why you normally get sightings in middle and northern Spain, northern Portugal and southern France in mid-July.  When I spoke to the rescue boat crew, they said they did not think the orca even left the Strait anymore.”

He advises other sailors planning voyages in the area to follow the advice and hug the coastline in 20m of water.

“As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t tenable to hug a coastline in 20m and have 2-3 days added onto the journey. So I think now, sailors have to seriously think about if they really want to sail in that area, especially if orcas are always there. Until there is a solution it is just luck really.”

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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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Watch as killer whales attack dutch yacht in ‘scary’ race incident.

Team JAJO had some special –– and terrifying –– visitors while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar as part of the 2023 Ocean Race on Thursday.

A group of orcas, otherwise known as killer whales, surrounded the Dutch crew’s yacht, first circling the boat and then ramming into it. 

“This was a scary moment,” Jelmer van Beek, Team JAJO skipper,  said, according to the Associated Press . “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team.”

Some of Team JAJO’s crew banged on the ship’s hull to try to scare the orcas away while the whales started biting the boat’s rudders.

“We took down the sails and slowed down the boat as quickly as possible, and luckily after a few attacks, they went away,” van Beek said. 

Team JAJO was in second place of the VO65 class in the Ocean Race when the incident happened.

While they dropped to fourth place after handling the orcas, the group eventually slotted back into second by the end of the day and remain there now as the race enters the final leg. 

The Ocean Race, started in 1973, is a six-month yacht race that covers 32,000 nautical miles and goes through nine international cities –– the competition started from Alicante, Spain in January and will finish at the end of June in Genova, Italy. 

There has reportedly been a recent increase in orca sightings in the Strait of Gibraltar.

There were more than 20 incidents of orcas interacting with boats logged in May. 

The Mipuri/Trifork Racing Team, another group competing in the Ocean Race, reported a pod of orcas, but there was no damage caused. 

Team JAJO is in good spirits after the scary moment and is back on track to Italy.

“Thankfully, the crew and the boat are unharmed,” they wrote in an Instagram post . “The Dutch boat skippered by Jelmer van Beek is now back on its way to Genova.” 

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.

Why are orcas attacking boats and sometimes sinking them?

After four years and hundreds of incidents, researchers remain puzzled why orcas, also known as killer whales, continue to ram boats – sinking a few of them – along the Iberian Peninsula. The most-recent incident was the sinking of a yacht on Oct. 31 in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The origin of these interactions remain a "great mystery," said Alfredo López, a University of Santiago biologist, but he does not believe the behavior is aggressive. Orcas are large dolphins, López said. And like dolphins, the events could stem from the orcas’ curious and playful behavior, such as trying to race the boats.

López, who specializes in orcas, and his team, Grupo de trabajo Orca Atlántica (GOTA) , have tracked these encounters since 2020. The team’s recent study theorizes the orcas could also be exhibiting cautionary behavior because of some previous traumatic incident.

Where have killer whales interacted with boats?

GOTA has tracked more than 350 interactions just on the Iberian Peninsula since 2020. Most have taken place along the Strait of Gibraltar, but the orcas’ mischief or self-defense may be spreading north. An incident was reported in June in the  Shetland Islands in Scotland .

GOTA defines interactions as instances when orcas react to the presence of approaching boats, such as:

• Interaction without physical contact.
• Some physical contact without damage.
• Contact that causes serious damage that could prevent the navigation of the boat.

Recent incidents when orcas attacked boats and sank them

The Oct. 31 incident occurred in the Strait of Gibraltar where a pod of orcas sank a mid-size sailing yacht named the Grazie Mamma after a 45-minute interaction,  Live Science reported . 

On June 19 an orca rammed a 7-ton yacht multiple times off the Shetland Islands in Scotland, according to an account from retired Dutch physicist Dr. Wim Rutten in the Guardian.

"Killer whales are capable of traveling large distances, so it is not out of the ordinary that an animal could travel that far," said Tara Stevens, a marine scientist at CSA Ocean Sciences Inc. "To my knowledge, this data is not available, so we cannot confirm at this time if these are the same animals." 

Including the Oct. 31 incident, orcas have sunk four boats this year. The previous sinking occured in May , off the coasts of Portugal and Spain, but whale expert Anne Gordon told USA TODAY  in May that the incidents shouldn't heighten concerns about the whales.

"Yes, they're killer whales. And yes, their job is to be predators in the ocean, but in normal circumstances there is absolutely zero threat to humans in a boat," Gordon said .

Most of the interactions have involved sailboats, but fishing boats, semi-rigid boats and motorboats haven’t gone unscathed. 

Are these the same killer whales attacking boats or unrelated incidents?

López hypothesizes that the interactions could be a self-induced behavior where you're "inventing something new and repeat it. This behavior coincides with the profile of the juveniles." He said it could also be response to an aversive situation: "One or several individuals had lived a bad experience and tried to stop the boat so as not to repeat it. This behavior coincides with the profile of adults."

"Fifteen different orcas from at least three different communities" have been identified, López said. And they are probably teaching the habit to others, or the others are mimicking the behavior. "Without a doubt orcas learn by imitation," López said.  The majority of the culprits are juveniles that touch, push and sometimes turn the vessels. He noted that adult males don't appear to be involved.

"Killer whales are incredibly intelligent animals that do learn behaviors from observation of other individuals," Stevens said. "Typically, very unique behaviors such as this are learned 'within' group, meaning individuals of the group may learn from each other and participate, but that does not necessarily mean that the behavior is shared outside the group with other individuals."

Which pods of killer whales are battering the boats?

Orcas operate in a social structure called a pod. These pods generally are a group of several generations of related orcas. Hierarchies are established within them, and they communicate and learn from one another, the study reads.

GOTA researchers have identified the individuals responsible for the interactions . One large pod is made up of three generations. It starts with grandmother Gladis Lamari, her daughter, grandchildren and a few other relatives.

Another pod comprises siblings Gladis Negra and Gladis Peque. Both have been photographed interacting with boats. Their mother, Gladis Herbille, has generally just watched her children at a distance from the boats, the study said.

A third group in the study are siblings and a cousin.

Orcas often tracking bluefin tuna

The movements of orcas depend on the location of their main food source, bluefin tuna. The migratory movements of tuna are very dynamic and predicting exactly where interactions will take place is very difficult, the report said. According to NOAA , Atlantic bluefin tuna are the largest in the tuna family and can reach a length of 13 feet and up to 2,000 pounds. They are a highly migratory species and can migrate thousands of miles across an entire ocean.

About the Iberian orcas

While they are called killer whales, orcas are actually the largest member of the dolphin family. This aquatic marine mammal family includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The Iberian orca is a subpopulation of the Atlantic orca population. These orcas are from the Strait of Gibraltar and the Gulf of Cádiz. Iberian orcas are small: 16 to 21 feet compared with Atlantic orcas that measure almost 30 feet.

Orcas in general are fast, reaching speeds up to 27.6 mph. By comparison, a 39-foot sailboat travels at about 9.2 mph.

What should you do if your boat is attacked by killer whales

The study recommended these tips to reduce the duration and intensity of the interaction.

• Stop the boat.
• Leave the rudder loose.
• Radio for help.

According to the GOTA study, most of the vessels involved in interactions are medium-sized (less than 49 feet) sailboats, with a paddle rudder, sailing at an average of 6.9 mph, under both sail and motor.

The interactions have been mostly concentrated in the spring and summer months and have been concentrated in the midday hours. They've lasted on average for 40 minutes, but several last less than 30 minutes. 

Types of rudders Iberian orcas have approached

"It is very common for dolphins to interact with the boats and approach," López said. "Before 2020, the orcas did it with frequency but they weren't classified as attacks. Now, sometimes they touch the boat and the encounter is unfairly classified as an attack. They judge socially before understanding what (orcas) do."

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Navigating Orca Alley: One Family’s Journey Among Rudder-Bashing Whales

We’ve always been thrilled to see orcas near our home in Alaska. But sailing through the waters along the Iberian Peninsula, where 600 boats have been hit—and five sunk—by whales, was unnerving at best.

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We landed awkwardly on a wave and the boat shuddered, our aluminum hull protesting loudly under the impact. Seconds later, I felt another violent thud and immediately feared the worst—orcas! Foghorn in hand, I readied myself to wake the rest of the crew, reciting our response plan in my mind. Noisemakers, full revs to shallower water, radio call, check the bilges. Run like hell and hope they lose interest!

But I hesitated in the intervening silence. After many days underway with relatively little sleep, I knew my nerves were raw, my internal radar struggling to decipher clutter from true danger. I forced myself to count to ten. Breathe, listen, wait. The usual sounds resumed. Water rushing beside us. Gulls calling hoarsely in the dark. Wind whistling against the halyards. No 8,000-pound whale body-slamming our boat. At least not yet.

It was 2 A.M., and I was on night watch 15 miles off the west coast of Portugal, feeling anything but at home on the sea. Familiar constellations offered reassurance that we hadn’t sailed off the edge of the earth, while the wildly tilting horizon suggested otherwise, making Orion dance like a jester. It was mid-November during a new moon, the sea black besides occasional phosphorescence rising in our wake.

We rode easily over the ten-foot swell that lingered from an earlier storm, but the west wind had begun to kick up an unpleasant chop with short, sharp waves whose crests looked eerily like orca fins. Alone on deck, my mind wandered to worst-case scenarios. I pictured my seven- and nine-year-old sons, Dawson and Huxley, being shaken from sleep as my husband, Pat, sprinted up on deck in his underwear to find that we had been struck by an orca.

Most unsettling of all was the unwelcome reconfiguration of my relationship to the natural world: suddenly, I was afraid of a creature I’d long regarded as friend. As a wildlife biologist in Alaska, I’ve worked in the company of orcas; as a sailor, I’ve celebrated each surprise sighting at sea; as a mother, I’ve reveled in my sons’ fascination with them.

But now, rather than being graced by the presence of whales, I was worried we’d be taken down by them.

Along the Iberian Peninsula, where the North Atlantic collides with the rugged coastlines of Spain and Portugal before pinching into the Mediterranean Sea, an endangered subpopulation of orcas has developed the unfortunate habit of ramming into sailboats. The powerful animals target the rudders, often breaking them and destroying or disabling a boat’s steering. Such force can sometimes also damage a boat’s hull and cause a leak.

Orcas, also called killer whales ( Orcinus orca ), are known for their prowess as marine predators, and they’re intelligent and highly social. Across their global range, they’re unusually flexible in what they eat, how they hunt, and where they call home. Among their many talents, they’re masters of surprise.

Since May 2020, when the first incidents were recorded, around 600 sailboats in the region have been hit, and at least five of these have sunk. There have been about 40 attacks this summer so far. An encounter in May off the northwestern coast of Morocco marked the first sinking of 2024, the crew of two rescued by a nearby tanker after the 50-foot boat began rapidly taking on water.

Although interactions have been recorded in every month of the year, most have occurred during summer, when both sailboats and orcas are more likely to be in the area. As the sailing season has come into full swing again, the orcas are back, and apparently ready to rumble.

A relatively small number of whales are responsible for all the fuss—an estimated 50 animals make up the Iberian subpopulation, with fewer individuals actually implicated in the incidents.

For me, sailing through what has been dubbed Orca Alley with my family during late fall last year, a previously abstract problem had become intensely personal. Alongside my husband, sons, and a friend from Alaska named Kevin who had volunteered to join us for this leg, I was no longer a curious bystander or a wildlife biologist at work but a sailor in the hot zone.

Aboard Turnstone , our 43-foot aluminum-hulled cutter, I was en route with my family from Greece to Greenland, part of a multiyear journey that would take us through the Mediterranean and North Atlantic before veering toward our home waters of Alaska.

We aren’t new to sailing, or to meetings with orcas. Pat and I lived aboard our first sailboat almost two decades ago. Our sons were toddlers when their own sailing adventures began, and they’ve grown up with the ocean as their backyard and whales as their neighbors. We’re used to navigating risk outdoors as a family—when we’re not at sea, we backcountry ski, commute by skiff, and live with grizzlies in our region. We’ve sailed peacefully alongside orcas on many other occasions.

Nonetheless, the situation we faced in the Mediterranean was unfamiliar and unnerving.

On the nearly 1,400-mile, four-week Iberian Peninsula leg of our journey—along the coasts of Spain and Portugal and across the formidable Bay of Biscay—orcas would dictate when and how we moved. The animals’ specific whereabouts remain unknown until confirmed by a sighting or closer encounter. What’s considered a safe zone one week could be an orca playground the next. For sailors, unlucky timing might mean the difference between a smooth passage and a voyage’s end.

For weeks it had felt like we’d been living backstage in a reality show, with events unfolding in frighteningly real time. Since leaving Greece in early September, I’d been following the status of the Iberian orcas carefully, knowing that our time to cross into their territory was quickly approaching. As we sailed west, the number of attacks steadily increased and the odds of an encounter in the area seemed uncomfortably high.

On Halloween night, while we celebrated Dia de las Brujas in Santa Pola, Spain, a Polish boat named Grazie Mamma made its final sail. The 43-foot vessel, with its seasoned crew of six, was struck by several orcas near Tangier, Morocco. Despite all efforts of the crew and the Moroccan navy to save the boat, it sank before it could be towed to the nearest harbor. It was the fourth orca-related sinking, and the second one of 2023. It was just one of eight orca attacks in the area to come in roughly as many days.

As we rounded the corner of southeastern Spain a week later, we knew we were headed directly into an orca hot spot.

One evening, Pat and I were on deck after the boys had gone to bed, staying up well past midnight to check weather, plan our route for the coming days, and talk orcas. We’d dropped anchor in a small cove after a sunset sail on flat seas punctuated only by a pod of spinner dolphins riding our bow. As placid as the day had been, our mood was tense: the next morning, we’d round into the Strait of Gibraltar, where much of the recent orca activity had taken place.

“Is it crazy to continue?” I asked. It was a question I’d gone over in my mind a hundred times before.

“I don’t see many alternatives,” Pat answered. Illuminated by the glare of my headlamp, his blue eyes shone intensely from under his sweatshirt hood.

We’d spent many hours worrying over the decision to transit this area, which is the only maritime exit from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. We’d considered other options for going north, including crossing France through a series of inland canals or waiting until the orca activity had diminished, but for many reasons neither of these seemed tenable.

“It’s hard to know if it’s like dealing with bears in Alaska—a risk but not an unreasonable one,” Pat said. “What are the actual chances of getting hit?”

“No one knows. That’s the problem,” I said.

As a researcher, I tend to be fact-driven. With the orcas, I was intent on gathering all available data to make an informed decision. I’d spent an absurd number of hours tracking reports and references online and trying to collate these into a semblance of an answer, to little avail.

Pat, while deferential to expert advice, was less apt to wait for all the information before acting. To his credit, such an approach can provide an easy excuse to never go anywhere.

After several more rounds of circular reasoning, our conversation lapsed into silence, with a tacit agreement taking the place of words. As we had for the previous two months of our trip, we’d continue to take it one day at a time. The deck felt cool against my bare feet as I leaned against the rail and looked up, searching for clarity in the dark sky.

Another encounter occurred just as we arrived at the port of Gibraltar for a resupply. On November 7, Australian sailors Eugenie Alder and her husband, Paul Alder, set off across the Strait of Gibraltar on Deo Juvante , their 62-foot catamaran. They’d left Spain early that morning with a convoy of six other boats, seeking safety in numbers. Orcas had been sighted in the strait, but Eugenie reasoned that a direct route would minimize their time in the orca zone while also allowing them to catch favorable winds to the Canary Islands.

With more than 22,000 ocean miles under her belt, Eugenie knew orcas weren’t the only factor to consider when planning a transatlantic passage. They’d been waiting several weeks for a suitable weather window to make their crossing; fall storms had begun to stack up and the clock was ticking.

At ten in the morning, three and a half miles from the Moroccan coast, Eugenie spotted two groups of fins in the distance. Minutes later, she felt the first impact, which she described to me as “taking a huge wave on the beam, or being rammed by a floating bulldozer.” An orca had hit them on the starboard side, knocking their 36-ton boat 90 degrees off course.

Eugenie immediately disabled the autopilot in hopes of reducing damage to the steering components, throttled up the engine, and called on the radio to alert other boats in the convoy that they’d been hit.

After swapping with her husband at the helm, she ran below to check for leaks. Following advice from other sailors’ experiences, she switched on the stereo and turned up the volume in both hulls—unfamiliar underwater sounds like music have been proposed as a possible short-term orca deterrent—but perhaps not quickly enough. Another blow came shortly after from the port side, followed by a powerful shove from behind.

“I saw the third one up close. When I looked out the stern porthole, there was a huge black body and tall dorsal fin right there. It was practically on top of us.”

As the “2023 Party Mix” she’d turned on blasted from the speakers, Eugenie watched the orca swim away from Deo Juvante , heading straight for a 43-foot catamaran sailing closely behind them.

“Everything felt exaggerated,” she said. “The noise of the engine at high revs, the music, the orca up close, the adrenaline.”

I’d met Eugenie online. We are both members of orcas.pt , an active and relatively tight-knit group of sailors, researchers, and others interested in minimizing sailboat-orca interactions. Organized by Rui Alves in 2022, the online group has grown in popularity among sailors for providing real-time updates on orca whereabouts. Working with Dr. Renaud de Stephanis from CIRCE, a marine-mammal research organization based in El Pelayo, Spain, and other partners, Alves merges scientific information with live reports to help inform sailors and prevent orca conflicts.

Before the Alders’ crossing, I’d been following their route planning via an orcas.pt Telegram chat. I saw Eugenie’s morning message indicating the group’s departure. Several hours later I read her post in horror: “Orcas in the strait we were hit 3 times not sure if any damage.”

“Repeat, Deo Juvante hit three times.”

Alves helped relay the information to orcas.pt members, clarifying where and when the encounter had occurred, while De Stephanis piped in a moment later: “Avoid the area where they are!!! You were just in their kitchen Eugenie,” he said. “Go close [to] the shore.”

“Hopefully we’re going out the front door now. Running as fast as we can,” Eugenie answered.

Deo Juvante and the other boats in the convoy were traveling so quickly toward shore that they aroused the interest of the harbormaster at Port Tanger Med II, who called by VHF to ask if they were part of a sailing race.

In the end, the Alders were among the lucky ones; there was no major damage to their boat and they were able to continue their passage to the Canaries, then across to the Caribbean. The catamaran sailing immediately behind them was also hit but reportedly sustained only minimal damage after being “roughed about a bit,” as Eugenie described it.

The other boats in their convoy revved their engines, played loud music, and threw sand into the water—tricks thought to interfere with an orca’s ability to “see” the boat via echolocation. They all escaped without contact, though at least one boat’s crew had been so shaken that, once they reached Morocco, they stopped for the season, abandoning their plans to continue across the Atlantic.

Mitigating risk is a familiar exercise for sailors. It’s what we do each time we read the marine weather forecast and plan a passage; it’s what keeps us safe in a constantly changing environment. We know we must abide by the rules of the sea: Expect the unexpected. Allow a little extra sea room around each headland; carry a spare set of charts; look for a weather window with a buffer; know where you can run if all else fails. 

After spending much of my adult life on sailboats, skiffs, rowboats, kayaks, and fishing boats, I have a deep respect for the power and unpredictability of the ocean.

A skipper doesn’t have survival suits and life rafts on board because she intends to use them but because even the most careful preparations carry with them a certain margin of error. Alves makes this point often in the orcas.pt forum: “There is no zero risk, and each skipper must decide what is best for their boat and their crew.”

It also never hurts to have luck on your side. So when a post from Alves said to pray to Neptune and throw some rum into the sea, I did it.

Simply avoiding the risk area might sound plausible from a distance, but it spans a large portion of the North Atlantic, including the single route in and out of the Mediterranean Sea. And unlike travel by air or road, nothing happens fast on a sailboat.

Waiting it out also brings up concerns about weather windows and visas running out. And there is a clear hypocrisy in telling live-aboard sailors to go home when, for many, the boats are their homes. Some insurance policies will cover orca-induced repairs but others, including ours, explicitly exclude such incidents, meaning that there is no financial recourse if a boat is severely damaged or sunk.

As a biologist, with two decades of experience studying species from chickadees to polar bears, I’m usually inclined to take the side of wildlife, aware that it’s too often human folly that leads to bad outcomes. But with orcas, I struggled to make sense of their behavior and decide how to mitigate the risk of a negative encounter. With bears there are well-founded avoidance strategies and reassuring statistics to lean on—in Alaska, a person is more likely to die from a dog bite or a bicycle accident than a bear attack.

But as the numbers of orca-sailboat conflicts skyrocketed, and the guidelines for safe passage seemed increasingly contradictory, I found little comfort in statistics.

One of the biggest challenges for sailors trying to avoid encounters is the lack of clear and well-supported guidance. There is no daily orca forecast, no reliable green light/red light system for passage making. In the end, I came to rely primarily on the orcas.pt maps and messaging groups, which offer real-time updates, measured advice, and a moderator whose tone strikes an impressively diplomatic balance between respect for whales and respect for sailors.

Alves is the first to acknowledge the limitations of trying to track orcas or to predict where attacks might occur. But some information is much better than none, and his good-faith effort to inform the parties with the most at stake has been well received. “My focus is to find solutions that permit orcas and sailors to share this beautiful place that is the sea,” Alves told me. “It is good for the sailors, and it is good for the orcas.”

In October 2023, the internationally renowned German sailing organization Trans-Ocean e.V. recognized Alves and De Stephanis for their work with an Ocean Award.

We followed the practical advice orcas.pt offered, which was to run as close to shore as possible, based on evidence that encounters are unlikely at depths of less than 65 feet. Shallow waters are generally the bane of sailors, who seek safety, and wind, offshore. But in this part of the world, so are orcas.

Shortly before we left Gibraltar, we learned about several other boats berthed nearby that were awaiting repairs from earlier orca incidents, reminding us of the hazards that waited just beyond the harbor entrance.

Swapping one set of risks for another, we clawed our way along the coast of southern Spain, navigating reefs and poorly marked fishing gear as we attempted to avoid becoming another orca statistic. Each time we saw an imposing Salvamento Maritimo ship, carrying Spanish search-and-rescue crews that have responded to and towed dozens of orca-damaged boats to safety over the past several years, we wondered where the next incident might occur.

In mid-November, after making it out of the Strait of Gibraltar safely, we rounded the southwestern corner of Portugal into the full force of the North Atlantic. We hoped we’d lessened our chances of orca encounters. Not because they didn’t regularly occur here—there had already been 15 attacks in the area that season and many more sightings—but because most of the orcas seemed to be busy chasing tuna, and sailboat rudders, elsewhere. All of the recent action had been recorded in the Strait of Gibraltar and along the coast of North Africa, the latter of which marked a southern range extension for such encounters.

Like most highly mobile predators, orcas aren’t known to stay put for long. Along the Iberian Peninsula, their movements typically follow those of bluefin tuna, which compose the bulk of their diet. Like their prey, orcas can travel at impressive speeds, with sustained swimming rates of more than eight miles per hour. Iberian orcas have also learned to capitalize on the relatively easy offerings of the tuna-fishing fleet, with a portion of their summertime feedings thought to come from plucking fish off of longlines.

Trying to track the movements of marine mammals is always challenging; throw a climate curveball in the mix and all bets are off. In the North Atlantic, 2023 was a staggeringly hot year, and 2024 is shaping up to be the same. Such changes mean that both predators and prey are likely to move beyond their historic ranges. The bottom line is that orcas follow the food, wherever it may take them.

After a weeklong period of relative quiet on the Iberian front, the orcas.pt live map of sightings and attacks flashed red again, and it showed a point nearly on top of us. A boat had just been hit near Sesimbra, Portugal, a small coastal port where we’d considered stopping for the night.

Elaine Summers was sailing with her husband and ten- and twelve-year-old sons on their boat Kendra when she heard a call on the radio about an orca attack nearby. She posted immediately to the orcas.pt site to alert other sailors in the area. I saw the message pop up with coordinates that made the skin on my neck crawl. The encounter had occurred just a few miles from our current position.

Like Kendra , the boat that had been hit was heading south, following our route in reverse. We’d sailed within a few hundred yards of each other just hours earlier, waving greetings from our cockpits.

On the afternoon of November 13, Stephan Tromp, skipper of Modus Vivendi , saw a tall, pointed dorsal fin a hundred yards away, moving parallel to his sailboat. The whale then made an abrupt 90-degree turn and, seconds later, collided with the boat on its starboard side.

“It looked like the orca tried to steer the boat,” he told me, “but because we have hydraulic steering the boat kept course.”

Tromp suspected the orca had intentionally targeted the rudder, a behavior that’s been reported in other attacks. When he dove down later to inspect for damage he saw bottom paint missing. As he wrote to me: “The whale knew what to do to damage the rudder because it hit the bottom 20cm,” presumably where the leverage on the rudder would be greatest. Tromp was fortunate that he had been relatively close to a harbor when the attack occurred; he was able to motor quickly toward shallower water and the interaction stopped.

This was the first encounter in this area in more than a month, and unwelcome news for all of us. The orcas were back.

As information about the encounter streamed in, Pat and I faced another decision point: sail on into the night, in hopes of passing out of the orcas’ current playground as quickly as possible, or take shelter and face the same problem the next day, lengthening our time of exposure to orcas and other coastal hazards.

Hugging the shore at the recommended 65-foot depth would be unwise in the dark under any conditions, and tonight was especially unsafe given the current sea state. Through binoculars, the sea spray I saw high on the cliffs gave a clear message: Stay away !

We were on a stretch of coastline notorious for its difficult-to-enter harbors and fierce surf breaks, such as the one at Nazare where the HBO series 100 Foot Wave was filmed. Terrifying video footage of what can happen when one ventures too close to a lee shore on a rough day had been circulating recently among the sailing community. In it, the mast of a sailboat swings wildly back and forth, the wind pushing the hull sideways, waves pummeling the keel until there’s nowhere left to go except onto the beach.

Sadly, the four Austrian sailors on the boat died in this incident, near Peniche, Portugal, in early November, a sobering reminder that certain seafaring rules must be respected.

As the sun began to slide below the wavering horizon, the tone on deck took on a heightened sense of urgency. While our friend Kevin entertained the boys below with Legos, Pat and I discussed our options.

“I don’t want to invite an attack, but it seems too late to change course now,” I said.

“Yeah, there are orcas out here somewhere, but breaking waves are a whole different animal to contend with,” Pat said. “I can’t see going anywhere near that coastline right now.”

Given the risks, there seemed to be only one reasonable option: we’d take a gamble with the orcas and sail far offshore. This meant that our current route would become a multiday passage, so Kevin, Pat, and I began regular four-hour watch rotations, with sleep, meals, and kid time squeezed into the margins.

Between checking instruments and adjusting sails, I filled the long hours in the cockpit thinking about our family’s relationship to orcas. Unlike many of the sailors we met in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, orcas weren’t strangers to us. I’d struggled with how to speak to my sons about this hazard. I didn’t want my fear or the recent media coverage to sour the magic of being in the company of whales.

Our family has been fortunate to see orcas dozens of times, from shore and at sea, in summer and winter, while traveling and at home. I recalled one cold December day five years earlier when my then two-year-old son called out “black ducks” from our front porch in Alaska; I turned to see six pointed fins rise in formation. He clapped and danced at the sight.

Even when they’re not immediately in our periphery, orcas have tended to linger somewhere nearby. They’re the mascot of my children’s elementary school and my alma mater. We have among our collective belongings a giant stuffed orca, an orca mug, orca earrings, orca-print sweatshirts, orca wall art, several orca school reports, and more orca memories than I can count. Orcas have long felt like a part of the family.

For a parent, there’s no easy way to juggle the challenges of an unconventional lifestyle with the reward of seeing the world up close. I don’t want to put my children at unnecessary risk, nor do I want them to grow up fearing the unknown. The orcas presented one of many such dilemmas that we face while living on our boat or off-grid in Alaska: how do we protect ourselves from the world while also embracing its wonders?

As we dodged orcas along the Iberian Peninsula, my younger son was reading A Whale of the Wild , a grade-school novel about a pod of orcas living in the Salish Sea in British Columbia. I’d come off night watch to find him asleep in his bunk, blond hair spread behind him, book open on his bare chest. To this day, he claims orcas to be his favorite animal.

For two more long weeks, until the last darkening days of November, we juggled the relative risks of weather and whales, staying or going, crossing the 350-mile Bay of Biscay between Spain and northern France directly or not at all. Like all oceans, the North Atlantic has many faces, smiling rainbows and light winds before twisting into a frothy gray rage. In the end, luck was on our side. When I saw the coast of England in the distance, more than a thousand miles of Iberian orca territory now in our wake, I finally relaxed.

So why are orcas ramming boats? There’s no simple answer. Like many complex animal behaviors, the origin of the latest fad has largely been left to speculation. The question has been debated a lot, as have proposed solutions, and it has gotten messy and controversial.

Many of the media reports have framed the Iberian orca situation as polemical, with wealthy yachties pitted against pissed-off whales, conservationists against recreationists, one expert against another. Commenters on Facebook groups and other online conversations tend to be strident voices advocating for whales to be punished for their bad behavior, by way of explosives or government interventions, or, conversely, animal-rights activists proposing romantic but wildly impractical solutions. Others highlight the obvious Malthusian undertones of the orcas’ behavior, a form of retribution exacted on the humans who’ve made such a mess of the ocean.

In my experience, sailors aren’t wont to blow up whales, any more than they’re inclined to trade out sails for motors. Having the rare opportunity to encounter whales and other marine wildlife on their own terms is one of the main draws of sailing.

At face value, it’s easy to take the orcas’ behavior as a giant middle finger to humans and our environmental malfeasance, especially during a time when the planet faces its greatest crisis yet. But these interpretations require a certain amount of arrogance, a human-centered worldview that presumes whales have nothing better to do than wreak revenge on us. They also echo the old and tired trope of man versus nature.

There is no evidence to suggest wild orcas are aggressive toward humans—the few orca-caused human deaths have happened among whales held in captivity , often under inhumane and highly stressful circumstances. By assigning our own emotion and intent to a whale, we do it a disservice, in part by emboldening bad behavior from humans who claim they are responding “in kind.”

An orca comes for a friendly visit in the author’s home waters of Chatham Strait, Alaska. (Video: Caroline Van Hemert)

According to marine biologists, the most likely explanation is that the attacks on sailboats constitute a form of play. The rudders may be a popularly trending orca toy, with curious juveniles “rewarded” by the satisfaction of breaking rudders, akin to kids smashing ice at recess. Orcas are known to display playful behavior. Elsewhere in the world, the whales have amused onlookers by balancing dead salmon on their heads like hats, rubbing their bellies on pebble beaches, and deliberately moving crab pots from one location to another.

Another hypothesis suggests that the rudders offer useful teaching tools for mimicking behaviors necessary for the whales’ existence, like socialization or hunting practices.

It’s quite possible we’ll never know why orcas are targeting sailboats. As a biologist, I’ve learned not to make any assumptions. The complexity of animal intelligence may exceed our own ability to perceive or describe it; often, the more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know.

Unfortunately, head-butting boats hasn’t earned the Iberian orcas any popularity prizes, and they need all the help they can get. In 2017, this subpopulation was declared “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to the small number of individuals and low adult-female survival rates, meaning the population is likely to continue to shrink unless conditions change.

These whales must contend with many of the same challenges other marine mammals face worldwide: noise pollution, climate change, environmental contaminants, changes in fish stocks, and boat collisions, the latter of which are typically caused by ships hitting whales rather than the converse. But this new form of conflict instigated by the whales bodes poorly for orcas and sailors alike.

It’s unclear where this problem, or the orcas themselves, might be headed next. It’s possible the rudder banging will fizzle, like other orca fads, the whales eventually losing interest the way they did with the fish-for-hats trend. It’s also possible the behavior will intensify or expand in scope.

In 2023, the latitudinal distance of sailboat encounters with orcas expanded substantially. In June 2023, a similar incident with an orca was reported a thousand miles north in the North Sea, where a single-handed Dutch sailor was repeatedly rammed during his passage from the Shetland Islands to Norway. Occurring far outside the range of Iberian orcas, this attack raised the possibility that such behaviors had spread to other pods.

What to do about the problem is another question entirely. The prospect of bringing all stakeholders together is complicated. Many of the major players—government agencies, conservation groups, sailing organizations, whale-watching tour guides, and commercial fishers—have diverse and conflicting interests. Trust is often in short supply. Coordinating working groups and sharing data across political borders requires patience and a high tolerance for bureaucratic gymnastics.

As others begin to step forward, and the international community takes interest, I’ll continue to tip my hat to Alves, who recognizes a critical truth: for sailors and whales alike, the ocean is home. Orcas.pt is collaborating with the Portuguese navy and other groups to develop new maps and expand its reach. And they aren’t alone in their efforts.

Last summer, in response to the widely circulating rumors about vengeful or aggressive orcas, an open letter from 30 scientists attempted to counter misinformation, emphasizing that assigning human emotion to whale behavior is inaccurate and potentially dangerous. The International Whaling Commission held a workshop on the topic in February, and it recently issued a public report emphasizing the need for additional research and collaboration. On a smaller scale, a graduate project led by Sophie Martel and advisor Dr. Niels Einarsson from the Stefansson Arctic Institute in Akureyri, Iceland, is studying the attitudes of sailors toward orcas to help identify information needs and partnership opportunities.

“We have competent researchers, scientists, and the government that will do some work to reduce this kind of incident,” Alves told me, “…[but] only together can people find a solution, share knowledge, and be informed about it.”

The sailors I corresponded with who’d had orca encounters expressed no ill will toward the whales. Among the lucky ones, like Tromp and the Alders, the experience might have been frightening but ended with minimal damage and no harm to crew. Other orcas.pt members sustained broken rudders and steering components, but most set out again after repairs were complete.

For those sailors who sustained major damage or lost their boats, it would be fair to expect a more antagonistic response. But what I found among the sailing community at large, including those who’d suffered, was not extremism but a measured respect for the ocean and the wildlife it supports. Even the owners of the Grazie Mamma , the boat that sank on Halloween night, had this public statement to offer on their Facebook page: “Love for the sea always wins.”

Caroline Van Hemert and her sons Dawson and Huxley watch dolphins ride the bow wake of Turnstone off the west coast of Portugal. (Video: Patrick Farrell)

On our final passage of 2023 in mid-December, blowing across the Irish Sea toward Scotland, where we would spend the winter, dolphins arrived to escort us. I swapped out at the helm with Pat just before dawn, taking the last night watch for the year as we approached the winter solstice. Ahead, the sky was clear, phosphorescence glittered, and a pod of cetaceans glowed brightly off our bow. Behind us were several thousand hard-won miles, and a now distant Orca Alley.

I nodded to the dolphins, thanked Turnstone for keeping us safe, and offered a splash of my coffee to Neptune.

Love for the sea always wins.

Caroline Van Hemert and her family spent the spring sailing, skiing, and climbing in Norway from their boat. They are currently in Iceland. Next stop: Greenland, with tentative plans (per the sailor’s motto: written in sand at low tide ) to return home to Alaska sometime in 2025.

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