Orcas keep attacking sailboats, sometimes sinking them. Scientists are looking for answers.
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Why are orcas attacking boats? More than 200 interactions between killer whales and boats have been recorded along the Iberian Peninsula since 2020.
Scientists aren't sure why so many attacks are happening in the area.
But as the jolts continued, and the rudder seemed to resist his steering, Blackburn looked down and saw a giant black animal in the water, with the characteristic white oval and underbelly. Two orcas were repeatedly ramming his boat, and soon two more whales joined in.
"There's not a lot you can do at that point," Blackburn, a sailor from the UK, told 9News. "After reading reports and knowing what has been going on, just thought we were in for a ride now."
A pair of notable killer whale attacks occured last July, when a pod of orcas attacked a sailboat off the coast of Portugal and, just hours later, targeted another vessel in the same area, according to reports.
Orca attacks have sometimes immobilized sailboats, but local media said that, in this instance, it caused so much damage that the vessel started to sink.
Unusually, another orca attack took place nearby just a few hours later.
Newsweek reported that the second orca attack involved a small sailboat with two passengers aboard.
The orcas, which can grow up to 26 feet long, struck the boat and bit the rudder, immobilizing it, the Portugal Resident said. The boat was towed to the dry dock.
Correction: May 9, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the nature of the 200 orca incidents reported since 2020, as well as the origin of that statistic. Those reports were of interactions between orcas and boats, not necessarily attacks. And that number comes from a collaboration of scientists collecting reports, not from local media outlets.
This post has been updated with new information. It was originally published on August 13, 2022.
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