with four people needing to be rescued<\/a>. It was the third such attack on a boat in the past seven days.<\/p>\nScientists are currently studying the underwater \u201cdialect\u201d that killer whales use, to see if they can solve the puzzle which has alarmed sailors navigating through the Strait of Gibraltar, one of the world\u2019s busiest seaways, running between Spain and Morocco.<\/p>\n
Convinced the orcas are playing with yachts much like children toy with anything to hand, researchers do not believe that when the marine mammals ram boats\u2019 rudders, it is an aggressive act, even if sailors are often shaken up.<\/p>\n
![\"Researchers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ORCA-CR\u00cdA_MUERTA_63884.jpg\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
Researchers believe orcas might be trying to \u2018play\u2019 with boats they hit (AP)<\/p>\n
Killer whales communicate in a dialect of sounds at between 1-50 kilohertz, most of which can be heard by humans. Dr Javier Almunia, of the Loro Parque Foundation, a research institute based in the Spanish Canary Islands, is using floating buoys to record the \u201cdialect\u201d that killer whales use when they hunt tuna in the Strait of Gibraltar.<\/p>\n
Dr Almunia wants to compare these sounds to the ones the orcas make during \u201cinteractions\u201d with boats.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some cases, the killer whale makes a \u2018joyful call\u2019 when they finish a catch of tuna. Once they kill the tuna, they share the food, and it is a playful interaction. If we can find that during interactions [with boats] it is the same, then it will help us to understand this. Is it an aggressive interaction or playful interaction?\u201d he tells The Independent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am more inclined to think it is playful interaction. When the animals approach the vessel, they are approaching the rudder in a gentle way; they are exploring the environment. When you have a four-tonne animal playing with a sailboat, the perception for the people on board\u2026 is that they are being attacked, but if you look at their movement underwater, it looks like a playful event.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Almunia, whose research is backed by the Conservation, Information and Study on Cetaceans research body, the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transformation and the Sea Observer company, says orca could sink small sailing boats if they wished but, apart from a few rare cases, they have not done this.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-18-085527.png\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
A Portuguese patrol boat after an orca collision (GNR)<\/p>\n
\u201cThese animals have the strength to probably sink one of these sailboats, but it has only happened in a few cases when it has broken the fibreglass. But in those cases, they were playing with the rudder,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Recording killer whales battering boats might not be easy, Dr Almunia concedes. However, researchers also hope to attach video cameras and sound equipment to killer whales to study the sounds they make when they are hunting and ramming yachts.<\/p>\n
They also want to make recordings using decoy boats employed in the sea. \u201cWe are focusing on this acoustic research. We are working next year to understand how the animals are using the sounds during the hunting season between May and July,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Fearing for their lives, some angry yachtsmen have threatened to take matters into their own hands by pouring petrol or stabbing the whales with spikes.<\/p>\n
Such is the alarm that a Facebook group called Orca Attack Reports<\/a> has sprung up, with nearly 76,000 members.<\/p>\nRenaud de Stephanis, a killer whale expert, favours the theory that the orcas are playing with sailing boats. He does not place much faith in the theory that these sleek black-and-white animals are exacting some kind of revenge for being injured by man.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy feeling after working for three years with these killer whales is that it is a game. For them, the sea is super-boring. Kids need to play with anything. Killer whales are the same,\u201d he tells The Independent. \u201cThey have turtles, they have wood, plastic, and now they have boats. It is not so much an attack but a game for them, and that is it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr De Stephanis says \u201cinteractions\u201d between orcas and boats have dropped by 80 per cent since Spain advised sailors to navigate close to the coast in 2022. \u201cThe whales can damage the boats, but it is the same damage as if the boat had hit a reef. Today, the orcas are just like a reef. It is just a problem of navigation. [If you sail] in a special area, you are going to damage the boat,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best way to avoid any problem is to go near the coast to a depth of 30 metres. The interactions I see today involve people who disregard this advice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-159526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}