Add and continue. On September 1, a group of orcas attacked the French sailboat Vol de Nuit 90 miles west of the island of Oléron, near La Rochelle, when it was returning from Gijón to France, causing extensive damage to the 18-meter-long vessel. for 5 manga.
“After they left, I realized that the rudders were warped, and I was able to return to power because the pilots were no longer working under sail,” navigator Bernard Bouyé informed the authorities, in statements reported by La Nueva España.
Since 2019, Bouyé has always spent his summers touring ports in northern Spain and, on that tour, he usually stops at the Gijón Marina. However, it is planned to change the route next year. “I think next year I will go north. In any case it is certain that we will return one day,” he says.
The skipper considers that there is a “major problem with orcas south of our French coast as far as Gibraltar.” Since July, at least seven orca interactions with sailboats have been reported in the Bay of Biscay.
According to this medium, Bouyé believes that it is “urgent to find a solution for this group of orcas, which have already caused two shipwrecks and are terrorizing all sailors who navigate the Bay of Biscay.”
Orca attacks on boats have become a problem for boaters and administrations. In recent months, there has been an increase in the number of rammings and specialists agree that this new practice, which consists of chasing sailboats and pushing the rudders until they break, continues to expand.
In an attempt to stop these attacks, the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (Miteco), in collaboration with Circe, announced in May the creation of a satellite tagging of six orca specimens. This system allows the location of specimens in the last hours and the preparation of a weekly map of the approximate area through which it has moved in the last week.
