There has been a remarkable change in Orca's behavior for weeks. Young male Orcas have been ramming and tearing pieces and even sinking yachts off the coast of Europe. The behavior is not uncommon, but there has been an uptick in strikes off Portugal's coast since it has earned much more attention than previous isolated attacks. And now, the behavior of young males has spread off Scotland.
Over the years, the behavior has sunk three boats and damaged hundreds. Two sailing ships were attacked most recently, participating in the International Monohull Open Class Association, an annual race of sixty-foot sailing vessels in the Atlantic.
Perhaps a matriarch named Gladis was injured by a ship, and members of her pod may have undertaken revenge.
Since 2020, there have been more than 500 encounters between yachts and orcas in the area, according to one of the study's co-authors, Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and a representative of the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica, or Atlantic Orca Working Group.
López Fernandez believes that a female known as White Gladis, who leads the group of around 40 animals, may have had a traumatizing encounter with a boat or a fishing net. In an act of revenge, she is teaching her pod-mates how to carry out revenge attacks with her encouragement, researchers believe.
"The orcas are doing this on purpose, of course, we don't know the origin or the motivation, but defensive behavior based on trauma, as the origin of all this, gains more strength for us every day," López Fernandez told Live Science.
It's an intriguing possibility, says Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute.
"I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge," she says. "I don't think we can completely rule it out."
Losing one's ability to steer these sailing yachts is quite dangerous. It's essential to recognize that there is no record of an Orca attacking or killing a human, except when a trainer is at a Seaworld aquarium. The trainer was able to calm the female down, and he escaped serious injury.
Marine experts are weighing in.
Deborah Giles, the science and research director at Wild Orca, a conservation group based in Washington state, is also skeptical of the hypothesis. She points out that killer whale populations in waters off Washington "were highly targeted" in the past as a source for aquariums. She says seal bombs, small charges that fishers throw into the water in an effort to scare sea lions away from their nets, were dropped in their path while helicopters and boats herded them into coves.
"The pod never attacked boats after that," she says. "It just doesn't ring true to me."
Deborah Giles commented that Orca's behavior has not spread to other pods; she commented in early June. We now know pods off Scotland have begun to ram boats as well as in Scandinavia.
Other experts believe that ramming is a fad, a game with young orca males. They specifically damage the rudder with their teeth, but they ram the hull repeatedly. One yachtsman described it as being hit by a bus.
Scientists hypothesize that orcas like the water pressure produced by a boat's propeller. "What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," de Stephanis says. So, when they encounter a sailboat that isn't running its engine, "they get kind of frustrated and that's why they break the rudder."
That idea doesn't explain a recent violent encounter with a catamaran using its sail but with the propeller running.
Whatever the reason for the encounters, this headline by the Atlantic is absurd and dangerous. And potentially a danger from humans targeting the whales for death. In Scotland, two orcas were named and identified, making them potential targets for human attack.
Orca boys will be boys, in my estimation. They may find yacht ramming as just fun or want to warn them to keep their fishing lines away from their food supply.
Whales are clearly unhappy with fishing lines, as evidenced by this sperm whale off Alaska. They eat the fisherman's catch right off the hook. Good for them.
In the Gulf of Alaska, as well as in longline fisheries throughout the world from the Bering Sea to the Antarctic and tropical waters between, toothed whales — that is, any whale that feeds with teeth instead of baleen, such as sperm, pilot, and killer whales — are learning to see fishers and their gear as a source of an easy meal. Scientists researching this behavior, known as depredation, say whales are increasingly eating lucrative catches right off the hook instead of foraging naturally. There’s no easy way to stop it, and the behavior is spreading through whale culture. Whales’ penchant for hooked fish might be the biggest fisheries story that hardly anyone knows about.We all love the film Free Willie and policymakers must not ask us to side with the yachts. The outcry would be deafening if they did.