For 4 years now, orcas have been attacking boats in the waters separating Spain and Morocco. And these very intelligent animals don’t do this by chance…
This is at least the 673rd time that an interaction between a boat and an orca has occurred around the Strait of Gibraltar since 2020. This time, it was the passengers of a fifteen-meter-long sailboat who saw the boat on which they found themselves sinking to the bottom of the water. The events occurred on May 14, reports TF1. The passengers first saw a group of orcas approaching. After several shocks, they sounded the alert.
Finally, these repeated shocks to the hull and rudder got the better of the boat, which began to sink after water seeped into it. Luckily, the two passengers were able to be saved by an oil tanker located a few nautical miles from the future wreck, which finally landed them in Gibraltar, a British territory on the southern tip of Spain.
The reasons for the first orca attack on a boat off the Spanish coast in 2020 were a mystery, but with the inventory of some 600 interactions over the past 4 years, as well as the testimonies of the victims of this sometimes inconsequential heckling, certain specialists developed a first hypothesis. If this new behavior perplexes scientists, it could ultimately only be the result of the curiosity of certain orcas and perhaps a lack of maturity among the youngest specimens.
According to some scientists, the orcas have adopted a game, which consists of racing with boats. Were those who ended up attacking the boats sore losers, or is that still part of the game? Mystery, but we know that they are particularly intelligent animals and whose way of having fun often flirts with cruelty.
What is certain is that in the space of a few years, they understood very well which part of the ships to attack. The fifty or so specimens living near the canal are only interested in monohulls and catamarans similar in size to the boat that recently sank.
The animal known as the “killer whale” is certainly a formidable predator for almost all marine species, but for humans, it represents only a very low risk. To date, there have been no documented cases of fatal orca attacks on humans in the wild. As for the 4 deaths that occurred in water parks, it is impossible to say whether they were accidents or whether these sea creatures had deliberately chosen to kill. On the contrary, orcas tend to feel indifference or curiosity towards humans. It really depends on the rate at which the human and the orc meet.