Seen a bunch of people sharing this one idea that the Iberian orcas are attacking sailing boats because one of them was previously “traumatised”.
I think it needs to be said that this is a fringe theory and widely regarded by lots of people studying this emergent behaviour as implausible.
For a start, orcas swim at 3 times the speed a sailboat travels at. As far as they’re concerned, they are essentially stationary objects. Secondly, orcas weigh more than sailboats, and if they wanted to sink them, they could, easily, but they aren’t doing that.
What the orcas are doing is biting rudders. The sinkings that have happened have been secondary to that: water ingress caused by damage to the rudder stock.
The leading theory is that this started as hunting practice. The Iberian orcas eat tuna, and they hunt them by biting their fins off so they can’t swim away. Sailboat rudders superficially resemble tuna fins, and so are good practice.
The behaviour started with a few young males about 3-4 years ago. It’s now spread and around 15 of them are doing it. It’s nearly all young males.
It appears that what started out as practice has now become the orca equivalent of that arsehole on TikTok walking into people’s houses: they appear to be doing it because their mates do it, and they think it’s funny.
Sadly inaction by, mostly Spanish authorities is leading to people increasingly taking things into their own hands. Sailboat owners share information on orca locations and are increasingly travelling in convoys, WWII style. Initially putting the boat into reverse on engine seemed to work, but they’ve got wise to that, and so an arms race is developing. The current technique which seems to work pretty much all the time is to throw firecrackers into the water.
They’re starting to move on to other types of boats too. Small fishing boats are increasingly being attacked.
This is not going to end well. Either they will finally kill someone, which will likely result in a cull, or they’re going to fuck with the wrong boat. In a few months the tuna migrate north towards Normandy. The orcas follow them. If they start attacking French fishing boats, I can’t imagine those guys taking any shit. Sail boats are pleasure craft and our response has been to try and avoid them, but that’s not going to be the case with fishing boats, and the French are not known for calm and gentle responses to things that threaten their livelihoods.
Watch this space, I guess. The hope is that this behaviour is a fad that will go out of fashion. If it doesn’t, it’s going to end up in deaths; possibly humans, definitely orcas.
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FeralRobots
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •the leading & fringe theories do seem to share the notion that however it started, the teenagers are doing it for fun, as a fad. I'll admit I thought it was funny for a moment when I first heard about it - but like you I then remembered that if humans start to think orcas are dangerous, that's gonna be nothing but bad for orcas, maybe everywhere.
& between this story & the increasing observation of 'shark hunts' ordinary people are beginning to remember orcas are apex predators.
FeralRobots
in reply to FeralRobots • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to FeralRobots • •@FeralRobots I think the point when it really hit home for me was reading about the family involved in one of the earlier sinkings. They were over a hundred miles off shore, in the Bay of Biscay, in their life raft, begging people on the radio not to rescue them in case they brought the orcas back.
One thing people are doing is sticking to shallow water, near the coast. If they go for you there, without a rudder you will likely be driven onto the rocks and drowned. Someone is going to die, sooner or later.
I place the blame for this squarely on the Spanish maritime authorities. They have an attitude of reckless indifference. Most of the attacks happen in their waters, and their response has been to tell people that they could be prosecuted for defending themselves.
This has led to people exchanging information in invite-only WhatsApp groups and the like. Where to get what are effectively depth charges, how to use them, etc. Occasionally someone pops up
... Show more...@FeralRobots I think the point when it really hit home for me was reading about the family involved in one of the earlier sinkings. They were over a hundred miles off shore, in the Bay of Biscay, in their life raft, begging people on the radio not to rescue them in case they brought the orcas back.
One thing people are doing is sticking to shallow water, near the coast. If they go for you there, without a rudder you will likely be driven onto the rocks and drowned. Someone is going to die, sooner or later.
I place the blame for this squarely on the Spanish maritime authorities. They have an attitude of reckless indifference. Most of the attacks happen in their waters, and their response has been to tell people that they could be prosecuted for defending themselves.
This has led to people exchanging information in invite-only WhatsApp groups and the like. Where to get what are effectively depth charges, how to use them, etc. Occasionally someone pops up and is all "don't hurt the murederfish! It's illegal under Spanish law!"
There is then the usual explanation that the safety of life at sea regulations emphasise first and foremost the need to save human life, and that people in international waters, or the territorial waters of Morocco, Portugal, France and the United Kingdom (attacks have happened in all these places) don't give a flying fuck what Spanish law says.
This could and should have been nipped in the bud. A targeted cull of 2-3 individuals in 2019 would have stopped it. Now there is a very high chance that this will result in the extinction of the Iberian Orca.
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Kyozou
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Graydon
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Here's hoping someone figures out how to make rudders taste indescribably bad to orcas.
(Thank you! Appreciate someone throwing some facts into the subject.)
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Eva Chanda
in reply to Graydon • • •Yes! There's gotta be nonlethal ways that work, or at least try them first. Humans are the most dangerous apex predator. #OrcaConservancy #OrcasGoneBad
David Penington
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_3…
Sailing Yacht (1967-1970)
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Sarah Brown
in reply to David Penington • •neville park
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
skua
in reply to neville park • • •Saw recent post of AIUI teenage male chimps attacking and successfully predating on a small band of gorillas.
Many human cultures had lengthy physically exacting rituals for teenage males.
youtube.com/watch?v=dHz4FYn-_e…
60 Minutes The Delinquents (Elephants of Pilanesberg)
YouTubeCooperJ
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to CooperJ • •@CooperJ this has been going on for about 4 years, and various such things have been tried (slowly reversing, different sounds, etc), but they always seem to adapt.
The authorities won’t help. They seem utterly uninterested, and it is likely going to take human deaths to get them to act, or maybe not even that. There are some marine researchers trying to look into it, but it’s kinda small scale.
If the first people they kill are leisure boaters, then there will likely be a bigger push for action. If the first people they kill are fishermen, then I suspect we’ll just start seeing orcas washing up ashore with bullets in them.
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in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to (((Klefstadmyr))) • •Oskar im Keller
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •