Orca attacks escalate off Portugal: Over 800 incidents since 2020

In May of last year, the yacht "Levante" set sail from Norway with two sailors on board. A few days ago, when the yacht was already en route to its home port, they were attacked by a group of orcas.

A bad weather forecast prompted the sailors to change course and head to the port of Lisbon. At that moment, they noticed a few dolphins swimming alongside the boat. Soon after, they spotted larger fins on the left side of the boat. “From the moment we noticed this to the first hit, it took two seconds,” one of the sailors told the Norwegian newspaper VG. Suddenly, they realized a pod of orcas was attacking them.

The orcas not only struck the boat, altering its course, they also began to bite it, damaging, among other things, the boat's rudder. The sailors immediately sent a "Mayday" signal and informed the port in Sesimbra of their predicament. They feared that their boat might sink.

The commercial vessel named NQ Rosa was the first to respond to the call for help. It positioned itself about 1 km from the damaged yacht to monitor the situation. After about two hours, a Portuguese rescue boat arrived at the scene and towed the damaged unit to the port.

Such incidents involving orcas attacking sailing boats were completely unknown just a few years ago, but since 2020, there has been a noticeable increase in reports.

According to the latest report from the organization GT Orca Atlántica (GTOA), from 2020 to the end of August 2024, a total of 824 documented orca attacks on boats have been recorded in the Strait of Gibraltar, the western Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Portugal, the northern coasts of Spain, and the western coasts of France.

Scientists are puzzled by this behaviour because orcas inhabit all of the world's oceans, yet they only attack sailing boats off the southwest coasts of Europe. Despite hundreds of such incidents, experts still do not have definitive answers as to why orcas exhibit this behaviour.

Source: vg.no