"It was dawn. We sailed calmly. We saw the first orca approaching, then the second, then the third... In the end it was about six or seven and they started hitting the rudders. They gave blows and blows and more blows. So for more than half an hour; It became very long."

Andrea Fantini sailed a few miles off the coast of Tangier, entering the Strait of Gibraltar from the Atlantic, where he participated in a regatta aboard his sailboat, the Mirai ('future' in Japanese), with which he had sailed from the French port of Lorient.

The day was peaceful. Nothing boded well for a bad journey. But then they suffered the shocking incident. The orcas came out of nowhere and started trying to eat their rudders. "We knew there was this problem in the Strait, but you never think it could happen to you."

This experienced sailor, accustomed to sailing the sea of half the planet and encountering large cetaceans, had never seen anything like it. "Normally they are accidental encounters with whales but the animals go on their way." With the killer whales, everything was different. "I had never seen anything like this, acting with that aggressiveness, we started the engine, we reversed to see if they left, we tried to do everything, but they did not leave."

His testimony, now revealed by the website Gaceta Náutica, has a double value. Not only because of the detailed account of the experienced employer. But because, due to the characteristics of his boat, a class 40 of about 12 meters, his encounter with the orcas could be filmed from a practically unprecedented angle.

Unique video

And it is that being a sailboat prepared for high competition, your boat has an underwater camera that always focuses fixedly on its keel, a fundamental element to maintain the stability and course of the boat.

It was that camera that captured the moment, offering a valuable audiovisual document of the shocking and mysterious phenomenon that for almost three years has baffled biologists and frightened sailors on the Atlantic coasts in various latitudes, from the south of France to the Strait, passing through Galicia. Without going any further, on May 4 three of these animals came to cause the capsizing of a sailboat off the coast of Barbate. So far, there have been more than 300 attacks on boats off the Spanish coast.

The video recorded by the underwater camera, to which EL MUNDO has had access, shows how three orcas emerge from the depths and stealthily approach the stern of the boat. In a coordinated manner, two of them are directed bluntly to the two rudders, located on port and starboard.

One of them manages to tear off a portion of the shovel that is submerged under water. "They literally ate one of the rudders and that moment is perfectly seen in the video, although luckily the boat has two rudders and we were able to reach Tangier," explains Andrea from the port of Palma. If it hadn't been a prepared ship, it might have drifted.

Interactions

Finally the orcas left, leaving the sailor stunned. "Then we documented ourselves more and they explained to us that there is a family of orcas that pass through the Strait, it is strange because they usually live in very cold waters, it is as if they were a group of 'serial killers', acting in the same way, although it is not well known why they do it. "

The phenomenon is known and has long puzzled the scientific community and sailors in the area, without there being a consensus on the reasons why these intelligent animals behave like this.

Many of the scientists do not qualify them as attacks, but as interactions, and emphasize that these large marine animals, known for their intelligence, could do more damage than they inflict on boats. And that therefore, according to that thesis, there would be no harmful intention against human beings.

In a report published by this newspaper last September, it was already pointed out that biologists establish two hypotheses that can justify the disturbing behavior of orcas. The first is the development of self-induced behavior, their innate ability to invent something new and repeat it. Like the pranks of a teenager. The second hypothesis would correspond to the response to an aggressive situation that they had suffered and that they do not want to repeat and therefore try to stop the sailboat.

Scientists consider that the interactions are the result of a set of ingredients among which they cite curiosity about something new, play, hunting and chasing, spurred by the speed of the ship. The protocol in one of these situations, disclosed by the Atlantic Orca Working Group, recommends reducing the speed of the ship or stopping it, leaving the rudder loose and turning off all electronic devices, except the radio.

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