Normally quite friendly, gangs of orcas are now attacking boats in the Straits of Gibraltor. The Guardian takes up the story:

Reports of orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar have left sailors and scientists confused. Just what is causing such unusually aggressive behaviour?

When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters. But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without steering, drifting into the Gibraltar Straits shipping lane between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate.

The pod rammed the boat for more than an hour, during which time the crew were too busy getting the sails in, readying the life raft and radioing a mayday – “Orca attack!” – to feel fear. The moment fear kicked in, Morris says, was when she went below deck to prepare a grab bag – the stuff you take when abandoning ship. “The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they communicated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout.” It felt, she says, “totally orchestrated”.

Full Report

Bubblecar said:

Normally quite friendly, gangs of orcas are now attacking boats in the Straits of Gibraltor. The Guardian takes up the story:

Reports of orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar have left sailors and scientists confused. Just what is causing such unusually aggressive behaviour?

When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters. But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without steering, drifting into the Gibraltar Straits shipping lane between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate.

The pod rammed the boat for more than an hour, during which time the crew were too busy getting the sails in, readying the life raft and radioing a mayday – “Orca attack!” – to feel fear. The moment fear kicked in, Morris says, was when she went below deck to prepare a grab bag – the stuff you take when abandoning ship. “The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they communicated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout.” It felt, she says, “totally orchestrated”.

Full Report

I would say the reasons are well covered in the full report. I feel very sorry for them having to survive in such conditions generated by people, some not very friendly.

Bubblecar said:

Normally quite friendly, gangs of orcas are now attacking boats in the Straits of Gibraltor. The Guardian takes up the story:

Reports of orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar have left sailors and scientists confused. Just what is causing such unusually aggressive behaviour?

When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters. But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without steering, drifting into the Gibraltar Straits shipping lane between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate.

The pod rammed the boat for more than an hour, during which time the crew were too busy getting the sails in, readying the life raft and radioing a mayday – “Orca attack!” – to feel fear. The moment fear kicked in, Morris says, was when she went below deck to prepare a grab bag – the stuff you take when abandoning ship. “The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they communicated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout.” It felt, she says, “totally orchestrated”.

Full Report

I have a book here. “Survive the savage sea”, by Dougal Robertson. Their ship Lucette was sunk by Orcas on 15 June 1972. They suffered exactly this kind of coordinated Orca attack, and ended up drifting 38 days north in their ship’s rowboat before being rescued. Their life raft had long since sunk by that time.

The Orca pod rammed the ship below the waterline in a coordinated attack that didn’t stop until their ship was sunk.

Robinson surmises that this was because the Lucette had inadvertently hit an Orca, injuring it, resulting in the pod turning their anger on the ship.

The Orca attack is described in detail. eg. a sketch of the damage caused by one of the Orcas, five wooden planks of the hull were snapped in half by one of the Orcas, and they were attacked by three.

“when sledgehammer blows of incredible force struck the hull beneath my feet, hurling me against the bunk … Three killer whales; I remembered the one in captivity in Miami Seaquarium weighed three tons and that they swam at about thirty knots into an attack; no wonder the holes in Lucette! The others had probably eaten the injured one with the V in its head, which must have split its skull when it hit Lucette’s three-ton lead keel.”

I don’t think I ever thought of orcas as gentle.

Was watching a deadly 60 episode where Steve Backshall travelled to the Fijords of Norway when the herring were spawning, specifically to film orca and show their amazing and deadly hunting techniques. Immediately it was obvious that huge trawler nets were full of herring and the orca and humpbacks were having trouble getting much more than a few fish scales or the odd fish that tumbled out of overfull nets.

Hardly majestic or any of that.

roughbarked said:

Was watching a deadly 60 episode where Steve Backshall travelled to the Fijords of Norway when the herring were spawning, specifically to film orca and show their amazing and deadly hunting techniques. Immediately it was obvious that huge trawler nets were full of herring and the orca and humpbacks were having trouble getting much more than a few fish scales or the odd fish that tumbled out of overfull nets.

Hardly majestic or any of that.

Some of the whales alive now were alive when Australia was still a whaling country.
Give them time.

Adrenaline Is Magic

“Everyone was like, ‘Oh, it was eight seconds. How’d you move so fast?’ But it was almost slow motion, like a movie.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-24/whale-capsizes-fishing-boat-off-new-hampshire-coast/104136336

SCIENCE said:

Adrenaline Is Magic

“Everyone was like, ‘Oh, it was eight seconds. How’d you move so fast?’ But it was almost slow motion, like a movie.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-24/whale-capsizes-fishing-boat-off-new-hampshire-coast/104136336

I think they need to be disciplined.

Small firecrackers that can go off underwater. Should be an unpleasant sensation of any whale getting too close.

It isn’t an orca.
Mollofumble hasn’t visited lately.

Peak Warming Man said:

It isn’t an orca.
Mollofumble hasn’t visited lately.

Haven’t seen Peek Warning Menchen either.

SCIENCE said:

Adrenaline Is Magic

“Everyone was like, ‘Oh, it was eight seconds. How’d you move so fast?’ But it was almost slow motion, like a movie.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-24/whale-capsizes-fishing-boat-off-new-hampshire-coast/104136336

While part of me is thinking that the whale was doing what whales do and it was an accident, I have been in a tinnie in the centre of a pod of breaching whales. They knew we were there and stayed well clear of us. This one in the video showed either a lapse of judgement, or a desire to tell the hoomans to just GTFO and leave it alone.