The sailor in me fears the calm and the storm, but not the sea monster, at least that's how I felt until recently. But what is happening off the coasts of Spain and Portugal now makes me wonder: Huge aquatic animals are playing ship sinking there.
Orcas off the Iberian Peninsula began attacking sailing ships in May 2020, rarely motorboats. The killer whales usually bite the rudder intentionally until it broke, leaving the ship unable to maneuver. Apparently, there have already been dozens of attacks.
In July 2022, orcas sank a first vessel, and in November 2022 a second. All the people were saved. At the beginning of May, the killer whales struck again: Three animals heated up the Swiss sailing yacht "Alboran Champagne" for an hour and a half. The attacks were brutal," reports skipper Werner Schaufelberger. One of the orcas rammed the boat again and again and so violently that it leaked.
The coast guard rescued the crew and towed the wrecked ship, but in vain: shortly before the rescue port, it sank in the Mediterranean Sea.
The next attack is sure to come – and the question is becoming more and more urgent: What's wrong with the orcas?
Apparently, up to nine orcas from two groups are involved in the attacks: a trio of cubs, which sometimes appear as a quartet, and a very special female, which is on the move with two cubs and sometimes two sisters. This female, researchers now speculate, could be the key figure.
"White Gladis", as they call the animal, could have been traumatised by a ship in the past, for example because it once got entangled in a net. This experience apparently led to the fact that »White Gladis« does not like certain ships. She has apparently passed on her dislike - and her fighting technique - to her offspring in real lessons, who now live up to her role model.
Do the researchers who hatch such theories think too much in human categories? Perhaps. Why an orca does what it does is not necessarily clear to humans. Orcas also sometimes run after bizarre fashions. Off the US state of Washington, in the summer of 1987, a group of killer whales began carrying dead salmon on their heads. For a few months they did this devotedly, then they went back to other things.
Sailors should be on their guard against the Iberian Peninsula in the coming holiday season, but there is probably no reason to be afraid of black and white sea monsters. There is no evidence that these behaviorally conspicuous orcas want to harm humans - only boating. If they were killer whales in the literal sense of the word, we would have learned this long ago. It is to be hoped that they will give up their attacks for another pastime before the endangered animals themselves are harmed.
Heartily
Marco Evers, Editor in the Science Department
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