A Whale’s Tale

Written by Sara Manley of Links Marine Services SL

When three Orcas seemingly attacked SY Wildlife while under passage from Lanzarote to Palma de Mallorca, the crew weren’t immediately concerned. The Orcas, however, were persistent in their mischief...

Over the last few months, we have been reading in the press and watching in the news the shocking stories of Orcas attacking numerous vessels off the Spanish coast apparently for fun. But this isn’t a recent phenomenon, so many incidents were reported from the Galician coast as far back as 2020 that sailing vessels under 15 metres had to be prohibited for their own safety from sailing off the coast and more recently in June of this year the first incident was reported in Northern waters off the Shetland coast.

The crew of SY Wildlife had first-hand experience of this back in May when they were terrorized by a group of three Orcas for an hour and a half as they were making passage from Lanzarote to Palma de Mallorca. The first the crew knew about the attack was a loud thud on the hull, which they assumed must have been from the hull hitting a submerged container. But as they looked over the side towards the stern they saw two pieces of red debris floating off into the distance, which unfortunately for them turned out to be bits of their fibreglass rudders… and then they spotted the Orcas circling under the boat.

The crew weren’t immediately panicked and as per protocol provided by Orcaiberica.org they slowed the vessel, stopped the engine, turned off the auto pilot and left the rudder to track, hoping that the whales would soon enough get bored and go away.

But once the boat had been turned completely around, the panic did set in. The captain called Tarifa traffic control to explain their predicament. They could see the whales pushing the rudders with their noses under the boat, one of which was slightly greyer along the back which they later learnt might have been the Orca named as Gladis, the other two Orcas with her seemed to be full size. The Orcas were pushing the rudders to such an extent that they broke the connecting rod between the two rudders, and they had also turned one of the rudders completely to face the other way leaving boat un-steerable.

Luckily for the crew, thanks to the Orcas’ continued prodding of the rudders, they managed to push the rudders back into the correct position and the boat was once again steerable.

The crew started the engine and got under way, eventually limping into Gibraltar. On arrival, the Harbour Master told them the unbelievable news that there had been 57 attacks in the last 60 days – three of them on the same day as Wildlife attack!

There are two main theories that have been put forward to explain this behaviour. The first being that one of the Orcas suffered from either being struck by a boat or entangled in fishing line and has then taught this attacking behaviour to younger whales as revenge for injuries suffered. The second theory, made recently in by Renaud de Stephanis, a marine biologist undertaking research for the Spanish Government into this behaviour and reported in the Daily Telegraph on 27 June, suggests that the mammals were possibly playing and received a ‘massive adrenaline rush’ from the attacks.

Whatever the reason for this behaviour, the consequences can be devastating and several boats have been lost. Luckily for SY Wildlife, Links Marine Services were able to rebuild in aluminium the two rudders using the existing rudder stock and were able to get the boat back up and running in a couple of weeks.