The recurring pattern has become the focus of much research since the first incident in May 2020. One study from the journal Marine Mammal Science details at least 49 incidents in which orcas made contact with boats in 2020 alone. Researchers recorded a total of 505 interactions between orcas and boats—ranging from orcas simply swimming toward the boats to damaging them—since 2020. Check out this footage from an orca encounter in October 2021 off the coast of Portugal:
“It is a rare behavior that has only been detected in this part of the world,” Alfredo Lopez, an orca researcher with the Atlantic Orca Working Group, told Scientific American.
Teaching Young Killer Whales to Attack Boats
Greg Blackburn, an experienced sailor from Leeds, U.K., witnessed what he thought was teaching behavior when an orca with two calves started ramming his boat on May 2 near Tangier, Morocco.
“You can see … the matriarch coming up and attacking the rudder with [the] calf [beside] her, then she drops back and then the little calf gets in to have a go,” he told 9News. “It was definitely some form of education, teaching going on.”
Blackburn manipulated the sails on his boat to “be as boring as possible” when he figured out the orcas were there. This is in line with what the Cruising Association and the Atlantic Orca Working group recommend when orcas start interfering with a boat; power it down, unfurl the sails, and disconnect autopilot. Eventually, the orcas swam away, but not after doing some serious damage to Blackburn’s vessel.
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“Obviously that was hard enough with everything that was happening,” he said. “[But] there was nothing we could really do.”