What is this story of orcas attacking boats at sea?

A group of divers was able to admire several orcas during an outing on the Bassin d'Arcachon.

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• Several killer whales attacks against boats have been reported in recent weeks off the Portuguese and Spanish coasts.

• Scientists are struggling to explain these attacks, with killer whales considered to be sociable and not very aggressive mammals.

• Protection of a hunting or breeding territory, a lost individual or mimicry… "20 Minutes" questioned specialists in these marine mammals to try to understand these attacks.

Broken rudder, damaged hull, ruffled crew ... In recent weeks, several incidents of orcas attacking boats in the Mediterranean Sea, causing extensive physical and material damage, have been reported by local media.

For scientists, this is misunderstanding.

Why have killer whales attacked boats, sailboats and also yachts on several occasions over the past two months off the Spanish and Portuguese coasts? 

takes stock of these “very unusual” attacks, according to specialists.

• What happened ?

Since the beginning of August, several attacks of killer whales against boats have been reported by the Spanish media, but also by the

.

On August 30, two incidents occurred off the coast of Galicia, in the Rías Baixas region.

A Spanish Navy yacht, named the Mirfak, lost part of its rudder after the attack by two orcas, as shown in this video taken by the crew of the boat.

A few hours later, a French sailboat was damaged by the friction of an orca.

The passengers had also alerted the Spanish coast guard after the incident.

More recently, on September 11, an orca struck a 10-meter yacht fifteen times, reported the director of the company Halcyon Yachts, owner of the boat.

On the same day, further south, two similar collisions were reported in Spanish waters.

Faced with the multiplication of incidents, the Spanish maritime rescue services warned, on Monday, the ships in the area of ​​the presence of orcas, and recommended to the sailors "to keep their distance, to give them a great margin of maneuver. and to inform the coast guard ”.

• How to explain the presence of orcas?

If scientists are struggling to explain these incidents, the presence of orcas in these waters is quite usual.

There are “about forty individuals in the Strait of Gibraltar, divided into ten families.

It is the only population of killer whales in the Mediterranean that is known and studied.

They come in the summer to feed on bluefin tuna, ”explains Guillaume Guinet, CNRS research director at the Center for Biological Studies in Chizé.

“Usually, orcas come to feed on the catches of Moroccan fishermen, this is called depredation.

Groups of killer whales have likened this place to tuna fishing.

They simply wait for the fishermen to collect their catches and take the opportunity to help themselves as they pass, ”explains Sami Hassani

director of the Association for the Conservation of Mammals and Marine Birds in Brittany.

While the region's killer whale population is known to specialists and sailors, they are not used to being aggressive, according to Loriane Mendez, research assistance at the International Commission for the Scientific Exploration of the Mediterranean (CIESM ):

"Until now, we had never recorded any form of aggression or accidents towards men orcas in the wild, unlike in captivity."

And for good reason, these marine mammals - whose size varies between 6 and 8 meters for a male - are known to be, at best, sociable with men, at worst, indifferent.

• Why do killer whales attack ships?

While cetacean specialists are struggling, for the moment, to explain this sudden change in behavior, several hypotheses emerge.

Are the orcs trying to mark or "reclaim" their territory?

For Loriane Mendez, the hypothesis is plausible: “This is not the first time that cetaceans have tried to make humans understand that they are on their territory.

But more often than not, that results in blows of tails on the surface to splash the boats ”.

Second hypothesis: mammals are trying to protect a specific area: "This territorial area could correspond to something important for the group of orcas, a hunting, resting or breeding area", explains Sami Hassani.

For Guillaume Guinet, the incident could have started with a single individual, or with a single family of killer whales, and have spread to other families: “There is a phenomenon of mimicry, of very imitation. present in killer whales, this is called horizontal transmission of behavior, different from vertical transmission, which goes from mother to offspring ”.

For the three specialists, it could also be a single individual: "We are perhaps dealing with an anecdotal individual, who is outside the framework of the group, as is the case with dolphins", explains Sami Hassani. .

“It might sound like something called 'dolphin ambassadors'.

They are isolated, rejected individuals who develop quite original and atypical behaviors, ”also considers Loriane Mendez.

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