yachting world orca attacks

Yachting World

• Digital Edition

Why have Orcas been attacking yachts? A puzzling mystery

• Elaine Bunting
• March 2, 2023

Elaine Bunting looks into the so-called 'attacks' on yachts by groups of Orcas and tries to unravel why it has been consistently happening for the last few years

Late in November last year, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s Farr 65 pilothouse cutter, Sanjula , was being sailed 10 miles west of Cape Finisterre in Spain when it was surrounded by orca whales. The collisions began immediately.

“A pod of seven to 10 orcas surrounded Sanjula and then began to barge into its rudder. This eventually broke a steering connecting rod. The engine was switched off and the boat lay hove-to while the emergency steering was rigged,” he reported. “After 10 minutes the orcas moved away, no longer finding a hove-to yacht interesting – but that is only an assumption. The boat sailed to Vigo for repairs.”

The incident was the most high profile yet of what has amounted to hundreds of interactions, or attacks, by killer whales off the coasts of Spain and Portugal since they were first reported nearly three years ago.

The incident involving Sanjula happened just a few weeks after the loss of a French Oceanis 393 , Smousse , 14 miles west of Viana do Castelo. Orcas tore Smousse ’s rudder by mouthing and shaking it, cracking the hull in the process. The four crew were forced to abandon to a liferaft, and were picked up by another yacht.

Close encounters between orcas and yachts were extremely rare occurrences until something very strange happened – in July 2020 the behaviour of a small sub-population of orcas off the coasts of Atlantic Spain and Portugal suddenly changed. They began to barge yachts seemingly aggressively, often causing serious damage to the boats’ rudders.

A towed dinghy could become a target for orca play. Photo: Jon Wright

Reports mounted up as the behaviour kept being repeated, and these incidents spread north, marking the orcas migratory route north along the Iberian peninsula to Galicia, where they feed on bluefin tuna and nurse their young. Whether these were play behaviours or attacks wasn’t clear but it involved repeated ramming of boats, and those who experienced them were terrified.

Delivery skipper Pete Green was delivering an Amel 52 from Gibraltar to the UK in 2020 when the yacht’s rudder spun uncontrollably from side to side.

“We knew there was a risk of meeting some orca so we stayed close to the Spanish coast, but we didn’t see them coming,” says Green, managing director of Halcyon Yachts. “The wheel was just suddenly spinning from left to right as they collided into the rudder.”

The crew immediately turned off all the electrics, shut down the engine, furled the sails and lay ahull. All the advice they’d seen said to sit passively in the water until the whales grew bored.

The orcas circled the Amel slowly for nearly two hours, so close at times that the crew were able to photograph and video the animals. The whole time, the orcas were bumping into the hull, the keel and hitting the rudder. “It seemed like an age before they finally left us in peace,” said Green. By the time the whales were gone, the rudder had been badly damaged.

It was not the first time Green had been on a yacht picked on by orcas. A year earlier, while close to A Coruña on the north-west corner of Spain, the Hallberg-Rassy 36 he was delivering to the UK was “rammed at least 15 times”. The yacht lost steering and had to be towed into port.

These encounters have become an established hazard along this coast. According to reports received and collated by the Cruising Association in conjunction with Grupo Trabajo Orca Atlántica, there were 102 interactions with orcas between January 2022 and January 2023, the majority of them off Cape Finisterre, west of Sines in Portugal, and in the Strait of Gibraltar. See the interactive map, which includes witness reports, at theca.org.uk/orcas/reports

Orcas chewed off this lump of rudder. Photo: Martyn & Zoe Barlow

Some of these resulted in damage, mainly to the rudder, and in a small number of cases it was serious. Some crews say they felt these were aggressive attacks, others viewed it as merely playful. The intent to barge the vessel and try to alter its course was, however, not in doubt.

A rogue group

Dr Ruth Esteban, a marine mammal researcher who works for the Madeira Whale Museum, has spent years studying the abundance, life history and social structure of orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar. The group of whales in question is a small one, she believes, just five pods comprising 28 individuals. It’s an endangered sub-population she knows well and she was both fascinated and alarmed by this bizarre evolution.

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“The orcas were more than used to being surrounded by vessels, sometimes hundreds of vessels at a time, but were never as far as we knew touching the vessel,” she says. “Then when 2020 arrived, after the worldwide lockdown, [this] disruptive behaviour was observed. They were reported interacting with boats and entering into contact with them, particularly sailing boats, resulting mainly in breaking the moving parts of their rudders.”

Since the incidents began, Dr Esteban has collected and reviewed videos taken on board some of the yachts that had been targeted and damaged, meticulously identifying each animal where possible and reviewing the whales’ behaviour. They were mainly juveniles, but there was at least one adult involved, the mother of one of the younger animals.

She observed that they were purposely targeting boats and trying to push them around by pushing or biting the rudder. “We could see the animals come close to the boat at the stern. Sometimes they showed up with intense bubbling. They would approach and start by observing moving parts before touching and pushing to control the movement of the boat.”

The whales mainly targeted sailing yachts under 15m, although some fishing boats, RIBs and motorboats were also attacked. In one case, they broke a yacht’s rudder in half. In another, a yacht crew endured repeated collisions for over an hour as the orcas repeatedly struck their rudder, breaking it and bending the stainless steel shaft by almost 90°. “The cost to repair was almost €21,000,” says Dr Esteban.

Orcas can live in all oceans of the world and are the second most widely distributed mammal on earth. Photo: Mike Korostelev/Getty

A group of working biologists and conservationists from organisations such as the Whale Museum of Madeira, La Rochelle university and the Portuguese Sociedade de Vida Selvagem was formed to investigate this behaviour.

Grupo Trabajo Orca Atlántica ( orcaiberica.org ) collates information on orca attacks, plots where they occur and promotes the conservation and management of the whales. It also offers advice aimed at mitigating damage to yachts or the animals themselves, the so-called orca protocol.

The behaviour, sporadic at first, has become an established set piece for the whales, and it has evolved. It has been going on now for three years, and there is no sign of this behaviour fading. It has become a natural behaviour for this population, and there is no evidence at all that they themselves are acting aggressively.

What can crews do?

If possible, avoid the areas of recent activity. The Spanish authorities set out two exclusion zones last year for vessels under 15m near A Coruña and on the approaches to Gibraltar on a stretch from Bolonia near Tarifa, to Cape Trafalgar. GT Orca Atlántica publishes a map on its website of current orca activity, valid for 24 hours, with the risk expressed in the form of traffic lights. This is based on the latest reports from boat crews and rescue services.

If targeted, GT Orca Atlántica advises stopping your yacht to make your vessel look unexciting and try to quell the whales’ prey drive. They suggest taking your hands off the wheel or disengaging the autopilot to allow the rudder to turn freely and advise crew not to shout at the animals, throw anything at them, ‘and do not let yourselves be seen excessively from overboard’.

Orcas circle a Sun Odyssey 40. Photo: Martyn & Zoe Barlow

But when faced with a pod of orcas and the prospect of hull or rudder damage, some crews have tried to scare them off. “We decided to go against protocol and bang metal tools against our metal railings and stanchions,” says a skipper who encountered the animals last summer.

“That seemed to deter them for about 10 minutes, then they returned. They carried on trying to get as close as possible to the stern again, so we started to play loud music on a portable speaker, banged pots and pans, and waved black and white striped towels off the stern. After a few minutes they left us alone, but the daylight was also dying by then and we can’t figure out if our deterrents worked or if they got bored.”

Some crews have kept bottles of diesel within reach in the cockpit just in case, ready to pour down the cockpit drains in case they are approached by orcas. The theory is that the orcas will be repelled by the mixture emerging underwater from the yacht.

Other crews have tried pouring sand into the water. Some even less humane methods have also been reported, such as crews letting off firecrackers or firing live rounds into the water. These do seem risky, and – aside from the issues of harming a protected marine species – no one can say whether any of these deterrents work.

A bubble curtain created by orcas circling beneath the surface

Three years on from the first reports of this animal behaviour, orca encounters off the Spanish and Portuguese coasts have become an accepted hazard. According to reports collected by GT Orca Atlántica, there were 239 cases of interactions with orcas between 2020 and 2021.

Social media and press reports have hugely amplified the issue. Considering the overall numbers of yachts on passage through these waters, thousands each summer, the percentage of boats affected is still small.

However, it seems unlikely this behaviour will extinct itself – its repetition proves the orcas find it self-rewarding. Are the orcas merely playing? Are they practising hunting behaviours? Are they reacting to stress or changes in food sources? Have pollutants affected them cognitively?

All these theories have been put forward, but no one knows. “Everyone is puzzled,” says Dr Esteban. “We don’t know what is going on and we do not know why they’re doing this. There have been a lot of hypotheses but none of them is based on clear evidence.”

From a yachtsman’s point of view, the reasons really don’t matter. The orcas’ behaviour has evolved, and will presumably continue until it serves no purpose. In the meantime, reported encounters will allow researchers to build up a more detailed picture of the areas of activity, types of boats targeted and successful deterrents, if any. Until then, many cruisers believe the only thing to do is to coast-hop Spain and Portugal while monitoring areas where the orca pods are reported to be hunting.

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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.

Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Encounters with orcas & how to protect your boat

• November 9, 2021

Andy Pag explores why orcas have been damaging yachts off Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar, and how to protect your boat

There were 52 reported orca incidents between June 2020 and March 2021. Credit: David Smith

Being chased, bumped and gnarled at by a pod of orcas was ‘a mix of horror and love,’ says Yara Tibirica who encountered the animals while sailing her 35ft live-aboard catamaran , Slughunter .

‘It’s a rare privilege to see such mighty and majestic orcas in the wild but when they are threatening your home the sight is double-edged.’

Yara and her husband Jon Wright had decided to stay 1.5 miles offshore on their passage from Cadiz to Gibraltar in July this year, after reading the trickle of information on social media about encounters with this semi-resident pod in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The crew of Slughunter watched as an orca appeared to play with their dinghy before targeting the boat’s rudders. Credit: Jon and Yara Wright

Since the start of the year, orcas have been nudging boats to bring them to a halt, and gnawing at their rudders, leaving sailors shaken and stranded, in many cases relying on salvage tows to get them back to shore.

Commonly known as ‘ killer whales ’, orca are not, in fact, whales , but the largest member of the dolphin family.

Orcinus orca can live to 80 years old, growing up to 9.75m (32ft) and weighing up to six tonnes.

In the eight months between June 2020 and March 2021,  there were 52 reported encounters around the Iberian coast, but there were more than 27 in July of this year alone in the Gibraltar Strait.

Initially smaller monohulls were targeted, but now even larger 50ft catamarans have reported approaches.

Depth sounders on or off, under sail or motor , day or night, the hull colour – it has not yet been possible to pin down a common factor.

Searching for a cause

Scientists are hesitant about being drawn on a motivation for the orcas’ behaviour.

Dr Ruth Esteban, of the Madeira Whale Museum has studied pods in the region, and has volunteered time to try to collate details of the encounters from skippers.

‘No one knows why they’re doing it,’ she explains. ‘We’re trying to figure it out and compiling information, but no one is actually doing any proper research on it. We need more data.’

Dr Ruth Estaban is studying the orcas behaviour to try and find a cause, here seen with a tagging device

Dr Esteban has applied for funding that would allow her to go to the area, speak with affected skippers , and see the behaviour first hand, but the research funding application is a slow process.

The crew of Slughunter consider themselves lucky.

They were towing their dinghy on a 15m line and the orcas seemed more interested in nudging it, diverting attention away from the rudders and allowing Yara and Jon to motor to the shallows.

After a nerve-wracking 30-minute chase they got to just 10m of depth and the pod left.

‘We were able to remove the rudder at anchor and get the shaft straightened and repaired the small fibreglass damage ourselves,’ Yara explained.

In the end repairs only cost them €150, but others have been less fortunate.

Learnt behaviour

In February the yacht Anyway , a sturdy Alpa 1150, had its rudder completely destroyed.

The private salvage tow took three hours to reach them and cost them almost €2,500.

Commercial delivery skipper Brandon Bibb was on board and said there were smaller orcas watching the older ones bite at the rudder.

Brandon Bibb doesn’t believe the behaviour of the orcas is intentionally aggressive

‘If the younger ones are learning this behaviour, that’s terrifying’; he says.

‘Sailing the Strait of Gibraltar is already Russian roulette. Imagine if they hit a saildrive and break the seals, or if a rudder tube cracks, and they learn how to sink boats.’

The long-term consequences and escalation are concerns shared by Dr Esteban.

‘It’s a worry because this is how they learn. They mimic behaviours, and the behaviour is evolving so fast.’

Brandon Bibb looked on as orcas attacked the rudder of the yacht he was delivering. Credit: Brandon Bibb

Despite their nickname, ‘killer whales’ have never killed a person in the wild.

After the quiet seas with few vessels moving during the Covid lockdown, this year Spanish fishermen have had a bumper tuna season.

Rumours circulate locally that orcas have learned to jump in and out of static nets to feed on the tuna catch.

A few fishing boats have also reported being targeted in a similar way to the yachts.

Both Yara Tibirica and Brandon Bibb are convinced the behaviour was playful and not intentionally aggressive.

Jon Wright and his wife, Yara, has a very close encounter when sailing their catamaran from Cadiz to Gibraltar, damaging their rudder stock. Credit: Jon Wright

Video of other encounters show the orcas swimming on their backs, a behaviour not associated with aggression.

Bibb is careful to use the term ‘interaction’ and not ‘attack’.

‘I don’t want to spread hate against an animal for doing its natural behaviour,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure if this behaviour is natural, but don’t want to spark the masses to do something stupid.’

Yara has also defended the whales’ behaviour, and is worried about the impact this fear amongst sailors might generate.

‘I am in the one imposing on their habitat and I believe we humans have done enough to destroy their habitat so I totally respect them and wish nothing bad ever happens to them,’ she said.

Alternative theories on why orcas are interacting with yachts

Predators rarely expend calories for reasons other than hunting or mating.

Play is often designed to hone hunting skills and Yara points out that yachts travel at similar speeds to tuna.

One theory is that this is play which develops fishing skills. There are alternative theories too, however.

Dr Victoria Todd of Ocean Science Consulting, an expert in sea life acoustics, suspects the noisy shipping channel is a more plausible explanation.

The damage to the rudder of the Beneteau First 47.7, Promise 3, which belongs to Graeme and Moira Walker who encountered orcas off Finisere on 22 September 2020. They endured 45 minutes of the mammals pushing and holding onto the boat before leaving when the couple switched their engine off. Credit: Graeme Walker

‘Orcas likely do play when they have a full stomach and aren’t stressed, but if they were teaching their young to hunt, they’d be doing it with live prey, not with inanimate rudders,’ she said.

‘Given the high levels of anthropogenic noise in the Strait of Gibraltar, [the encounters] could be related to stress.’

These orcas hunt with sonar and the background noise makes it harder for them to hear the echo, or each other’s vocalisations.

‘They may also be associating vessels as competing for fish; they can be injured by fishing lines, and they’re also under increasing pressure from ship strikes; acoustically it’s difficult for them to detect oncoming sailing vessels. It’s important not to anthropomorphise, but they could just be pissed off,’ she said.

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Perhaps sailing boats have struck orcas previously, and this is why they’re being targeted.

Herminio, who runs a nautical workshop in Lisbon and has skippered yacht deliveries along the Atlantic coast and into the Med , is adamant the behaviour is aggressive.

‘They are not playing. I lived in Madeira for 15 years and worked on whale watching boats there. I had the chance to be near them. I can tell when they are being curious, or when they’re scared, and attacking, and it’s different. The speed they came to the boat and immediately went to the rudders – it wasn’t playing. It was meant to be aggressive,’ he says.

Avoiding encounters with orcas

Herminio had an encounter while delivering a 50ft Fountaine Pajot for a client from Lisbon to the Balearics.

The advice issued by the authorities is to stop the boat and wait for the orcas to get bored.

Typically after 30-60 minutes they leave, but by then the boat can be rudderless and incapacitated.

Instead Mr Herminio threw the engines in reverse, creating froth that sent the orcas temporarily away from the rudders and gave him time to drop the sails and keep the boat moving backwards.

Going astern, the spinning props were preventing access to the rudders.

Marc Herminio employed a reverse prop technique to repel the orcas from the boat’s rudders. Credit: Marc Herminio

‘For half an hour we moved backwards at 2-3kts, with the orcas following off the bow. They didn’t attack the keels, and eventually they left.”

It’s a technique that Dr Estaban is cautious about.

‘We’ve seen some people reporting this [evasion technique] but it could cause injury to the animals. The main problem with any new strategy is it can work for a while, but then the animals figure it out.’

Dr Estaban’s work has faced the criticism from some sailors that her focus is on protecting the orcas rather than preventing damage to yachts.

Orcas are the biggest mammal in the dolphin family. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

While her research is voluntary and has little funding, she said, ‘We are researchers working at sea, but we’re kind of sailors too. We put the location of the encounters on the website [www.orcaiberica.org]. We don’t do this for the orcas, we do it for the sailors.’

Yara Tibirica would like to see more of the collected information being shared on the site, which currently shows the location and date of reported encounters.

Co-skippers Fionna and Iain Lewis sailed their Westerly Oceanlord 41 Ruffian through ‘Orca Alley’ without incident, but the 60-mile trip from Gibraltar to Cadiz was highly stressful.

‘The whole sail felt threatening; every white cap was an orca tail, every lobster pot was something that would attract them,’ recalled Iain.

Rounding Cape Trafalgar they smelled cetacean breath in the air, and immediately altered course for the shallows.

Mitigating risk

‘Sailing is all about managing risk,’ said Iain. ‘You have the right sail in case there’s a storm . You have radar in case there’s ice or fog . For me, what makes this such a scary situation is that I can’t mitigate the risk.’

The couple chose to buddy-boat with others, reasoning that in a group of boats the odds of being singled out might be reduced.

‘It’s impossible to quantify the risk,’ added Fiona Lewis. ‘We have an idea how many boats are attacked, but we don’t know how many sail through unharmed.’

Interactions between fishermen and orcas, and competition for food have been cited as possible reasons for the increasing encounters. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

Orca-related insurance claims are not having a huge impact on insurance claims departments.

Of the two insurers contacted, one was not aware of the issue, while the other had received some claims and said they were monitoring the situation.

Nigel Hawkes of Topsail Insurance was confident that most yacht policies are sufficient to cover such incidents.

But escalating claims might lead to increased premiums or high-risk zones being excluded from standard policies.

Both would be costly for sailors entering or exiting the Med, but pressure from insurers might also encourage the development of more pro-active steps.

Exclusion zone

After over a year of reported incidents, in August the Spanish Ministry of Transport sketched out an exclusion zone for boats under 15m length between Bolonia and Cape Trafalgar.

The zone encourages boats to sail close to the shore.

‘The exclusion zone covers where most of the interactions have happened,’ said Dr Estaban. ‘If all the boats move to another area, then we may see the interactions move, and it may be more dangerous close to the coast. The exclusion zone is a good first step, and it’s established contact with authorities. Sadly they cannot make fast decisions. It has to go through a lot of ministries and secretariats. It will take time to change the size or move.’

Within days of being established, encounters were being reported outside the zone.

Credit: Maxine Heath

One sceptical Facebook user asked, ‘Have the orcas been informed?’

The exclusion zone is due for regular review.

The Spanish Ministry of Transport confirmed it has not assigned any extra budget for dealing with these incidents but told YM, ‘Recreational sailors have praised the work of the Maritime Rescue Services, the correctness of the security protocol [advising sailors what to do] in the event of an encounter with orcas, and the information provided to sailors.’

But many sailors have expressed frustration at the lack of action to ensure safety at sea .

Andy Pag is a former investigative journalist. He and his partner have lived aboard their 1998 Lagoon for a year and are slowly heading from Greece to the Caribbean

There have been calls on social media for culling the pod and other more aggressive defence methods, but all whales and cetaceans, including orcas, are protected from ‘deliberate disturbance, capture or killing within EU waters’ by law.

The framing of these encounters as a conflict between boat safety and wildlife conservation is an oversimplification.

The two conflicting challenges are inexorably intertwined.

Finding a way to mitigate the encounters would benefit the safety of sailors and remove the developing animosity towards the orcas.

But until there is funding for research and a more agile, resourced response from the authorities, it’s certain more boats will be damaged, and the risk of attack may become a permanent feature of passages through the Strait.

Proposed solutions: Pros & cons

• Trackers: Tracking the disruptive pod is difficult and the trackers need to be renewed regularly. It’s costly and might not be very helpful as orcas can travel at up to 30 knots, covering large distances quickly.
• Convoys: Escorted convoys could help boats through the most risky section, but would offer little actual defence in an encounter except offering safety in numbers.
• Sonar: Acoustic Deterrent Devices (ADDs), also known as pingers, are used in fishing operations to warn off dolphins and porpoises from nets they might get tangled in. But the noise only becomes a deterrent once the animals learn to associate it with a risk, and the frequencies need to be tuned to the animal you want to ward away. Acoustic Harassment Devices (AHDs) are used in Oil & Gas and Renewable industries to repel animals, but as well as questions over their effectiveness, cost and practicality, AHDs and ADDs need to be licensed to be used legally.
• Shallows: Statistically there have been no attacks in the shallows, but this might be because few boats have hugged the coast while transiting the Strait. As more boats stick to 10m depths time will tell if this strategy works or not. Orcas are able to manoeuvre in shallow water and are known to chase prey into shallows, but it is a less clear acoustic environment.
• Slapping the water: Slapping the water with a fin is thought to be a signal of irritation between some whale species, says Dr Todd. ‘A flat smack on the water with a large paddle could give them a signal to stop,’ though she points out this is untested, and shouldn’t be tried where there’s a risk of falling overboard or hitting an animal.
• Fending off: ‘Deliberate disturbance’ is illegal, but might be arguable as justified if there is immediate risk to life of those on board.
• Carry spares: Ensure you have the necessary tools for emergency steering , or even rudder replacement, if you lose your steering. A salvage tow is expensive.

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