yacht rock killer

Pod of killer whales attacks and sinks 50-foot yacht in Strait of Gibraltar

The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.

A pod of killer whales attacked and sunk a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco, officials confirmed to ABC News.

Two people were on board the vessel when the incident occurred Sunday at 9 a.m. local time, according to Spain's maritime authority.

The nearly 50-foot yacht, named The Alboran Cognac, was 15 miles from Cabo Espartel in Morocco when an unknown number of orcas began ramming it.

MORE: Killer whales learn 'coordinated' attacks on sailboats, some observers say

The couple alerted Spanish authorities and a rescue team arrived to extricate them from the vessel an hour after the attack, though officials were unable to salvage the sinking boat.

There have been approximately 700 orca attacks since 2020, according to GT Orca Atlantica, a conservation group, and officials believe there are more than 37 orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, separating Europe from Africa.

"During the summer and autumn of 2020, interaction events began to occur between several specimens of this species and vessels, mainly sailboats, both in the Strait of Gibraltar and in the waters of the Galician coast," according to Spanish government officials. "These interactions have ranged from persistent approaches to ships, to ramming the hull and rudder, causing various types of damage, which continue today."

It's unclear why orcas attack boats, though experts hypothesize the marine mammals could be targeting vessels for sport or they feel threatened.

According to a study in Biological Conservation , a peer-reviewed journal, "sophisticated learning abilities" have been found to exist in orcas.

In June 2023, racing yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar had a close encounter with a pod of orcas, race officials said at the time.

Crew members aboard a rival pair of 65-foot yachts were on the final leg of The Ocean Race, a global sailing competition, when they reported being intercepted by killer whales as their boats approached the Strait of Gibraltar.

No fatalities were reported in the incident, according to officials.

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Orcas Sink Fourth Boat Off Iberia, Unnerving Sailors

Orcas caused enough damage to sink a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar last week. A small pod has been slamming boats in recent years, worrying skippers charting routes closer to shore.

By Isabella Kwai

The yacht Grazie Mamma II carried its crew along the coastlines and archipelagos of the Mediterranean. Its last adventure was off the coast of Morocco last week, when it encountered a pod of orcas.

The marine animals slammed the yacht’s rudder for 45 minutes, causing major damage and a leak, according to Morskie Mile , the boat’s Polish operators. The crew escaped, and rescuers and the Moroccan Navy tried to tow the yacht to safety, but it sank near the port of Tanger Med, the operator said on its website.

The account of the sinking is adding to the worries of many sailors along the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where marine biologists are studying a puzzling phenomenon: Orcas are jostling and ramming boats in interactions that have disrupted dozens of voyages and caused at least four boats in the past two years to sink.

The largest of the dolphin family, orcas are playful apex predators that hunt sharks, whales and other prey but are generally amiable to humans in the wild . The orcas hunting in the Strait of Gibraltar are considered to be endangered , and researchers have noticed an upsurge of unusual behavior since 2020: A small group of the marine animals have been battering boats in the busy routes around Portugal, Spain and Morocco.

While most interactions occur in the waters of southwestern Europe and North Africa, an orca also reportedly rammed a yacht some 2,000 miles north off the coast of Scotland, according to The Guardian.

“Orcas are complex, intelligent, highly social,” Erich Hoyt, a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation and author of “Orca: The Whale Called Killer,” said. “We’re still at the early stages of trying to understand this behavior.”

Researchers have pushed back at the idea that orcas are attacking vessels. Instead, they theorize that the rudders of boats have become a plaything for curious young orcas and that the behavior has become a learned fad spreading through the population. Another hypothesis, according to biologists who published a study on the population last June, is that the ramming is an “adverse behavior” because of a bad experience between an orca and a boat — though researchers tend to favor the first.

It is unclear what will stop the ramming, whether it’s playful or otherwise, a point that has left anxious skippers traveling these parts sharing advice in Facebook groups dedicated to tracking such interactions .

“It’s been an interesting summer hiding in shallow waters,” said Greg Blackburn, a skipper based in Gibraltar. Orcas slammed into a boat he was commanding in May and chewed at the rudder, he said, though the vessel was able to return to shore.

The encounter left an impression: On a recent trip to Barcelona, Mr. Blackburn had to pass through a patch where orcas had been sighted the week before. “I genuinely felt sick for about three hours,” he said, “just watching the horizon constantly for a fin to pop up.”

Conservationists, maritime rescue groups and yacht clubs are partnering to navigate the challenge of preserving an endangered population and helping sailors avoid calamity. The Cruising Association, a club supporting sailors, has recommended safety protocols for orca encounters, such as disconnecting the boat’s autopilot and staying quiet. Skippers have offered one another anecdotal advice to deter attacks, including throwing sand into the water and banging loudly on the boat.

Before leaving shore, seagoers can also consult digital platforms that now track reported orca sightings and interactions in the region. This can help them avoid the animals, or chart a route closer to shore, said Bruno Díaz López, a biologist and the director of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute based in Galicia, Spain.

“We suggested the boats stay in shallow waters,” he said, adding that they had noticed more boats changing their journeys. “Maybe the trip takes longer, yes. But it is worth it.”

Mr. Blackburn, the skipper, said he had heard of people resorting to throwing firecrackers into the sea to try to scare the animals away, adding that the boats served as people’s homes on the ocean. “At the end of the day, if you’re protecting your home what are you going to do?”

But the ocean is the orcas’ home, and conservationists say scaring the animals is not a solution.

“It is not about winning a battle, because this is not a war,” Mr. López said. “We need to be respectful.”

Isabella Kwai is a breaking news reporter in the London bureau. She joined The Times in 2017 as part of the Australia bureau. More about Isabella Kwai

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Orcas Sink 50-Foot Yacht Off the Coast of Morocco

The vessel’s two passengers were evacuated onto an oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar. The incident marks the fifth vessel the mammals have sunk in recent years

Daily Correspondent

The boat-ramming orcas are back in action: Two people had to be rescued from a sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar after the black-and-white marine mammals damaged the vessel so badly it later sank, reporters Reuters ’ David Latona.

The incident occurred around 9 a.m. local time Sunday, some 14 miles north of Cape Spartel in northern Morocco. Passengers aboard the 50-foot Alboran Cognac felt blows to the yacht’s hull and saw that the rudder had been damaged. As water began leaking onto the ship, they contacted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Tarifa, Spain, which directed them to prepare for an emergency rescue.

About an hour later, a nearby oil tanker picked up the two crew members, who were customers of Spain-based Alboran Charter , which owns the yacht, reports the Washington Post ’s Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff.

The boat took on more water and sank soon after. It’s not clear how many orcas targeted the vessel.

The sinking of the Alboran Cognac is the latest in a string of incidents involving orcas and ships in the Strait of Gibraltar. The highly intelligent, social marine mammals made headlines last spring , when they sank a Swiss yacht called Champagne off the coast of Spain. In November, they brought down another ship , a Polish sailing yacht called the Grazie Mamma .

But the animals’ unusual behavior goes back even further: Since 2020, mariners have reported 700 interactions between orcas and ships in the Strait of Gibraltar, per Reuters. The Alboran Cognac is the fifth vessel orcas have sunk in the last three years, reports Live Science ’s Harry Baker.

Most of the incidents have been recorded in the Strait of Gibraltar, a waterway linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The strait, which is bordered by Morocco to the south and by Spain to the north, is home to a distinct—and critically endangered —subpopulation of fewer than 50 orcas .

However, last June, orcas also rammed into a ship in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway, roughly 2,000 miles away from the Strait of Gibraltar. Scientists weren’t quite sure what to make of that incident, which raised the possibility that the destructive behavior was spreading to different groups of orcas.

In the meantime, authorities are urging mariners in the Strait of Gibraltar to exercise caution this summer. Spain’s Maritime Safety and Rescue Society recommends avoiding a large area between the Gulf of Cádiz and the Strait of Gibraltar; the agency also suggests that mariners sail as close to the coast as possible, especially from May to August, when orcas are more likely to be in the region.

If sailors do encounter orcas, the agency recommends they keep the vessel moving and head toward shallower waters. People onboard the ship should remain in the middle of the vessel and not approach the sides, where they may be at risk of falling overboard.

The agency also asked mariners to notify authorities of any orca encounters and, if possible, to take photographs of the creatures for identification.

Scientists remain puzzled by the orcas’ destructive behavior. A leading hypothesis is that a female nicknamed “White Gladis” started ramming into ships after having some sort of traumatic run-in with a vessel; she may also have been pregnant when she first started targeting ships. Since orcas are social creatures, other members of White Gladis’ group may have simply followed her lead and mimicked her actions.

“The idea of revenge is a great story, but there’s no evidence for it,” said Lori Marino , a neuroscientist and the founder and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, to BBC Newsbeat ’s Shaun Dacosta last year.

Another possibility is that the orcas are curious about ships, or maybe, they’re just having fun.

“They’re probably socializing, yucking it up with each other about their adventures without realizing the terror they’re creating in their moments of joy,” said Andrew Trites , a marine mammal researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, to Business Insider ’s Erin Heger last summer.

From January to May 2024, the interactions recorded by the GT Orcas APP and @crewingservice were a total of 26. It is a 65% lower than the 2023 records and 40% less than the average. Interactions have been reduced since the wide distribution of the orcas. — Orca Ibérica GTOA (@Orca_Iberica) May 14, 2024

Orcas have also been known to temporarily exhibit other unusual behaviors, like placing dead salmon atop their heads. The boat-ramming behavior may be another, similarly short-lived fad that the Strait of Gibraltar orcas will eventually move on from.

And they may already be doing just that: Between January and May 2024, the number of reported interactions with orcas was 65 percent lower than during the same period in 2023 and 40 percent lower than the average for those months across 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to the Atlantic Orca Working Group .

Whatever the orcas’ motivations, scientists have urged onlookers to avoid assigning human emotions to the animals’ behaviors. Though the boat-ramming killer whales have given rise to internet memes and merchandise that suggests they’re plotting an “ orca uprising ,” researchers argue that the marine mammals are not acting with malicious intent.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

Orcas rip rudder off boat and follow it all the way to port, in 1st known attack of its kind

Previous reported interactions between orcas and sailboats followed a clear pattern, with the animals losing interest and swimming away once they had broken the rudder.

A group of orcas recently nearly sank another sailboat in the Strait of Gibraltar and followed the vessel all the way to port — marking the first-known case of the killer whales stalking a boat after destroying its rudder.

Orcas started behaving unusually and attacking boats in 2020. Since July 2020, there have been 744 reported encounters, 505 of which involved contact between the animals and the ship, according to the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA). One in five interactions have prevented boats from sailing on and three have ended in vessels sinking.

Most of these interactions ended in the orcas losing interest in the boat once they'd broken its rudder. But during the recent attack on the night of May 24, the orca pod continued to stalk the yacht "Mustique" even after damaging the vessel. It is unclear whether this marks a shift in the orcas' learned pattern of aggressive behaviors towards sailboats .

Related: In rare attack, 30 orcas 'badly wounded' 2 adult gray whales in California  

"They didn't leave after the rudder was removed," April Boyes, an experienced sailor who was aboard the Mustique, told Live Science in a message on social media. 

The crew first spotted the orcas around 9:30 p.m. local time as they were sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar. "It didn't take long for them to start hitting our rudder and the force of this would spin the helm violently and you could feel the vibration through the deck," Boyes wrote in a blog post .

After breaking the rudder , the orcas seemed to lose interest and swam away. But 20 minutes later, the pod returned and began circling the boat. "After an hour of the orcas continuing to hit the rudder it was evidently now completely destroyed and water started to flow into the boat," Boyes wrote. 

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The crew alerted the Spanish coastguard, which towed the boat to the port of Barbate. But even then the orcas lingered. "The orcas continued to follow the boat until we got inshore," Boyes wrote.

Experts with the GTOA, who have been keeping track of the unusual encounters between orcas and boats off the Iberian coast, declined to comment on whether the new behavior of pursuing the battered boat signified a shift in the orcas' strategy.

"Navigators are not sending us reports of the interactions so we cannot answer blindly and without information about these cases," Alfredo López Fernandez , a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and representative of the GTOA, told Live Science in an email.

Spanish officials and researchers from the group Conservation, Information and Research on Cetaceans (CIRCE) plan to use satellite trackers to monitor six orcas that have been involved in attacks. One orca has already been tagged, government representatives said in a statement .

"Thanks to the GPS of the killer whales and prediction models, we have some variables that allow us to predict where these animals are going to be," Renaud de Stephanis , the president of CIRCE, told the Spanish broadcaster RTVE . "100% of the attacks that have occurred since March until now could have been prevented simply by people being informed." 

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But some experts think the measure could backfire. "Many of us have reservations because we think that satellite tagging is not going to be of any use in relation to interactions, if not to aggravate the situation, because it is done by shooting and the killer whales will surely not find it very funny," López Fernandez told RTVE. 

De Stephanis also recently suggested that sailors could deter orcas by gluing anti-pigeon spikes onto the rudder. "We believe that one solution to reduce the impact, which is cost-effective and highly effective, would be to install anti-pigeon spikes cut to 3 cm [1.2 inches] on the back of the rudder," he wrote in a Facebook post on June 2. "The system should be easy to install (using Velcro or underwater glue) and easy to remove."

For now, sailors should "be prepared if they sail in those areas, avoid sailing at night and approaching the coast, as far as possible," López Fernandez told Live Science.

Sascha is a U.K.-based trainee staff writer at Live Science. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Southampton in England and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and the health website Zoe. Besides writing, she enjoys playing tennis, bread-making and browsing second-hand shops for hidden gems.

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Watch CBS News

Sailors are looking for new ways to ward off orca attacks – and say blasting thrash metal could be a "game changer"

By Li Cohen

Updated on: November 16, 2023 / 10:18 AM EST / CBS News

For years, killer whales have been attacking and sometimes capsizing boats in the waters off Spain and Portugal. Now, sailors are working together to find a way to deter the orcas, and may have found a "game changer" solution – blasting thrash metal music. 

GTOA, a group that researches killer whales in this region, including the Strait of Gibraltar where orcas sank a yacht in a 45-minute attack last month, has recorded hundreds of interactions between the species and boats in recent years. The number of interactions – when the whales fix their attention on a boat and either approach, observe or touch it – has increased over the past three years, the group found. 

There were 52 interactions meeting over a five-month period in the region in 2020, the group found. Two years later, in 2022, there were 207 recorded interactions. There have been several documented instances reported this year. 

In a Facebook group of more than 59,000 people, sailors are swapping ideas of the best methods to save themselves from experiencing such events. Many group members have shared their own encounters, with one person saying at one point, the whales were "putting their noses on the rudders and pushing." 

"Any movement that makes that action uncomfortable for them will deter them," they said. "... I just waggled the helm pretty violently so they would not want to put their noses there. Worked instantly and they got bored quick!" 

Earlier this week, one person sought advice as he prepared to cross from the Spanish city of Málaga to the country's Canary Islands. Sand, fireworks and loud horns were all suggested to keep away the whales, but one person had a suggestion he claimed was a sure-fire way to avoid an attack. 

"When we had an interaction last year, I'm pretty sure that rattling the hull by playing full volume east European thrash metal, was the game changer," he said. "... They made three approaches and left after 5 mins without doing any damage.. which was 2 or 3 minutes into the music. Good luck." 

Another sailor, Florian Rutsch, told The New York Times that he's had two encounters with orcas. In May, he tried putting sand in the water and also put the boat in full throttle to rush away, which he said worked. Then during his second encounter in November, Rutsch said he also tried music – a Spotify playlist called "Metal for Orcas" – that he played through an underwater speaker. In that instance, the music didn't work, he said, and the orcas ended up attacking his vessel's rudder. His crew had to be rescued by Spanish authorities. 

"No one knows what works, what doesn't work," he told The Times. 

While sailors are trying various tactics to avoid interactions that could result in the sinking of their vessels, the Spanish government has its own set of rules for what is allowed. Blasting music is seemingly prohibited. 

According to GTOA, a set of rules known as Royal Decree 1727/2007 – which outlines protections for whales and other cetaceans – says "no activity can be carried out that could kill, harm or disturb the animals." Specifically, the group says, people who come across whales in Spanish waters cannot purposefully come into contact, throw substances that could harm the animals, prevent them from moving freely, separate them, or "produce loud and shrill noises and sounds." 

Why are killer whales attacking boats? 

It remains to be seen what exactly is causing the increase in orca attacks. Over the summer, wildlife conservationist and biologist Jeff Corwin told CBS News it's "interesting behavior" that highlights the animals' intelligence. 

"These are curious creatures, they're very intelligent creatures," he said. "...What we're seeing is adaptive behavior. We're learning about how they actually learn from their environment, and then take those skill sets and share them and teach them to other whales." 

He said those skills may have come from a single famous orca – White Gladis – after her own encounter. But it could also be some sort of play or game to the animals, or even a response to a traumatic event they could have experienced.

"There are a number of examples where boats have stoved or hit whales in the Mediterranean and off the coast of Spain," he said. "So, it's likely that White Gladis had this traumatic experience, learned from it. Now, she associates whales as part of her team to survive in this pod, and she's looking at these boats as the enemy." 

Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news.

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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 killer whales going ‘Moby-Dick’ on yachts lately? Experts doubt it’s revenge

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The attacks started suddenly and inexplicably in the spring of 2020 — pods of endangered killer whales began ramming yachts and fishing boats in European waters, pushing some off course and imperiling others.

Since then, there have been more than 500 reports of orca encounters off the Iberian Peninsula, the most recent occurring Thursday when a trio of whales rubbed against and bumped a racing sloop in the Strait of Gibraltar.

In most cases, the financial and structural damage has ranged from minimal to moderate: Boats have been spun and pushed, and rudders have been smashed and destroyed. Three vessels have been so badly mauled, they’ve sunk.

As the encounters continue, shaky video captured by thrilled and fearful seafarers has ignited a global internet sensation, while experts have struggled to explain the behavior and its timing. The seemingly militant whales have also won over a legion of adoring fans — many transfixed by the notion that the mammals are targeting rich people and exacting revenge for all the wrongs humanity has waged on their species and their ocean home.

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Others wonder if the unusually large pods of multi-ton cetaceans now appearing off the coasts of San Francisco , Monterey and Nantucket, Mass., may soon follow suit.

Despite such rampant speculation on social media, most killer whale scientists have offered a very different interpretation. The Moby-Dick “revenge” narrative for the behavior is highly unlikely, they say.

“That just doesn’t sit right with me,” said Deborah Giles, an orca researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle and director of Wild Orca, a Washington-based conservation research organization.

She noted that despite the long history of orcas being hunted by whalers — and more recently marine parks — these top ocean predators have typically demonstrated a lack of aggression toward humans. There are no verified instances of orcas killing humans in the wild. The only deaths have occurred in marine parks and aquariums, where animals taken from the wild and forced to perform for humans in small tanks have attacked their trainers.

“So, I just don’t really see it as an agonistic activity; I just don’t see it going down like that,” said Giles, who has studied killer whales in the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound and the Salish Sea for nearly 20 years.

Instead, she thinks the animals are engaging with boats because the vessels are “either making an interesting vibration or sound, or maybe it’s the way the water moves past the keels that is intriguing to these animals.”

The scientific literature is rife with anecdotes and research showing high cognition, playfulness and sociality in the species known as Orcinus orca — and examples of what appear to be the cultural transmission of new behaviors, either via teaching or observation.

In 1987, a female orca in the Pacific waters off North America was spotted sporting a dead salmon on her head. Within weeks, individuals in two other pods also began wearing fish hats. The trend lasted a few months and fizzled out within a year.

In South Africa, the killing of white sharks appears to be growing in popularity among a resident group of killer whales in the waters near Cape Town; Giles has watched a local trend of “phocoenacide” — porpoise killing — grow among a group of whales off the San Juan Islands.

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In both cases, the behavior does not appear to be for the purpose of feeding, Giles said. The orcas do not eat the dead animals. For instance, in the case of the porpoises, the killer whales played with them — bandying them about, sometimes surfing with them, other times carrying them on the orcas’ pectoral fins — until the porpoises drowned, at which point they were abandoned, she said.

“Fads” are not unique to orcas. Other animals, including primates and other cetaceans, have also been observed to adopt new behaviors, which then spread through a social group.

Susan Perry, a biological anthropologist at UCLA, has studied a population of capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica, where she has observed and demonstrated the cultural transmission of novel behaviors, including “eye poking” — in which one monkey slips its finger “knuckle deep” between the eyelid and the bottom of another monkey’s eyeball.

But the idea that the whales’ behavior is a response to trauma has gripped many — including the researchers who most closely study this population and first documented the behavior.

In a paper published last year , a team of Portuguese and Spanish researchers suggested the behavior seen in the Strait of Gibraltar orcas could have been triggered by a variety of causes, including trauma.

Alfredo López Fernandez, a killer whale researcher with GT Orca Atlántica, a Portuguese conservation research organization, said it is impossible to know how it started, or which whale or whales may have initially instigated the attacks.

He listed several adult females as the possible original perpetrators — which then taught or showed others how to participate.

There is White Gladis, which seems to be present in most of the attacks; Gladis Negra, which was observed to have injuries in 2020, possibly from a ship strike; and Gray Gladis, which in 2018 witnessed another whale get trapped in fishing gear.

Gladis is a name given to all orcas in the pod that interact with boats; it comes from Orca gladiator, an early nickname given to these boat-jouncing killer whales.

“All of this has to make us reflect on the fact that human activities, even in an indirect way, are the origin of this behavior,” he said.

For Cal Currier’s part, he thinks the whales are entertaining themselves.

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Nearly six months after Martinez Refining Co. released hazardous materials, officials have announced reassuring soil test results.

June 9, 2023

On June 8, as the 17-year-old Palo Alto High School senior sailed through the strait with his father, James, 55, and brother, West, 19, their 30-foot sailboat was accosted and spun in circles.

The rudder was battered, and the trio had to be towed to shore in Spain. “They were playing,” Currier said.

He said that when they pulled in, they were told roughly 30 other boats were ahead of them in line for repairs; half were damaged by the killer whales. He said there were no bite marks on the rudder, and he did not sense aggression from the whales.

For Giles, the Washington killer whale researcher, her biggest concern is that the longer the whales continue this behavior, the more likely it is they’ll get injured or suffer retribution at the hands of humans.

She’s hoping authorities in the region will consider non-traumatic hazing techniques — such as instructing boats to play or make sounds that irritate the whales — to get them to stop. She said studies have shown orcas don’t like the calls of pilot whales and will generally swim away if they hear them. Loud banging sounds, such as hitting a large, metal oikomi pipe underwater, can also be effective.

“Anything that might irritate them, make them lose their interest or swim away,” Giles said.

Currier said he wasn’t too rattled by the whole experience — unlike his dad and brother, who were “scared for their lives.”

The trio have since sold the boat and intend to spend the rest of the vacation on dry land.

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Susanne Rust is an award-winning investigative reporter specializing in environmental issues. She is based in the Bay Area.

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Orca Attack Leaves Yacht Heading for Rock Collision

Yet another sailing yacht has been "attacked" by orcas off the coast of Spain after a spate of similar incidents that have become dramatically more frequent over the last few months.

The most-recent incident took place off the coast of Estepona on July 21. The boat, the Kapote Tercero, was intercepted on its way to the Copa del Rey regatta, according to the organisers of the event.

"The orcas have attacked again tonight, this time already inside the Mediterranean at the height of Estepona," the organizers of the Copa del Rey regatta, Copa del Rey MAPFRE, wrote in a post on Twitter . "The crew [...] are safe and without personal injury."

Footage taken by the crew shows the ship's rudder in tatters as it was pulled out from the water.

#orcas 📹 El “Kapote Tercero” sale de agua en #Estepona para evaluar daños y Santi Villagran de @Puertosherry nos cuenta cómo fue el incidente con las orcas esta noche frente a la costa malagueña. En el ánimo del equipo portuense está reparar y continuar rumbo a @RCNPalma para… pic.twitter.com/KNqdVvRfsA — Copa del Rey MAPFRE (@CopaReyMAPFRE) July 21, 2023

"We felt a very strong hit and the rudder started to turn. The boat heeled completely," crew member Santi Villagrans can be heard saying in the footage shared by Copa del Rey MAPFRE. "When I looked at the back, I saw them just like three years ago, with their white belly up, the rudder swinging from side to side.

"We lowered gears, furl the sails, go in reverse because supposedly that's what you're supposed to do," Villagrans added. "There were 3 or 4 killer whales. Two were observing, and the other two were acting. They came and went."

Due to the damage, the crew members were unable to steer, and the yacht was towed to the nearest marina. "Right as we were entering the harbor, at night, we had to call for rescue because we were heading towards the rocks," Villagrans said.

The conservation group GT Orca Iberica says there have been hundreds of similar interactions since early 2020. Exactly why the orcas are targeting ships is unclear, but researchers have several theories.

One is that a single, revenge-bent female has taught the others to attack ships after being injured by one in the past. However, not everyone is convinced by this theory.

"They could crush the boat in a heartbeat if they wanted to," Sébastien Destremau, a captain who was involved in a similar attack on May 22, previously told Newsweek . "But they were not aggressive. They're not wanting to have a piece of you."

Instead, Destremau believes the orcas might be using our boats to teach their young how to hunt. "If I was a parent orca, I'm not going to touch my living stock, because my living stock is low, so why not train them on our boats?" Destremau said. "For them, the rudder looks like a fin! [It] moves like a fin, and you can play and push and grab it. And, as soon as the rudder is destroyed, they disappear."

• Orca attack map: killer whales have rammed boats in these locations
• Ship captain attacked by orcas again says they developed their strategy
• Orcas filmed destroying ship's rudder in shocking clip: "Surrounded"

This theory does seem to be consistent with the experiences of other sailors. The orcas are rarely said to be acting aggressively toward the ship and instead appear to be almost playful. Secondly, almost invariably, they attack the ship's rudder and nothing else.

Unfortunately, stories about mother orcas taking their young out for a hunting lesson do not spread as quickly as fear over predatory revenge. Many sailors are now arming themselves with guns and other weapons to defend their ships.

"It's important to get a different message across," Destremau said.

About the writer

Pandora Dewan is a Senior Science Reporter at Newsweek based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on science, health and technology. Pandora joined Newsweek in 2022 and previously worked as the Head of Content for the climate change education start-up, ClimateScience and as a Freelance writer for content creators such as Dr. Karan Rajan and Thoughty2. She is a graduate in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford. Languages: English.

You can get in touch with Pandora by emailing [email protected] or on Twitter @dewanpandora.

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From MIDI to MusicVAE —

How yacht fed their old music to the machine and got a killer new album, "i don’t know if we could’ve written it ourselves—it took a risk maybe we aren’t willing to.".

Nathan Mattise - Aug 31, 2019 12:00 pm UTC

• The band YACHT, named for a mysterious sign seen in Portland around the turn of the century. YACHT / Google I/O 2019
• YACHT's Claire Evans takes the stage not to rock out, but to talk out the band's new album leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning. Google I/O 2019
• Album art for Chain Tripping . Here's the Spotify link . YACHT / DFA Records

The dance punk band YACHT has always felt like a somewhat techy act since debuting in the early 2000s. They famously recorded instrumental versions of two earlier albums and made them available for artists under a Creative Commons license at the Free Music Archive . Post-Snowden, they wrote a song called “ Party at the NSA ” and donated proceeds to the EFF. One album cover of theirs could only be accessed via fax initially (sent through a Web app YACHT developed to ID the nearest fax to groups of fans; OfficeMax must’ve loved it). Singer Claire L. Evans literally wrote the book ( Broad Band ) on female pioneers of the Internet.

So when Evans showed up at Google I/O this summer, we knew she wasn’t merely making a marketing appearance ala  Drake  or  The Foo Fighters . In a talk titled “Music and Machine Learning,” Evans instead walked a room full of developers through a pretty cool open secret that awaited music fans until this weekend: YACHT had been spending the last three years writing a new album called Chain Tripping  (out yesterday, August 30). And the process took a minute because the band wanted to do it with what Evans called “a machine-learning generated composition process.”

“I know this isn’t the technical way to explain it, but this allowed us to find melodies hidden in between songs from our back catalog,” she said during her I/O talk. “Here’s what the user-facing side of the model looked like when we recorded the album last May—it’s a Colab Notebook, not the kind of thing musicians usually bring into the studio.”

YACHT had long possessed an interest in AI and its potential application in music. But the band tells Ars it wasn’t until recently, around 2016, that the concept of doing a full album using this approach seemed feasible. While research entities had long been experimenting with AI or machine learning and allowing computers to autonomously generate music, the results felt more science project than albums suitable for DFA Records (home to labelmates like Hot Chip or LCD Soundsystem). Ultimately, a slow trickle of simplified apps leveraging AI—face swap apps felt huge around then; Snapchat and its dynamic filters rose to prominence—finally gave the band the idea that now could be the time.

“We may be a very techy band, but none of us are coders,” Evans tells Ars. “We tend to approach stuff from the outside looking in and try to figure out how to manipulate and bend tools to our strange specific purposes. AI seemed like an almost impossible thing, it was so much more advanced than anything we had dealt with… And we wanted to use this to not just technically achieve the goal of making music—so we can say, ‘Hey an AI wrote this pop song’—rather we wanted to use this tech to make YACHT music, to make music we identify with and we feel comes from us.”

Bringing a Colab Notebook to a rock studio

Having the idea to use artificial intelligence to somehow make music was one thing; doing it proved to be something else entirely. The band started by looking at everything available: “We messed around with everything that was publicly available, some tools that were only privately available—we cold emailed every single person or entity or company working with AI and creativity,” as YACHT founder Jona Bechtolt puts it. But no single existing solution quite offered the combination of quality and ease of use the band had hoped for. So, they decided to ultimately build out their own system by borrowing bits and pieces from all over, leveraging their entire back catalog in the process.

One instrument of note

“A lot of these music making tools right now are made by engineers who love music, but they’re made by engineers,” Evans adds. “So they’re often in love with the math in this way that doesn't ultimately take into consideration that the audio output of these tools isn’t objectively very impressive. You can have this incredible piece of tech that uses advanced ML techniques to split the difference between two different sounds, but what if the output sounds like a fart?”

Ultimately, YACHT made it work for them by embracing that, er, fart-iness. (“The NSynth for us, we thought it sucked at first,” Bechtolt admits.) Rather than thinking of the NSynth as something that could replicate or replace a traditional guitar or even synth within a composition, the band embraced its oddity and found more success. Bechtolt notes music has a long legacy of this type of repurposing—the 808 drum machine didn’t sound like real drums, but its unique sound ultimately spawned many new genres. Though the band doesn't see the NSynth having that legacy.

“It’s not good at what it’s trying to do; it’s good at something it didn’t set out to do—that’s what’s interesting,” Evans adds. “It sounds wonky, reedy, lo-fi, and kind of shitty, but in a way that speaks to us as lo-fi, DIY artists.”

“We knew we’d have to base everything on some kind of dataset, so early on, we thought, ‘What if we used our back catalog?” Bechtolt says. “We naively thought it’d be something like Shazam, where we could throw raw audio at an algorithm. That isn’t really possible…”

“Or, at least, not within the realm of our computing capacity,” Evans interjects.

“So we had to notate all our songs in MIDI, which is a laborious process,” Bechtolt continues. “We have 82 songs in our back catalog, which is still not really enough to train a full model, but it was enough to work with the tools we had.”

With that MIDI data, Bechtolt and longtime collaborator (bass and keyboards player) Rob Kieswetter started by identifying small segments—a particular guitar riff, a vocal melody, a drum pattern, anywhere from two bars to 16 bars—that could be looped, combined, and ultimately run through the band’s simplified AI and ML model. The band relied heavily on Colab Notebooks in a Web browser—specifically, the MusicVAE model from Google’s Magenta team—manually inputting the data and then waiting (and waiting) for a fragment of output from this workflow. And that AI/ML-generated fragment, of course, was nothing more than data, more MIDI information. Evans told I/O the band ran pairs of those loops through the Colab Notebook at different temps “dozens, if not hundreds of times to generate this massive body of melodic information” as source material for new songs. From there, it became the humans’ turn.

“It still couldn’t make a song just by pushing a button; it was not at all an easy or fun flow to work through,” Bechtolt says. “So after three days, we were like, ‘OK, I think we have enough stuff.’ By that point we had a few thousand clips between two- and 16-bars, and we just had to call it quits at some point.”

“It wasn’t something where we fed something into a model, hit print, and had songs,” Evans adds. “We’d have to be involved. There’d have to be a human involved at every step of the process to ultimately make music… The larger structure, lyrics, the relationship between lyrics and structure—all of these other things are beyond the technology’s capacity, which is good.”

reader comments

Channel ars technica.

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Study explains why Orcas are attacking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar

13 June 2023 5 minutes

Experts say an orca known as ‘White Gladis’ may be attacking and damaging vessels after being traumatised by a boat injury, triggering a behavioural change that other orcas are imitating

By Victoria Heath

A 2022 study has shed light on the reasons why orcas (killer whales) have been attacking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar, with researchers theorising that the incidents began after a vessel injured a female orca named White Gladis . 

Since the attacks began in 2020, three boats have been sunk and more than 250 damaged by a group of orcas, with the animals appearing to deliberately target the vessels’ rudders.

Of the 35 killer whales in the region, 15 are reported to have been involved in the highly unusual interactions, which experts think began after White Gladis’ behaviour altered in a ‘defensive’ fashion after she suffered a ‘critical moment of agony’ involving a boat collision or illegal fishing entrapment – leading to other orcas damaging passing vessels in response. 

A study published in June 2022 in the journal Marine Mammal Science has found that assaults by the orcas are directed mainly at sailing boats. There is a clear pattern of orcas striking the rudders, with spade rudders the most targeted and damaged type, and then losing interest once the boat has successfully stopped. 

The general movement of the orcas involved in the incidents was from the Strait of Gibraltar to Galicia in northern Spain, with at least one of the groups returning to southern Portugal.

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Understanding why orcas are damaging boats

After analysing over 47 testimonies, 110 pictures, and 69 videos, the study theorises some motivations that the orcas had to interact with vessels: a ‘punctual aversive incident’ such as collision with a vessel; the natural curiosity of the animals; or pressures already identified for killer whales such as prey depletion, boat disturbance and interaction with fisheries.

The study also considered how orcas – which are known to possess high cognitive abilities – are easily able to reproduce behaviour via social learning. In previous studies, the use and transmission of hunting techniques have been investigated in this particular subpopulation of orcas, leading to concerns from researchers that more orcas will eventually learn this new behaviour, aggravating the situation.

But co-author of the recent study, Alfredo López Fernandez , a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and representative of the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica (Atlantic Orca Working Group), said it isn’t as simple as White Gladis ‘teaching’ other orcas to retaliate in the wake of her boat injury.

‘We do not interpret that the orcas are teaching the young, although the behaviour has spread to the young vertically, simply by imitation, and later horizontally among them, because they consider it something important in their lives,’ López Fernandez said.

The orcas’ unusual behaviour could also be seen as a ‘fad’ – a temporary behaviour started by one orca and picked up by others before being abandoned.

According to Lòpez, it appears that orcas believe that the behaviour is advantageous , despite the risks associated with swimming near operating boats. Since these interactions first appeared in 2020, 4 orcas have died , although the deaths cannot be directly linked to the orcas’ encounters with boats.

The timeline of orca incidents

‘The reports of interactions have been continuous since 2020 in places where orcas are found, either in Galicia or in the Strait,’  said Lòpez-Fernadez.

Initially, the interactions baffled both researchers and recreational boat users. Rocío Espada, one of the study’s co-authors, who works with the marine biology laboratory at University of Seville and has observed orcas for years in the Strait of Gibraltar, explained her initial reaction to the orcas’ new behaviour.

‘For killer whales to take out a piece of a fibreglass rudder is crazy,’ Espada said in a 2020 interview with the Guardian . ‘I’ve seen these orcas grow from babies, I know their life stories, I’ve never seen or heard of attacks.’

One of the first reported attacks by orcas on a boat in the Strait of Gibraltar was in July 2020, when orcas rammed the hull of a boat that researcher Victoria Morris was crewing for over an hour, leaving the vessel without steering. In the same year, couple Beverly Harris and Kevin Large were motor-sailing their 50ft boat when orcas began to spin the vessel.

The latest of the three sinkings occurred on 4 May, when German skipper Werner Schaufelberger’s boat was so severely damaged by the orcas that it sank while being towed to safety by the Spanish coastguard.

In June, British sailor Iain Hamilton was marooned for several days after the rudder of his boat, the Butey of Clyde, was destroyed by five orcas off the coast of Gibraltar.

The difficult life led by Gibraltar orcas 

A 2011 census of recorded 39 individuals in the Gibraltar orca subpopulation, which today, with 35 members, is classed as Critcally Endangered by the IUCN Red List of threatened species due to a number of factors, including pollution, fishing, food scarcity and sustained injuries.

Orcas are drawn to the area due to the presence of bluefin tuna, a fish also highly-prized by humans, leading to a complex interaction between fishers, orca and tuna. The interaction is often dangerous to the orcas, which are known to ‘steal’ fish from drop lines, resulting while in serious hook injuries to their dorsal fins.

The narrow Strait of Gibraltar is also both a major shipping route and huge draw for whale-watching tours due to the presence of the orcas – leading to the constant threat of boat strikes from the heavy marine traffic.

The future of Gibraltar orcas 

The researchers behind the 2022 study into why killer whales are attacking boat traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar are concerned of the potential impact that this behaviour may have on both orcas and mariners.

‘If this situation continues or intensifies, it could become a real concern for the mariners’ safety and a conservation issue for this endangered subpopulation of killer whales,’ the researchers wrote.

‘There is an urgent need to conduct dedicated research that would help better understand the behaviour of the animals and implement mitigation measures.’

The complete study, ‘ Killer whales of the Strait of Gibraltar, an endangered subpopulation showing a disruptive behavior ,’ by Ruth Esteban ,  Alfredo López et al is published in Marine Mammal Science

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Orcas sink another boat in Strait of Gibraltar off Morocco

For years, the region’s killer whales have been bumping, biting and, in some cases, sinking boats. But many scientists caution not to ascribe motive to the animals.

The orcas have done it again.

On Oct. 31, a pod of killer whales swarmed a Polish yacht sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar. For 45 minutes, the orcas hit the vessel’s rudder and damaged the boat, according to the company that operated it. Despite rescue efforts, the yacht never made it back to shore, sinking near the entrance of the Moroccan port of Tanger Med.

“The crew is safe, unharmed and sound,” the Polish tour company Morskie Mile wrote in a Facebook post describing the demise of its boat.

Since 2020, orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Iberian Peninsula have been bumping and biting boats — oftentimes, yachts — in dozens of incidents that have frightened mariners and confounded scientists.

A recent spate of killer whales sinking boats delighted online observers who anthropomorphize the marine mammals and hail them as working-class heroes.

Are the orcas really out to get us? What to know about recent attacks.

Fishing vessels and motorboats have all had their run-ins with orcas in the region, though sailboats appear to be the most popular target, according to a 2022 study . The tour agency Morskie Mile did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

No one is quite sure what is prompting the orcas to go after vessels — whether the whales are simply being playful, or had a bad run-in with a boat in the past, prompting the aggressive behavior.

Some scientists say the incidents should not be called “attacks” at all, since the whale’s motives are unknown. Perpetuating the idea that whales are out for revenge, they fear, may lead to retaliation by boaters.

“We urge the media and public to avoid projecting narratives onto these animals,” a group of more than 30 scientists wrote in an open letter this summer. “In the absence of further evidence, people should not assume they understand the animals’ motivations.”

What we do know is that orcas are highly intelligent marine mammals that appear to learn from one another. Usually, that learned behavior is a hunting strategy, such as corralling and eating massive blue whales .

Other times, it is something stranger, such as when orcas near Seattle were observed “wearing” dead salmon as hats. Orcas, it turns out, can be victims of cultural fads, too.

One other thing is clear: Killer whales normally don’t hurt people. And humans are a bigger threat to them than they are to us.

Getting entangled in fishing gear or struck by speeding boats is a threat for all whales. With perhaps fewer than 40 individuals left , the orca population off the coasts of Spain, Portugal and Morocco is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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Orcas sank a yacht off Spain — the latest in a slew of such 'attacks' in recent years

Scott Neuman

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast. Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast.

The crew of a sinking yacht was rescued off the coast of Spain this week after a pod of orcas apparently rammed the vessel – the latest "attack" by the marine mammals in the area that has left scientists stumped, several boats at the bottom of the ocean and scores more damaged.

Killer whales are 'attacking' sailboats near Europe's coast. Scientists don't know why

The encounter on Sunday between an unknown number of orcas, also known as "killer whales," and the 49-foot sailing yacht Alboran Cognac occurred on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow passage linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean where the majority of such incidents have occurred in recent years.

The Alboran Cognac's crew said they felt sudden blows on the hull and that the boat began taking on water. They were rescued by a nearby oil tanker, but the sailboat, left to drift, later went down.

The sinking brings the number of vessels sunk – mostly sailing yachts – to at least five since 2020. Hundreds of less serious encounters resulting in broken rudders and other damage, Alfredo López Fernandez, a coauthor of a 2022 study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, told NPR late last year.

As NPR first reported in 2022, many scientists who study orca behavior believe these incidents — in which often one or more of the marine mammals knock off large chunks of a sailboat's rudder — are not meant as attacks, but merely represent playful behavior.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Catamaran Guru(@catamaranguru)

Some marine scientists have characterized these encounters over the years as a "fad," implying that the animals will eventually lose interest and return to more typical behavior.

The study co-authored by López Fernandez, for example, indicated two years ago that orcas were stepping up the frequency of their interactions with sailing vessels in and around the Strait of Gibraltar.

Some researchers think it's merely playful behavior

One hypothesis put forward by Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research, a research group based in Spain, is that orcas like the feel of the water jet produced by a boat's propeller.

A picture taken on May 31, 2023, shows the rudder of a vessel damaged by killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar and taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A picture taken on May 31, 2023, shows the rudder of a vessel damaged by killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar and taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain.

"What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," de Stephanis told NPR in 2022. "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."

In one encounter last year, Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht that his vessel, Champagne, was approached by "two smaller and one larger orca" off Gibraltar.

"The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side," he said.

The Spanish coast guard rescued Schaufelberger and his crew, towing Champagne to the Spanish port of Barbate, but the vessel sank before reaching safety.

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31, 2023. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31, 2023.

The encounters could be a response to past trauma

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 attacks with her encouragement, he believes.

"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, Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute , told NPR last year.

"I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge," she said. "I don't think we can completely rule it out."

However, Shields said she remained skeptical of the "revenge" hypothesis. She said that despite humans having "given a lot of opportunities for orcas to respond to us in an aggressive manner," there are no other examples of them doing so.

Deborah Giles, the science and research director at Wild Orca, a conservation group based in Washington state, was also cautious about the hypothesis when NPR spoke to her last year. She pointed out that killer whale populations in waters off Washington "were highly targeted" in the past as a source for aquariums. She said 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 said.

Sailor describes terrifying moment pod of killer whales sank his £100k boat

Robert Powell, 59, was 22 hours into a 10-day trip between Portugal and Greece when the pack of five orcas began their violent "attack" off the coast of Spain which sunk the boat

• 09:45, 26 Jul 2024

A British yacht captain has told how a pod of killer whales sunk his £100,000 boat during a "terrifying" two-hour attack - in the Mediterranean Sea.

Robert Powell, 59, said the pack of five orcas encircled his 39ft sailing boat 'like wolves' and took it in turn to smash into the ship as he sailed off the coast of Spain . He and two crew were 22 hours into a ten-day trip between Vilamoura, in Portugal , and Greece when the animals began their violent "attack" at 8pm on Wednesday, roughly two miles offshore.

After they knocked out the boat's rudder, the animals spent the next few hours "taking it in turns" to charge into it - causing the vessel to buckle under the pressure. Robert, who had radioed for help not long after the orcas began their assault, said he and his crew had felt like "sitting ducks" as they waited for rescue.

And just minutes before the boat sunk, a Spanish salvage vessel helped them leave their stricken ship, which is now 130ft below the Mediterranean Sea. Robert said about the ordeal: "Once the rudder was disabled, all five orcas circled the boat. And one by one they kept coming in and ramming in various different places.

"They'd ram the keel, ram the stern. The boat, with no rudder, just goes around in circles. They were circling. It was like watching wolves hunt. They were taking it in turns to come in sometimes two would come in at the same time and hit it. So obviously pretty terrifying.

"It was a very long attack, and it was really the violence of the attack that surprised me. To me they were not playing at all, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat and they knew how to sink it. Their sole intention was to sink the boat, and that was it."

Orca attacks on sailing ships in the Mediterranean have increased recently - with another boat being sunk in May in the Straights of Gibraltar after getting rammed. Robert, who lives in London, believes the pod that attacked and sunk his vessel could be the same that has been terrorizing other skippers

He added: "I've heard of a group that operates around that area. I've sailed it before, I sailed it last year. I know other people who have been hit. They've not had their boats sunk but have had it damaged badly. And I have a feeling that this group are boat sinkers I think they knew what they were doing, I'm sure of it."

Robert set out in his boat, the Bonhomme William, from Vilamoura, on Portugal's Algarve coast, for the ten-day trip to the Greek Islands to celebrate his 60th Birthday on Tuesday, July 23. But as the IT company owner sailed with two crew, a deckhead and a chef, he was hit by the first orca between the Spanish towns of Barbate and Tarifa at around 8pm.

Robert said: "All of a sudden I felt something really hard hit the bottom of the boat. My initial reaction was that I'd hit a rock or fishing net or I'd hit something submerged and it shuddered the whole boat. It was a big hit. Whilst I was looking around the boat to see if I could see anything - I was doing about five to six knots - it got hit again.

"On the second hit, I looked over the back of the boat and I could see the dark shape of a killer whale in the water. That killer whale was accompanied by two others. At this stage, these three were fairly young, fairly smallish juveniles, and they were hitting the rudder really violently and hard."

Robert said the pod of three whales managed to disable the rudder, which controls the boat's steering, after around 15 to 20 hits. He then used his radio to call the Coast Guard for emergency assistance, but not long after, his crew spotted two more killer whales that joined the rampage.

Robert said: "They pointed to two big orcas. And once the rudder was disabled, all five orcas circled the boat. One by one they kept coming in and ramming in various different places. Probably about an hour and a half into the attack, I heard the hull split. They hit the middle of the boat and I heard something crack.

"I went down below decks and they'd split the hull and there was water coming in the main living area of the boat right in the centre." Robert, who had originally sailed his boat over from Brighton to Portugal, said he had tried several different techniques to dissuade the orcas but none had worked.

He said: "I had prepared for an orca attack... I tried to put a couple of firecrackers in the water. But you're not allowed to shoot them or throw things at them. One of the other ploys that people say to get rid of orcas is to switch the engine off and go quiet and just do nothing. I tried that and I was just a sitting duck and they just hit me even harder."

Robert said he had inflated life rafts and had made plans to disembark his ship when he managed to attract the attention of a Spanish salvage vessel. And around 15 minutes after he and his crew had got to safety, his boat sank into the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. He added: "I don't know at what stage the ocas cleared off. At this stage, the boat was going under. They then took us off the boat.

"They boarded to see if there was any way that the boat was salvageable but by this time it was about four or five feet deep inside the cabin. Literally, it was about 15-20 minutes later as the pictures show, down she went, and she sank. And that was the end of that." Robert, who is now thankfully back in the UK, warned it was only a matter of time before sailors decided to take matters into their own hands.

He said: "It's only a matter of time before someone shoots one of these killer whales. The fight between man and beast is going to get worse. Luckily none of us were in the water or got hurt. If that family have decided to move in there and live any boat that goes there is going to be running the gauntlet. And it's a lottery as to whether they hit you or not."

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Killer Whales Sink $128K Yacht In Terrifying Attack: "They Knew How To Sink It"

O ne yacht owner had a terrifying ordeal at sea when a pod of killer whales attacked and ended up sinking his boat to the bottom of the ocean. The orcas sank the $128,680 vessel.

59-year-old Robert Powell described a horrific two-hour attack via New York Post . The incident happened on Wednesday in the Mediterranean Sea. Powell had been just a day into his 10 day trip to Greece when he encountered killer whales.

"To me, they were not playing at all, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat, and they knew how to sink it," Powel said. To make matters worse, it was also his birthday celebration. "Their sole intention was to sink the boat, and that was it."

According to Powell, five killer whales circled the yacht. They took turns smashing into the vessel like a pack of wolves. At first, he thought it was a rock.

"Whilst I was looking around the boat to see if I could see anything — I was doing about 5 to 6 knots — it got hit again," Powell recalled. "On the second hit, I looked over the back of the boat, and I could see the dark shape of a killer whale in the water." The orcas attacked the rudder of the boat stranding them at sea.

Killer Whales Attack Yacht

They then separated and focused on different parts of the boat. "They were circling. It was like watching wolves hunt," Powell said. "They were taking it in turns to come in — sometimes two would come in at the same time and hit it. So obviously pretty terrifying."

After an hour and half, the hull of the boat began to split from the attack. Water gushed into the main area of the yacht. Though they radioed for help, it took two hours for crews to reach them. Fortunately, they managed to vacate the yacht just minutes before it sank. Powell said he tried everything from dropping firecrackers over board to shutting down the engine to stop the attack.

"It was a very long attack, and it was really the violence of the attack that surprised me," he said. "I have a feeling that this group are boat sinkers — I think they knew what they were doing, I'm sure of it."

It's not the first time killer whales have attacked and sank boats.

"It's only a matter of time before someone shoots one of these killer whales," Powell ominously warned. "The fight between man and beast is going to get worse. Luckily none of us were in the water or got hurt. And it's a lottery as to whether they hit you or not."

The post Killer Whales Sink $128K Yacht In Terrifying Attack: "They Knew How To Sink It" appeared first on Wide Open Spaces .

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