“Three killer whales came right at us and started hitting the rudders. It is impressive to see the orcas, very beautiful animals, but it has also been a dangerous moment for the whole team.” This is how Jelmer van Beek, skipper of one of the sailboats that participated on Thursday June 22 in the Ocean Race competition, in the Strait of Gibraltar, declared. “He has been terrifying!” he exclaims in the recorded video.
His testimony is one more example of how orcas have become a nuisance for boaters and administrations. Last Monday, the Maritime Rescue Center of Tarifa had to rescue the two crew members of the sailboat ‘Julia High Coast Swe’ that was left without control after suffering an interaction with orcas.
These cetaceans continue to have clashes and attacks in the sea. The data supports an increase in incidents this year. Everything indicates that this new practice that consists of chasing sailboats and pushing the rudders until breaking them continues to expand.
The episodes of interaction between orcas and boats, mainly sailboats, began in the summer of 2020, and have taken place both in the Strait of Gibraltar and in Galician waters.
These marine animals continue to cause confusion and have forced the Spanish Administration to redouble its efforts to prevent “interactions”, a mild expression that seeks not to criminalize cetaceans. All this occurs while the differences of opinion between scientists on the ultimate origin of the orcas’ behavior are maintained.
Given the situation caused, and to guarantee safety in navigation, the Administration has issued new recommendations that ship crews should follow when approaching killer whales. Until now, the advice was for the captain to stop the boat’s engine, stop the electronics except the radio and notify the authorities to proceed with the towing.
The Administration now indicates that before the appearance of killer whales, “it is preferable to sail by motor rather than sail and avoid stopping the boat”; It is also requested to navigate “as close as possible to the coast, where there is less probability of encountering groups of orcas”
“The administrations recommend going out on your feet,” expressively sums up Renaud de Stephanis, coordinator and president of Circe (Conservation, Information and Studies on Cetaceans) who collaborates with the Administration. De Stephanis says getting away at full speed is the best option and that the measure has been implemented with the agreement of the ministries involved; that is, Transport (maritime traffic) and Ecological Transition (biodiversity protection).
“We have changed the recommendations because the proposal to stop the engines was not having an effect. The killer whales do not stop interacting even if the engine was stopped,” says a spokesman for the Ministry of Transport (competent in maritime navigation). “The recommendations are agreed with the General Directorate of Biodiversity”, confirms this spokesperson. Renaud de Stephanis stresses that thanks to the new recommendations “interactions have been reduced”.
On the other hand, Alfredo López Fernández, member of the Atlantic Orca Working Group, disagrees with the decision adopted; He criticizes the lack of explanations about the change in criteria by those responsible for the General Directorate of Biodiversity (in charge of protecting cetaceans) and highlights the contradiction that there are now “different recommendations in Spain and Portugal”. Cemma participated in 2020 in the study on orca collisions.
In an attempt to help navigation, the Ministry for Ecological Transition (in collaboration with Circe) has begun to signpost risk areas. To do this, it has marked one of the specimens that “ram” the boat so that information is available via satellite on the location of the group. In this way, it prepares a weekly map of the area where the cetaceans have been moving to disseminate useful information for boaters and thus reduce the risk of interaction and avoid or minimize navigation through said areas.
Are these the areas where you should not navigate? “If someone dares to go through those areas, the orcas will blow up the ship; on the other hand, if you move away from them there is less chance that your boat will blow up”, says Renaud de Stephanis, who has participated in the preparation of these maps, to endorse this delimitation method. “I am a researcher; I’m not speaking out, but if anyone dares to go through those areas, the orcas will blow up the ship, he adds, making his personal position clear.
On the other hand, Alfredo López (member of the Coordinadora para o Estudio dos Mamíferos Mariños (Cemma) doubts the effectiveness of the measure, since only one specimen has been marked to make the maps and several groups of orcas are moving. His organization does their own maps with the information provided by the navigators.
Meanwhile, the sub-delegate of the Government in Cádiz, José Pacheco, stated on Monday that the Maritime Captaincy is studying delimiting “certain areas” and prohibiting the navigation of recreational boats in these areas, as they are “transit places” for cetaceans. He says that the Maritime Captaincy (Ministry of Transport) does not know if these incidents are one-off events or, “as it seems, they are increasing.”
In the summer of 2021, the Cádiz Maritime Captaincy prohibited sailing in the Barbate cove for sailboats of less than 15 meters. However, the measure taken last year “has not been shown to have been effective,” according to sources from the Ministry of Transport. “The Captaincy has not yet taken that measure; and it is possible that it will continue without applying restrictions ”, add the same Transport sources.
Meanwhile, the behavior of orcas continues to cause confusion
Renaud de Stephanis attributes these clashes “to a childish game of the orcas” that, little by little, “has been transmitted to the rest of the individuals”, who thus seek a distraction with the rudder. His explanation is that “the only goal in life for orcas is to hunt tuna” and “anything they have in the sea amuses them”, as he himself has verified in the sea observing their games “with plastic, with sunfish” and now with the helm of ships. De Stephanis has used cameras, underwater, above water, and even attached to the orca, to understand what exactly is going on between them and the fictional rudders. “We found out what happens: killer whales push the rudder with their noses, this causes the rudder to break due to leverage,” he says.
In its conclusions in October 2020, the Atlantic Orca Task Force (GTOA) this group launched two hypotheses. The first is the idea that orcas “have invented something new and are repeating it”, something typical of young orcas, says Alfredo López who participated in this work. But a second hypothesis suggested that these animals have developed aversive behavior, something like a trauma caused in orcas by a boat, and “in which the speed of the boat could be a critical component.”
In other words, after having had a bad experience (a clash between a group of juvenile orcas that were injured in the Strait) the presence of a sailboat leads to “a preventive behavior consisting of stopping its speed by manipulating the rudder”.
“We don’t know which of these two is the correct one, and even if it’s the second, we don’t know what the event that triggered it could have been,” says López.
However, this group (GTOA) does not rule out that it is behavior induced by interest and curiosity since “by touching moving parts of the ship, they can move or even stop a large moving object.”
In any case, “the intention is not hostile. The killer whales are not showing an aggressive attitude in all of this, although they may break something. Cetaceans are not vindictive,” says López.
In that investigation, it was pointed out that Gladis Blanca was probably the one who initiated the interactions, since in 2020 she was the only adult who did this, in the middle of a group of young orcas.
Lori Marino, a cetacean neuroscientist and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, says the “fun” theory makes the most sense to her.
“These are highly intelligent and inquisitive animals, and seem to be attracted to the bottom of boats and protruding parts. Orcas are cultural beings and often start a trend and that trend spreads through the group,” he told BBC.
The Tarifa Maritime Rescue Center has detected a total of 78 interactions in the Strait of Gibraltar this year until June 13. For this reason, this year it has had to assist and tow some 28 sailboats that had problems at sea after encountering orcas in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar. This number almost doubles the fourteen rescues they had to do in all of 2022 and the 13 they did in 2021.
