A group of Iberian orcas have a risky new hobby: chasing sailboats and breaking their rudders. Now scientists are discovering what is really behind this fad.
In the summer of 2022, Andrea Fantini and his crew members were sailing towards Tangier on the Moroccan coast for the start of a global regatta, the Glob40 race, when one of them suddenly shouted, “Orca! Orca!"
Fantini saw a tail in the distance, then a huge orca charging straight towards them.
"We saw the first orca coming, then the second, the third, and then we were surrounded by orcas," he recalls.
“There were seven orcas all around us, and they started attacking the helm. It was really weird and a little scary."
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Orcas are commonly known as killer whales, but they are actually part of the dolphin family and have never been known to be aggressive towards humans in the wild.
However, since 2020, strange new behavior by a group of them living in the waters around the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe, has been puzzling sailors, scientists, and now a global audience.
Whales seem to have invented a new risky game: it involves chasing sailboats and pushing their rudders, breaking them in the process.
Last week it was widely reported that an orca crashed into a boat in the North Sea.
A few days ago, a school of orcas "attacked" racing boats near the Strait of Gibraltar.
Scientists prefer to call these encounters "interactions," because the orcas' intent may be mischievous rather than hostile.
It's an unprecedented phenomenon, says Alfredo Lopez Fernandez, an orca researcher with the Atlantic Orca Working Group (GTOA), which monitors Iberian orcas.
Historically, there have been reports of orcas diving under boats, or crashing into them and causing them to sink.
But Lopez says those cases were usually isolated and tied to a specific situation: "None of them are like what's happening now."
The new behavior suggests orcas touch, push and even turn boats, according to an analysis of interactions reported in 2020.
Lopez cautions that our own perception of this could be biased.
What looks like kicking may just be the orca moving the boat or rudder with their heads and bodies "because they can't hold things with their fingers."
A new, ongoing research project by orca expert Reno de Stéphanis, which involves presenting wild orcas with fake rudders and filming them, has revealed new insights into these encounters.
What seems to be happening is instead of biting the rudders, the orcas are pushing them with their noses until they break.
"They push, push, push - boom! It's a game. Imagine a child of 6, 7 years, weighing three tons. That's it, nothing less, nothing more," de Stefanis told the BBC.
"If they wanted to break the boat, they would have broken it in 10 minutes," he adds.
He has been studying Iberian orcas since the 1990s and is the coordinator and president of Cetacean Conservation, Information and Research (CIRCE), a marine conservation organization.
The game seems to be expanding. There were 2022 interactions in 207, the task force's data shows, compared to 197 in 2021 and 52 in 2020.
Originally they mostly took place in and around the Straits of Gibraltar, along the coasts of Portugal, Spain and Gibraltar, but the playing field has expanded to the coasts of Morocco and France.
"The interactions follow the migratory routes of orcas," says Lopez.
Only about 35 Iberian orcas have been identified, and the total population is thought to be less than 50.
Of those, 15 are known to be involved in boat encounters — it's always the same flock, Lopez says.
According to the Cruise Association, three yachts were sunk in 2022 and 2023 after interactions with orcas.
As Fantini says, breaking the rudder completely can open a hole and water can rush in and sink the boat.
Even those who sail in sturdy racing boats, with spare rudders and lifeguards nearby, find the experience terrifying.
"20 minutes ago we were hit by orcas," says Jelmer van Beek, skipper of the Dutch sailing team JAJO, in a video shot this summer in the Atlantic Ocean west of Gibraltar, during the Ocean Race leg.
“Three orcas came at us, right at us, and they started hitting the rudder. It's impressive to see orcas, first of all, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us and the team."
In Fantini's encounter during last year's Glob40 race, the team's underwater camera captured orcas swimming towards the helm.
"It seems that they really have a modus operandi, they have a project, they know what to do. They were really well organized," he says.
As part of a project supported by CIRCE and the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, Reno de Stefanis intensively monitored this group of orcas.
He and his team used a variety of cameras—underwater, above water, and even attached to the orca—to understand exactly what was going on between them and the fake rudders.
"We discovered what happens, killer whales push the rudder with their nose, which causes the rudder arm to break," he says.
The detailed results have not been published yet, but he hopes to publish them soon.
What started this game? And what can be done to stop it?
In the fourth summer since the trend began, the mystery is still not fully solved - but scientists are starting to get there. Here's what we know.
Even before 2020, orca communities in and around the Strait of Gibraltar developed a foraging strategy that involved swimming to tuna fishing boats to hook fish.
In 2020, nine orcas began to approach the sailboats, pushing or hitting them, and occasionally breaking the rudder.
There were three "ringleaders" most involved in these interactions: an adult orca named White Gladis and two juveniles, Black Gladis and Gray Gladis.
(Scientists have chosen a name for all interacting orcas: "gladis", based on one of the species' old names, "gladiator orca").
Over the years, more orcas joined them. They have consistently focused on sailboats rather than all types of boats, Lopez says.
Lopez cautions against describing the behavior as assault: "We socially condemn them before we even realize what they're doing."
In his opinion, their intent is not hostile.
"The orcas are not showing an aggressive attitude in all of this, although they might break something," he told the BBC in an email.
"We know it's a complex behavior that has nothing to do with aggression (they don't want to eat anyone, or harm people) or sanctification (orcas are not bitter)."
When the rudder breaks, the orcas swim away - as they did in the case of Fantini, whose boat had two rudders: "Fortunately, they only broke one. And then they left. They disappeared," says Fantini.
This leads to the most difficult question: what exactly is their motivation?
The working group presented two hypotheses, says Lopez.
One might be called the "fun or fad hypothesis." As Lopez says, the idea is that orcas "invented something new and are repeating it."
This behavior would be more typical of young orcas, he says.
In the 2021 report, the task force notes that young orcas have occasionally been observed approaching ships, staring at them, following them and jumping on the waves they cause.
Another could be called the "trauma hypothesis".
According to that explanation, "one or more individuals have a bad experience and try to stop the boat to prevent it from happening again," he says.
In his opinion, this would be more in line with the behavior of adult orcas.
"We don't know which one is correct, and even if it's the other one, we don't know what could have been the trigger," Lopez says.
However, he makes several points that support another trauma-related explanation.
First, White Gladys, the adult orca, was probably the one who initiated the interaction.
At the time, in 2020, she was the only adult orca to do so, among a group of young orcas.
Second, in 2021 she continued to interact even though she had her newborn daughter with her, suggesting in his view that "her desire to interact is even stronger than her protective maternal instinct."
Regarding this traumatic experience, he points out that many fishing boats place ropes on the stern of the boat, which attracts orcas, who come to inspect them and catch fish.
There have been cases of orcas becoming entangled and injured in these ropes.
It is possible that something like that happened to Bela Gladis, he believes.
Meanwhile, Black Gladys has had injuries that may have been caused by humans, and "we know that Gray Gladys witnessed a friend get tangled in fishing lines in 2018," Lopez says.
"All of this leads us to think that human activities are the source of these behaviors, even if it's in an indirect way," Lopez says.
What we can learn from their new habit is "that they are very intelligent, and we bother them a lot".
Lori Marino, a neuroscientist, whale expert and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, says the "fun" theory makes the most sense.
“These are very intelligent and inquisitive animals and seem to be attracted to the underside of boats and protruding parts.
Orcas are cultural creatures and will often start a fad and that fad will spread through the group."
Such cultural traditions include distinctive call types, which are described as dialects, as well as different feeding strategies.
All these different behaviors "start as a fad," says Marino.
"The fad, if it continues, can become part of their culture and be passed down from generation to generation," she says.
Their ability to work in flocks helps develop such complex quirks and traditions: "For example, they can coordinate their behavior to get a seal off an iceberg or enter different defensive swimming patterns if they are being chased by a predator... So the ability is there. Orcas show impressive levels of organization in many other activities," she says.
Sailors and orca experts agree that it would be best to halt the risky trend. But how?
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a surefire way to prevent or even shorten interactions.
The Orca Working Group recommends avoiding orcas by regularly checking maps of their movements.
Renaud de Stephanis' main recommendation is also to avoid areas where orcas are found, with the help of updated maps based on satellite tracking of orcas - this is starting to help reduce interactions, he says.
The sailors also tried to scare them by banging on things.
However, this doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
Trying to escape them is futile.
According to a 2021 task force report, orcas usually swim between 15-20 kilometers per hour, but can reach speeds of up to 50 kilometers per hour, making them difficult to shake off (the boat sailed by Team JAJO, a Dutch team, it was sailing at a speed of 22 kilometers per hour when the orcas struck, and according to the sailors, the animals found the speed exciting).
There is no evidence that other tricks used by some sailors, such as throwing sand at orcas to confuse them, work - and throwing things at them is not a good idea given that Iberian orcas are endangered.
Leaving the area quickly helps, says de Stefanis (not because the orca can be outrun, but because it's less likely to follow the boat once it's outside the desired area).
In Fantini's case, the orcas stayed for about 30 or 40 minutes: “It felt like forever. The team waited until the orcas broke the rudder and left. They knew there was no point in trying to speed up: “They were very fast. Even if you try to go as fast as you can with the boat, they will always be faster. So driving fast is not the solution. I don't really know what the solution would be. Right now, if I have to go again, I don't know what to do."
He's laughing. - Except to bring a spare rudder.
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