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ORCAS Attacking BOATS in The Atlantic....
ORCAS Attacking BOATS in The Atlantic
SURROUNDED AT SEA > Brit sailor relives ‘terrifying’ ordeal as orcas attacked his boat for hours as he called coastguard begging for help
In the past six months there have been at least 40 reported incidents involving orcas off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.
BBC 1 DEC 2020
For two hours, six or seven orcas, also known as killer whales, continuously rammed the underside of David Smith's 45ft yacht as he was sailing off the coast of Portugal last month.
"I don’t frighten easily and this was terrifying," David said i
"It was continuous. I think there were six or seven animals, but it seemed like the juvenile ones - the smaller ones - were most active.
"They seemed to be going for the rudder, the wheel would just start spinning really fast every time there was an impact."
During the terrifying ordeal, David was part of a team delivering a boat from France to Gibraltar - he had "quit the rat race to sail" back in 2013.
The crew initially thought the killers whales were dolphins, but soon realised they were behaving strangely.
The team knew something was wrong after one of the whales disappeared beneath the boat and David heard a loud thumping sound.
David contacted the Portuguese coastguard 20 miles away in Porto, who advised David and his team to be as "uninteresting" as possible and switch off the motor and take down the sails.
“So then we were just drifting. But while I was on the phone I could hear them ramming the boat," David said.
"At one point, one of the larger animals came right to the stern and flipped onto its back – you could see its bright white underside."
David, who was concerned the whales might dislodge the rudder stock, said he "was definitely preparing to ask the Portuguese coastguard to send a helicopter to get us off".
An hour before sunset, one of the crew called out.
“He said: ‘It looks like we have some large dolphins,’” recalls David.
The only other encounter he had had with an orca was more than 20 years ago in a Vancouver aquarium, but he was in no doubt that he was looking at a group of killer whales.
“They were right at the back of the boat.”
A sense of curiosity and excitement very quickly turned to fear when one orca disappeared beneath the boat and there was a loud thumping sound from the hull.
The boat was 20 miles (32.2km) off Porto, at least three hours from the Portuguese coast. With their VHF radio out of range, they had to use the satellite phone to contact the coastguard, who advised them to switch off the motor and take down the sails. Be as “uninteresting” as possible, they said.
“So then we were just drifting. But while I was on the phone I could hear them ramming the boat. At one point, one of the larger animals came right to the stern and flipped onto its back – you could see its bright white underside.”
The repeated thudding, unsettling as it was, was not David’s biggest fear. As the wheel spun back and forth, he thought the animals might be about to dislodge the rudder stock - a steering column through the hull of the boat.
“If that fractures, you’re really in trouble,” he says. “I was definitely preparing to ask the Portuguese coastguard to send a helicopter to get us off.”
The encounter is one of at least 40 similar incidents in the area. During the summer of 2020, the strangest of summers for so many of us, a group of killer whales off the coast of Spain and Portugal began to act very strangely indeed.
Accounts of the incidents suggested that the animals were deliberately targeting sailing boats. As David puts it: “They came to us, not the other way around.”
The first reported incident was back in July, the most recent at the end of October.
Behind international headlines about “rogue killer whales”, “orchestrated” orca attacks and the videos shared thousands of times on social media, there is a forensic marine science investigation that is still trying to work out what is driving these complex, intelligent and highly social marine mammals to behave in this way.
‘I just didn’t believe it’
“After about an hour, we were confident they’d left us.”
The crew moved the boat closer to the coast - back within radio range. When they reached Gibraltar to carry out a more thorough check for damage, their boat became another piece of evidence in the ongoing investigation.
It's not unusual to see killer whales in these Atlantic waters. For millennia they have pursued their favourite prey, bluefin tuna, as the fish migrate along the hundreds of miles of Portuguese and Spanish coast, and through the narrow Strait o
As the light faded, the reverberating thuds from beneath the boat continued. Then David noticed the lights of a fishing boat in the distance.
“We put up the sail, with the idea that if things really went south, we would have another boat to jump onto.”
Finally, after two hours, as unexpectedly as it started, it all went quiet. No sound for five minutes, then nothing for 10. The wheel stopped sf Gibraltar, to breed in warmer Mediterranean waters.
NB:
Whales are PACK animals & are more intelligent than man.. So many have beached in the last couple of years in many countries..
They are trying to warn MANKIND...but no-one is listening...
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