Orcas attack two racing boats off Gibraltar
A pod of orcas rammed two boats competing in The Ocean Race in the Strait of Gibraltar on June 22, 2023.
Team JAJO confronts a pod of orcas. (Video: The Ocean Race).
The orcas pushed hard against the racing boats of Team JAJO and Team Mirpuri Trifork Racing, according to representatives of The Ocean Race. The 15-minute encounter, involving at least three orcas, forced the crews to lower their sails and make loud noises to drive the animals away. Although no one was hurt, it was still a frightening experience, said Jelmer van Beek, skipper of Team JAJO. He said three orcas rammed straight into the boat's rudders.
When the orcas approached the VO65-class monohull, Team JAJO was nearing the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea on the leg from the Netherlands to Italy. In video filmed by the crew on board, one orca nudges the rudder while another butts its head against the bow.
Knowing they might encounter orcas in these waters, the sailors dropped their sails to slow the boat from its racing speed of 22.2 km/h. They also made plenty of noise to scare off the pod, but slipped from second to fourth place on the leg from The Hague to Genoa. "The orcas were more aggressive when we were going fast. After we slowed down, they also started attacking more gently," van Beek said.
Scientists have recorded a number of incidents in which orcas rammed or damaged boats off the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Measuring 5 to 6.5 m long on average and weighing more than 3,600 kg, the animals are thought to behave this way out of revenge or play. A team of marine scientists studying orcas off Spain and Portugal identified 15 individuals involved in the attacks, 13 of them juveniles, supporting the hypothesis that they are playing. But two adult orcas in the group could support the hypothesis that they are reacting to a past injury, suspected to have been caused by a collision with a boat.
The Ocean Race is a six-month, 59,000-km round-the-world race with 60 participating boats, consisting of seven legs. Although they route around marine protected areas, the racing boats sometimes still collide with whales. One boat in the 2022–23 Ocean Race sent out a distress signal after hitting a whale off Newfoundland in May, injuring two crew members.
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