A couple from Eastern England found themselves in a precarious situation off the coast of Morrocco as a pod of killer whales began ramming into their boat.
Janet Morris and Stephen Bidwell, from Cambridge, England, were enjoying a sailing trip near the African coast when they caught a glimpse of a rare sight. A group of Orca whales traveling together. Then, out of the blue, the Orcas began ramming themselves into the boat, creating a standoff that lasted nearly an hour. According to Fox News, Morris was feeling both awe and fear during the encounter, saying:
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw them — it’s extremely rare. We were sitting ducks.”
“We were amazingly calm but underneath we were thinking, ‘Oh my God.’”
“Because everyone was calm it felt OK, but we were petrified. It wasn’t until afterward that we talked about being very scared.”
Morris added that the group even contemplated making a break for it and using a life raft to get away from the marine mammals, saying:
“We got our valuables and our passports and talked about getting the life raft ready. It really didn’t help that conditions were bad before the orcas. The boat was moving around a lot — it was hard to distinguish one cause from the others.”
Morris and Bidwell attributed their safety to the captain, who displayed impressive calm during the ordeal. According to Live Science, a group of Orcas have been displaying this behavior consistently in the area surrounding the Strait of Gibraltar. They wrote:
Reports of aggressive encounters with orcas off the Iberian coast began in May 2020 and are becoming more frequent, according to a study published June 2022 in the journal Marine Mammal Science. Assaults seem to be mainly directed at sailing boats and follow a clear pattern, with orcas approaching from the stern to strike the rudder, then losing interest once they have successfully stopped the boat.
Biologist Alfredo López Fernandez also spoke on the matter, saying:
“The reports of interactions have been continuous since 2020 in places where orcas are found, either in Galicia or in the Strait.”
“In more than 500 interaction events recorded since 2020 there are three sunken ships. We estimate that killer whales only touch one ship out of every hundred that sail through a location.”
He added that given the incredibly high IQ of Orcas, these attacks mustn’t be random. Fernandez hypothesized that the attacks are targeted, saying:
“The orcas are doing this on purpose, of course, we don’t know the origin or the motivation, but defensive behavior based on trauma, as the origin of all this, gains more strength for us every day.”
He also adds that while it may not be intentional, this behavior is being seen in young Orcas as well, indicating that the behavior is being passed down from older members of the pod:
“We do not interpret that the orcas are teaching the young, although the behavior has spread to the young vertically, simply by imitation, and later horizontally among them, because they consider it something important in their lives.”
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