Mystery Orca Attacks Sink Another Boat

Orcas have attacked and sunk another boat of the coast of Portugal.

The French sailboat, which had four passengers aboard, had been 14 miles off the coast of Viana Do Castelo in Portugal when the orcas attacked, the National Maritime Authority said in a statement.

The Lisbon Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Center was alerted to the incident at 12:05 p.m. on November 1, when it was evident that the boat was sinking.

Orcas, also known as killer whales, have been targeting sailboats off the coast of Spain and Portugal since 2020. The encounters have ranged from orcas simply approaching boats to actively interfering with them. The incidents don't seem to be increasing, but clearly they have not stopped.

Scientists don't know why the orcas are interfering with boats, but it appears they are targeting the boats' rudders in particular.

Orcas are huge animals and can measure 20 to 26 feet long, meaning they are capable of inflicting severe damage on boats.

When authorities arrived in the area after the latest attack, the passengers had been rescued by a nearby sailboat and no one was injured.

A picture shared by the maritime authority shows the boat halfway sunk in the water. The Viana do Castelo Lifeguard Station arrived at the site later to inspect the wreckage.

It isn't clear whether it is the same orcas carrying out these attacks, but many believe it is one pod that appears to be inflicting the most damage.

"Local scientists who have worked with killer whales in this region for more than two decades have had closer looks at incidents, and so far I think it is fair to say that we do not know why these accidents and attacks are happening," David Lusseau, professor of marine sustainability at the Technical University of Denmark, told Newsweek. "The individual whales seem to engage in the same pattern of attack, focusing on the rudder which can lead to the vessels being immobilized and needing rescue or to tragic situations like the most recent accident where the vessel sunk."

It hasn't been the only boat to sink.

In July, orcas sank a sailboat with five people on board off the coast of Sines, after they rammed the boat.

Orcas are highly intelligent species and can display playful tendencies. This begs the question whether the orcas are playing games when they attack the rudder.

"[It seems to be] a small number of whales targeting boats in a small coastal region where they live. Their attack pattern and their targets seem to be consistent across accidents. We don't know why they are doing this. If this is a game, it is not a trivial one as given the reported force of the attacks and some reported injuries on the whales, these attacks require dedicated and sustained effort which can place the whales in danger. We have no evidence that this is reprisal; the absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence though," Lusseau said.

"In short, we really don't know; and that's the interesting point for me: we have a species interacting with us in a way we don't understand. We project on these interactions all the human emotions we can find, but at the end of the day, they are not humans; they are another species with a very large brain, complex social lives, and [they are] a master problem solver. They have their reason for these attacks, I like to keep an opened option that they have their own, alien, reason or motivation which humans can't understand."