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Orcas Sink 50-Foot Yacht Off the Coast of Morocco

The vessel’s two passengers were evacuated onto an oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar. The incident marks the fifth vessel the mammals have sunk in recent years

Daily Correspondent

The boat-ramming orcas are back in action: Two people had to be rescued from a sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar after the black-and-white marine mammals damaged the vessel so badly it later sank, reporters Reuters ’ David Latona.

The incident occurred around 9 a.m. local time Sunday, some 14 miles north of Cape Spartel in northern Morocco. Passengers aboard the 50-foot Alboran Cognac felt blows to the yacht’s hull and saw that the rudder had been damaged. As water began leaking onto the ship, they contacted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Tarifa, Spain, which directed them to prepare for an emergency rescue.

About an hour later, a nearby oil tanker picked up the two crew members, who were customers of Spain-based Alboran Charter , which owns the yacht, reports the Washington Post ’s Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff.

The boat took on more water and sank soon after. It’s not clear how many orcas targeted the vessel.

The sinking of the Alboran Cognac is the latest in a string of incidents involving orcas and ships in the Strait of Gibraltar. The highly intelligent, social marine mammals made headlines last spring , when they sank a Swiss yacht called Champagne off the coast of Spain. In November, they brought down another ship , a Polish sailing yacht called the Grazie Mamma .

But the animals’ unusual behavior goes back even further: Since 2020, mariners have reported 700 interactions between orcas and ships in the Strait of Gibraltar, per Reuters. The Alboran Cognac is the fifth vessel orcas have sunk in the last three years, reports Live Science ’s Harry Baker.

Most of the incidents have been recorded in the Strait of Gibraltar, a waterway linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The strait, which is bordered by Morocco to the south and by Spain to the north, is home to a distinct—and critically endangered —subpopulation of fewer than 50 orcas .

However, last June, orcas also rammed into a ship in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway, roughly 2,000 miles away from the Strait of Gibraltar. Scientists weren’t quite sure what to make of that incident, which raised the possibility that the destructive behavior was spreading to different groups of orcas.

In the meantime, authorities are urging mariners in the Strait of Gibraltar to exercise caution this summer. Spain’s Maritime Safety and Rescue Society recommends avoiding a large area between the Gulf of Cádiz and the Strait of Gibraltar; the agency also suggests that mariners sail as close to the coast as possible, especially from May to August, when orcas are more likely to be in the region.

If sailors do encounter orcas, the agency recommends they keep the vessel moving and head toward shallower waters. People onboard the ship should remain in the middle of the vessel and not approach the sides, where they may be at risk of falling overboard.

The agency also asked mariners to notify authorities of any orca encounters and, if possible, to take photographs of the creatures for identification.

Scientists remain puzzled by the orcas’ destructive behavior. A leading hypothesis is that a female nicknamed “White Gladis” started ramming into ships after having some sort of traumatic run-in with a vessel; she may also have been pregnant when she first started targeting ships. Since orcas are social creatures, other members of White Gladis’ group may have simply followed her lead and mimicked her actions.

“The idea of revenge is a great story, but there’s no evidence for it,” said Lori Marino , a neuroscientist and the founder and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, to BBC Newsbeat ’s Shaun Dacosta last year.

Another possibility is that the orcas are curious about ships, or maybe, they’re just having fun.

“They’re probably socializing, yucking it up with each other about their adventures without realizing the terror they’re creating in their moments of joy,” said Andrew Trites , a marine mammal researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, to Business Insider ’s Erin Heger last summer.

From January to May 2024, the interactions recorded by the GT Orcas APP and @crewingservice were a total of 26. It is a 65% lower than the 2023 records and 40% less than the average. Interactions have been reduced since the wide distribution of the orcas. — Orca Ibérica GTOA (@Orca_Iberica) May 14, 2024

Orcas have also been known to temporarily exhibit other unusual behaviors, like placing dead salmon atop their heads. The boat-ramming behavior may be another, similarly short-lived fad that the Strait of Gibraltar orcas will eventually move on from.

And they may already be doing just that: Between January and May 2024, the number of reported interactions with orcas was 65 percent lower than during the same period in 2023 and 40 percent lower than the average for those months across 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to the Atlantic Orca Working Group .

Whatever the orcas’ motivations, scientists have urged onlookers to avoid assigning human emotions to the animals’ behaviors. Though the boat-ramming killer whales have given rise to internet memes and merchandise that suggests they’re plotting an “ orca uprising ,” researchers argue that the marine mammals are not acting with malicious intent.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

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Orcas Sink Another Boat Near Iberia, Worrying Sailors Before Summer

Two people were rescued on Sunday after orcas damaged their boat near the Strait of Gibraltar, where the animals have caused havoc in recent years.

By Isabella Kwai

Summer is on the way, meaning that the orcas are out to play near the Strait of Gibraltar — which is bad news for sailors.

Two people were rescued on Sunday after an attack by a group of orcas caused enough damage to sink their boat, according to the Spanish maritime rescue service. It was the fifth such sinking in waters off the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in recent years.

The Alboran Cognac, a sailing yacht about 50 feet long, was approached by the animals on Sunday morning, some 14 miles off Cape Spartel in Morocco, the rescue service said. Crew members onboard reported that the animals had slammed the hull, damaged the rudder and caused a leak.

A nearby oil tanker quickly maneuvered toward the boat and evacuated the two sailors, who were taken to Gibraltar, the rescue service said. The boat was left adrift, and the Moroccan authorities reported that it eventually sank.

It’s the first boat to sink in those waters this year after an orca-related mishap. A group of orcas that traverse the Strait of Gibraltar and nearby waters has plagued sailors and intrigued marine biologists , who are studying the population. Since 2020, orcas have disrupted dozens of sailing journeys in these high-traffic waters, in some cases slamming vessels hard enough to cause critical damage.

Last November, orcas slammed a yacht’s rudder for 45 minutes, causing its crew to abandon the vessel, which sank near the Tanger Med port.

The group is more likely to appear in the busy lanes around the Gulf of Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar between April and August, the Spanish government said in a news release, and sailors have spotted some of the orcas there in recent weeks.

Researchers do not know why the pod is targeting boats, but they have theorized that the behavior is a form of play for the curious apex predators. The interactions have become so frequent that they are now a multinational issue, involving scientists and officials from Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Online, anxious sailors have gathered to share advice on navigating “orca alley,” and biologists are tracking the orcas’ movements and testing methods that could deter them.

In the event of an orca encounter, the government advised in its release, boats should not stop but instead head toward shallower waters near the coast.

But the number of incidents may be declining: Researchers at the Atlantic Orca Working Group said on Monday that the number of orca interactions with boats between January and May had dropped some 40 percent, compared with that of similar periods in the past three years.

Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends. More about Isabella Kwai

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Orcas again sink yacht near Strait of Gibraltar as high-risk season looms

Two people were rescued after orcas hit the roughly 50-foot Alboran Cognac 14 miles off the coast of Morocco, the 26th orca encounter in the region this year.

The boat-sinking orcas are back.

Around 9 a.m. Sunday near the Strait of Gibraltar, two people on board the roughly 50-foot Alboran Cognac reported blows to the vessel’s hull and saw damage to the rudder as water flowed into the ship, Spain’s maritime rescue agency said.

An unknown number of killer whales had struck again, after hundreds of such encounters in recent years.

Over the radio, responders told the two individuals to put on their life jackets, make sure their GPS locaters were turned on and prepare for emergency evacuation. In the meantime, Spanish and Moroccan rescue agencies began urgently working to save them, locating a nearby oil tanker and electing not to dispatch a helicopter.

After about an hour, that tanker rescued the pair 14 miles off Cape Spartel in northern Morocco, the Spanish Maritime Safety and Rescue Agency (SASEMAR) said in a news release. The boat was left adrift and soon sank.

Spain-based Alboran Charter confirmed its ownership of the sunken vessel and said the individuals were customers. The company declined to say more about what happened or who the clients were.

Iberian orcas sinking a ship is not new. Over the past four years, at least 15 orcas have interacted with hundreds of boats sailing in the waters off Portugal, Spain and Morocco, sinking a handful of vessels in seemingly coordinated ambushes. Some ships have been found with teeth marks; others appear to have been rammed by an orca’s head or body.

On average, there have been 168 interactions each year since 2020, according to Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica, or GTOA, a research group studying the region’s killer whales. GTOA has tracked 26 interactions so far this year, down from 61 through a similar time frame in 2023.

It’s not clear why the orcas have recently bumped, bitten and sunk vessels. Some scientists say they are simply being playful, or maybe are curious, or perhaps are coming after boats because of a loss of prey. A handful say the actions could actually be gratifying to the whales.

A leading theory, though, is one of vengeance.

This idea, advanced by a scientist who has studied the encounters, posits that a female orca suffered a traumatic run-in with a boat that led her to start attacking the vessels. And because orcas are intelligent marine mammals that learn behaviors like hunting together, others followed.

But there is disagreement over this theory.

Some scientists argue that the incidents shouldn’t be called “attacks” without knowing the whales’ motives. They fear that label could prompt retaliation by boaters, calling it potentially “harmful” to the critically endangered species with just a few dozen members.

“Science cannot yet explain why the Iberian orcas are doing this, although we repeat that it is more likely related to play/socialising than aggression,” a group of more than 30 scientists wrote in an open letter last summer. “ … When we are at sea, we are in the realm of marine life. We should not punish wildlife for being wild.”

The letter explained that orcas have been observed developing “cultural ‘fads,’” including carrying dead fish on their heads, and the incidents with the boats may be nothing more than a “fashion trend.”

SASEMAR warned that the risk of the encounters is highest between May and August, recommending that boats avoid the area between the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Cádiz to its west. It added that if a boat comes across orcas, it should not stop moving, and instead should head toward the coast and shallower waters. People should not approach the side of the boat and are barred from using measures that could injure or kill the whales.

“It is possible the behaviour, as previous fads have,” the scientists wrote, “will disappear as suddenly as it appeared.”

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Killer Whales Sunk a 50-Foot Sailing Yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar

It's just the latest in a string of orca attacks on sailboats., tori latham, tori latham's most recent stories.

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Two sailors had a whale of a time over the weekend—but only in the technical sense.

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“This was a scary moment,” the skipper Jelmer van Beek said at the time. “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team.”

While that attack didn’t result in the sinking of the ship, another sailing yacht sank near the Tanger Med port in November, The New York Times wrote. The crew of that ship had to abandon the boat after a group of orcas slammed into the rudder for a whole 45 minutes. (The whales have seemingly been targeting sailboats in particular.)

Researchers don’t know for sure why the whales have been attacking boats, but they think it may be one of the ways the orcas play, the Times said—a pretty dangerous form of amusement, albeit. Others have theorized that it’s a short-term fad among the animals, or that one orca experienced a traumatic event that made it aggressive and other whales began to mimic that behavior. The incidents have become so common in recent years that sailors trade advice online about how to maneuver in the Strait of Gibraltar area, and the Spanish government issued a release that included tips for sailors.

Tori Latham is a digital staff writer at Robb Report. She was previously a copy editor at The Atlantic, and has written for publications including The Cut and The Hollywood Reporter. When not…

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Orcas sank a yacht off Spain — the latest in a slew of such 'attacks' in recent years

Scott Neuman

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast. Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Killer whales are pictured during a storm in the fjord of Skjervoy in 2021 off the coast of northern Norway. Researchers say orcas are stepping up "attacks" on yachts along Europe's Iberian coast.

The crew of a sinking yacht was rescued off the coast of Spain this week after a pod of orcas apparently rammed the vessel – the latest "attack" by the marine mammals in the area that has left scientists stumped, several boats at the bottom of the ocean and scores more damaged.

Killer whales are 'attacking' sailboats near Europe's coast. Scientists don't know why

The encounter on Sunday between an unknown number of orcas, also known as "killer whales," and the 49-foot sailing yacht Alboran Cognac occurred on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow passage linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean where the majority of such incidents have occurred in recent years.

The Alboran Cognac's crew said they felt sudden blows on the hull and that the boat began taking on water. They were rescued by a nearby oil tanker, but the sailboat, left to drift, later went down.

The sinking brings the number of vessels sunk – mostly sailing yachts – to at least five since 2020. Hundreds of less serious encounters resulting in broken rudders and other damage, Alfredo López Fernandez, a coauthor of a 2022 study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, told NPR late last year.

As NPR first reported in 2022, many scientists who study orca behavior believe these incidents — in which often one or more of the marine mammals knock off large chunks of a sailboat's rudder — are not meant as attacks, but merely represent playful behavior.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Catamaran Guru(@catamaranguru)

Some marine scientists have characterized these encounters over the years as a "fad," implying that the animals will eventually lose interest and return to more typical behavior.

The study co-authored by López Fernandez, for example, indicated two years ago that orcas were stepping up the frequency of their interactions with sailing vessels in and around the Strait of Gibraltar.

Some researchers think it's merely playful behavior

One hypothesis put forward by Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research, a research group based in Spain, is that orcas like the feel of the water jet produced by a boat's propeller.

A picture taken on May 31, 2023, shows the rudder of a vessel damaged by killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar and taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A picture taken on May 31, 2023, shows the rudder of a vessel damaged by killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar and taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain.

"What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," de Stephanis told NPR in 2022. "So, when they encounter a sailboat that isn't running its engine, they get kind of frustrated and that's why they break the rudder."

In one encounter last year, Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht that his vessel, Champagne, was approached by "two smaller and one larger orca" off Gibraltar.

"The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side," he said.

The Spanish coast guard rescued Schaufelberger and his crew, towing Champagne to the Spanish port of Barbate, but the vessel sank before reaching safety.

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31, 2023. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A worker cleans Champagne, a vessel that sank after an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar and was taken for repairs at the Pecci Shipyards in Barbate, near Cadiz, southern Spain, on May 31, 2023.

The encounters could be a response to past trauma

López Fernandez believes that a female known as White Gladis, who leads the group of around 40 animals, may have had a traumatizing encounter with a boat or a fishing net. In an act of revenge, she is teaching her pod-mates how to carry out attacks with her encouragement, he believes.

"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," López Fernandez told Live Science .

It's an intriguing possibility, Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute , told NPR last year.

"I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge," she said. "I don't think we can completely rule it out."

However, Shields said she remained skeptical of the "revenge" hypothesis. She said that despite humans having "given a lot of opportunities for orcas to respond to us in an aggressive manner," there are no other examples of them doing so.

Deborah Giles, the science and research director at Wild Orca, a conservation group based in Washington state, was also cautious about the hypothesis when NPR spoke to her last year. She pointed out that killer whale populations in waters off Washington "were highly targeted" in the past as a source for aquariums. She said seal bombs – small charges that fishers throw into the water in an effort to scare sea lions away from their nets – were dropped in their path while helicopters and boats herded them into coves.

"The pod never attacked boats after that," she said.

Why are orcas attacking boats and sometimes sinking them?

After four years and hundreds of incidents, researchers remain puzzled why orcas, also known as killer whales, continue to ram boats – sinking a few of them – along the Iberian Peninsula. The most-recent incident was the sinking of a yacht on Oct. 31 in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The origin of these interactions remain a "great mystery," said Alfredo López, a University of Santiago biologist, but he does not believe the behavior is aggressive. Orcas are large dolphins, López said. And like dolphins, the events could stem from the orcas’ curious and playful behavior, such as trying to race the boats.

López, who specializes in orcas, and his team, Grupo de trabajo Orca Atlántica (GOTA) , have tracked these encounters since 2020. The team’s recent study theorizes the orcas could also be exhibiting cautionary behavior because of some previous traumatic incident.

Where have killer whales interacted with boats?

GOTA has tracked more than 350 interactions just on the Iberian Peninsula since 2020. Most have taken place along the Strait of Gibraltar, but the orcas’ mischief or self-defense may be spreading north. An incident was reported in June in the  Shetland Islands in Scotland .

GOTA defines interactions as instances when orcas react to the presence of approaching boats, such as:

• Interaction without physical contact.
• Some physical contact without damage.
• Contact that causes serious damage that could prevent the navigation of the boat.

Recent incidents when orcas attacked boats and sank them

The Oct. 31 incident occurred in the Strait of Gibraltar where a pod of orcas sank a mid-size sailing yacht named the Grazie Mamma after a 45-minute interaction,  Live Science reported . 

On June 19 an orca rammed a 7-ton yacht multiple times off the Shetland Islands in Scotland, according to an account from retired Dutch physicist Dr. Wim Rutten in the Guardian.

"Killer whales are capable of traveling large distances, so it is not out of the ordinary that an animal could travel that far," said Tara Stevens, a marine scientist at CSA Ocean Sciences Inc. "To my knowledge, this data is not available, so we cannot confirm at this time if these are the same animals." 

Including the Oct. 31 incident, orcas have sunk four boats this year. The previous sinking occured in May , off the coasts of Portugal and Spain, but whale expert Anne Gordon told USA TODAY  in May that the incidents shouldn't heighten concerns about the whales.

"Yes, they're killer whales. And yes, their job is to be predators in the ocean, but in normal circumstances there is absolutely zero threat to humans in a boat," Gordon said .

Most of the interactions have involved sailboats, but fishing boats, semi-rigid boats and motorboats haven’t gone unscathed. 

Are these the same killer whales attacking boats or unrelated incidents?

López hypothesizes that the interactions could be a self-induced behavior where you're "inventing something new and repeat it. This behavior coincides with the profile of the juveniles." He said it could also be response to an aversive situation: "One or several individuals had lived a bad experience and tried to stop the boat so as not to repeat it. This behavior coincides with the profile of adults."

"Fifteen different orcas from at least three different communities" have been identified, López said. And they are probably teaching the habit to others, or the others are mimicking the behavior. "Without a doubt orcas learn by imitation," López said.  The majority of the culprits are juveniles that touch, push and sometimes turn the vessels. He noted that adult males don't appear to be involved.

"Killer whales are incredibly intelligent animals that do learn behaviors from observation of other individuals," Stevens said. "Typically, very unique behaviors such as this are learned 'within' group, meaning individuals of the group may learn from each other and participate, but that does not necessarily mean that the behavior is shared outside the group with other individuals."

Which pods of killer whales are battering the boats?

Orcas operate in a social structure called a pod. These pods generally are a group of several generations of related orcas. Hierarchies are established within them, and they communicate and learn from one another, the study reads.

GOTA researchers have identified the individuals responsible for the interactions . One large pod is made up of three generations. It starts with grandmother Gladis Lamari, her daughter, grandchildren and a few other relatives.

Another pod comprises siblings Gladis Negra and Gladis Peque. Both have been photographed interacting with boats. Their mother, Gladis Herbille, has generally just watched her children at a distance from the boats, the study said.

A third group in the study are siblings and a cousin.

Orcas often tracking bluefin tuna

The movements of orcas depend on the location of their main food source, bluefin tuna. The migratory movements of tuna are very dynamic and predicting exactly where interactions will take place is very difficult, the report said. According to NOAA , Atlantic bluefin tuna are the largest in the tuna family and can reach a length of 13 feet and up to 2,000 pounds. They are a highly migratory species and can migrate thousands of miles across an entire ocean.

About the Iberian orcas

While they are called killer whales, orcas are actually the largest member of the dolphin family. This aquatic marine mammal family includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.

The Iberian orca is a subpopulation of the Atlantic orca population. These orcas are from the Strait of Gibraltar and the Gulf of Cádiz. Iberian orcas are small: 16 to 21 feet compared with Atlantic orcas that measure almost 30 feet.

Orcas in general are fast, reaching speeds up to 27.6 mph. By comparison, a 39-foot sailboat travels at about 9.2 mph.

What should you do if your boat is attacked by killer whales

The study recommended these tips to reduce the duration and intensity of the interaction.

• Stop the boat.
• Leave the rudder loose.
• Radio for help.

According to the GOTA study, most of the vessels involved in interactions are medium-sized (less than 49 feet) sailboats, with a paddle rudder, sailing at an average of 6.9 mph, under both sail and motor.

The interactions have been mostly concentrated in the spring and summer months and have been concentrated in the midday hours. They've lasted on average for 40 minutes, but several last less than 30 minutes. 

Types of rudders Iberian orcas have approached

"It is very common for dolphins to interact with the boats and approach," López said. "Before 2020, the orcas did it with frequency but they weren't classified as attacks. Now, sometimes they touch the boat and the encounter is unfairly classified as an attack. They judge socially before understanding what (orcas) do."

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Killer whales attack another sailboat off Spain, prompting complex rescue that injures crewmember

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: August 26, 2024 / 4:08 PM EDT / CBS News

Orcas slammed into a sailboat off the coast of northwestern Spain on Sunday, damaging its rudder and prompting a complicated rescue operation that left one crew member seriously injured, officials said, marking the latest incident of the predators attacking a vessel in the region. 

It wasn't known exactly how many orcas — also known as killer whales — were involved in the attack near O Roncudo along the rocky cliffs of the Spanish province of Galicia. Spain's maritime rescue service said two people on board the boat, called the Amidala, sent out a mayday at around 4 p.m. GMT to the dispatch center in Cape Finisterre, an area also marked by rocky shores and, at the time, rough seas.

The man and woman who crewed the Amidala haven't been identified by name, but the rescue service described them as Belgian nationals. Their boat sailed under the Finnish flag.

Another vessel with the Spanish maritime rescue service sailed for hours to the Amidala through adverse weather, which included waves nearly 10 feet high and winds of up to 40 miles per hour, the rescue service said. While arranging the towing operation that would allow the rescue vessel to slowly pull the sailboat to a port at Camariñas, the woman on board the Amidala seriously injured her hand and was airlifted back to land. The towing mission eventually ended with the sailboat docked just before 9:30 p.m.

Manuel Capeáns, who leads the rescue coordination center in Cape Finisterre, in a statement commended the Amidala's crew and everyone involved in the recovery for successfully completing the operation in such harsh conditions. 

The incident on Sunday is just the latest in a string of accounts of orcas severely damaging sailboats in Spanish waters and across the surrounding region. In May, a sailing yacht sunk after killer whales attacked it in the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea between southern Spain and Morocco. The unknown number of orcas in that ordeal slammed into the vessel carrying two people and caused a water leak, according to Spain's maritime rescue center. Those crew members were rescued by a passing oil tanker.

Orca attacks on sailboats have apparently become more common in recent years. Reports of killer whale interactions with humans more than tripled over the last two years, according to a research group called GTOA, which documents such incidents in and around the Atlantic Iberian Peninsula. 

The group said it has recorded hundreds of those interactions since 2020, although researchers noted that orcas' behavior in the Strait of Gibraltar and Bay of Biscay — another hotspot for killer whale interactions — dropped significantly between January and May of this year compared with the last three years' average figures over those same months.

Sailors have resorted to everything from throwing sand in the water to setting off fireworks to blasting thrash metal music in efforts to ward off the encroaching predators.

• Boat Accident

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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After Second Death This Year, Russian Aquarium Renounces Use of Captured Orcas

In the wake of two young captive orcas dying so far this year at the Moskvarium Aquarium in Moscow, the facility has admitted that keeping captured whales in concrete tanks is fundamentally unworkable. 

On June 23rd, the aquarium announced that Nord, a 16-year-old male orca, who was captured in 2013, had died of an acute peptic ulcer.

Photo of Nord by Oxana Federova

Only five months earlier, on January 8th, it posted that Narnia, a 17-year-old female orca taken from the ocean several years ago had died of an acute volvulus (the abnormal twisting of a portion of the gastrointestinal tract).

Naya, a 12-year-old female, is now the one remaining orca at the aquarium.

These latest two deaths are part of a worldwide pattern of illness and death that characterizes the lives of captive orcas – whether wild-caught or captive-born – in concrete tanks. In the wild, male orcas live to an average age of 30 (maximum 50-60 years) and females live to an average age of 46 (maximum 80-90). Most captive orcas do not live beyond their early 20s.

Following the passing of Nord, the Moskvarium admitted publicly that it is impossible to close the gap between what orcas need to thrive and what life in a tank is like for them. It is impossible to close the gap between what orcas need to thrive and what life in a tank is like for them

“Despite the high level of competence of the center’s experts … it is extremely difficult to approximate the artificial conditions for keeping large marine mammals to natural,” it wrote in a statement. The facility has called for a “complete ban on catching marine mammals for educational and cultural purposes.”

The Moskvarium notes that its Center for Oceanography and Marine Biology took part in the development of a law that comes into effect in Russia in September 2024 and provides for a complete ban on “the capture of marine mammals for cultural and educational purposes.”

Photo of Narnia by Moskvarium

The decision to end catching orcas and other marine mammals for entertainment is certainly laudable but it does not ban the breeding of these animals in captivity. Science tells us that captive-born orcas have just as poor, if not poorer, well-being in the tanks as those who were born in the ocean.

The aquarium also notes that in 2019, its experts participated in the rescue and return to the ocean of the 97 orcas and beluga whales who were being held at the infamous “whale jail” near Vladivostok after being captured for sale to entertainment parks in China. (The Whale Sanctuary Project also worked with the Russian government and with Russian animal protection groups. See our posts on Whale Aid Russia.)

The question now is what will happen to Naya, the remaining orca at the Moskvarium who is being kept under conditions that, for a highly social and intelligent mammal, are inhumane. The stress of being the sole individual in a highly artificial environment after experiencing the deaths of two other orcas could lead to her demise, too.

Just as the Miami Seaquarium is now working with the nonprofit Friends of Toki toward transferring its lone orca Tokitae to a sanctuary environment, the Whale Sanctuary Project and our colleagues in the wildlife sanctuary community stand ready to work with the Moskvarium toward determining what are the next best steps for Naya to ensure that she has the highest possible quality of life so that she doesn’t follow the same path as Narnia and Nord.

Title photo of orca Nord by Moskvarium.

© 2024 The Whale Sanctuary Project. All Rights Reserved.

Far East Russia Orca Project (FEROP)

Wdc helped open up whale research in russia in 1999, building a photo-id catalogue of russian orcas as well as a russian team to study them. ferop is still going strong today..

Shadowed by snow-covered coastal volcanoes, Avacha Gulf on the southeastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula is home to more than 700 Russian orcas. Mostly the resident orcas come to feed on salmon but they also eat mackerel and cod. Orcas also use Avacha Gulf for resting, socializing and giving birth. When the pods join up together, they form into “clubs”. Whales in these clubs gather to establish and maintain social bonds, and they play a role in reproduction, but they don’t feed together.

The appearance and structure of the Russian fish-eating killer whale communities resemble the well-known northern and southern Vancouver Island communities and the resident Alaskan communities—but there is no known exchange between any of them.

Besides Avacha Gulf, the Russian orca photo-ID catalog includes about 1,100 orcas around the Commander Islands, located 175km east of Kamchatka. For the entire Russian Far East, the total number of photo IDs stands at more than 2,000 fish-eating orcas and 130 transient mammal-eating orcas. Unlike Avacha Gulf which has a mostly fixed population, the numbers of orcas identified in the Commander Islands are still increasing every year; this suggests a greater number of individuals in this area, which seems to be a crossroads for visiting orcas.

Orcas captured for marine parks

In 2003, after FEROP researchers had finished the year’s research, two young female orcas from Hooky’s pod were caught by Russian captors in Avacha Gulf and killed — one suffocating in the nets, the other dying after 13 days in a Black Sea aquarium. FEROP helped to get captures banned from Avacha Gulf. In 2012, however, an industry started up in the Russian Okhotsk Sea, on the other side of Kamchatka, and since then at least 16 transient mammal-eating orcas have been caught and sold to three marine facilities in China and one in Russia. There are no current estimates of the numbers of transient killer whales in the Okhotsk Sea. Russian marine mammal scientists, as well as the International Whaling Commission and various conservation groups, have expressed concerns about the growing number of quotas and permits that are given to capture killer whales without reliable abundance estimates.

Today the FEROP work continues with new generations of Russian students, and it has expanded to include studies on humpback whales which have increased in the region in recent years, as well as the first behavioral study of Baird’s beaked whales and starting a catalog of the rare North Pacific right whales who number only 500 individuals.

WDC Research Fellow Erich Hoyt, together with Russian scientists Alexander Burdin, Olga Filatova and Tatiana Ivkovich are responsible for directing the project. FEROP has succeeded in training a generation of young students in photo-ID, acoustic recording and other research techniques, with at least ten students having obtained MSc’s and four students PhDs through the project mostly at Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University. The FEROP work has been widely reported by BBC News and other publications around the world. The main papers published by the team in international journals can be seen and downloaded on the Russian orca website.

FEROP has been partly supported every year by the Animal Welfare Institute, Humane Society International, and the Litowitz Foundation, based in the U.S. British and European sponsors such as the Rufford Foundation, the Sacher Trusts and the Klüh Prize have helped in other years. The continuation of this work depends on your donations.

Successes so far

• Generation of students have qualified as marine researchers at university.
• Ban on capture of orcas in Avacha Gulf
• 2000 resident orcas identified
• 130 transient orcas identified
• Worldwide coverage of the project and new discoveries about orcas living off the Russian coast.
• Expansion of the project into other areas and species such as the endangered North Pacific right whale.

Find out more about orcas

Visit our species guide to learn more about this species.

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• WILDLIFE WATCH

Time running out for orcas, belugas trapped in icy 'whale jail'

Russian video footage shows that the animals, likely bound for aquariums, are languishing in freezing waters and legal limbo.

The video shows a bird’s eye view: dozens of wild beluga whales and orcas trapped in frozen seawater.

Eleven killer whales (also known as orcas ) and 87 belugas languish in several rectangular sea pens in Srednyaya Bay in Russia’s Far East. Four Russian firms that supply marine animals to aquariums caught them over the course of several months in the summer of 2018. Their plight made headlines in November, when a drone captured aerial video footage of the facility, leading the media to label it the “whale jail.”

That month, regional authorities opened an investigation into the alleged illegal capture of the marine mammals. Russia’s Prosecutor General warns that selling them to aquariums in other countries, such as China, would be illegal. ( Read more about Russian orcas in Chinese marine parks. )

One of 87 beluga whales swims in a sea pen at the holding facility in Russia's Srednyaya Bay.

The animals now appear to be suffering tremendously, says Dmitry Lisitsyn , head of Sakhalin Environment Watch , an NGO based on Sakhalin Island, also on the Far East coast. Authorities invited Lisitsyn, marine mammal researchers, and veterinarians to visit the facility on January 18 and 19 to assess the animals’ health.

Lisitsyn says 15 of the belugas are babies who likely hadn’t yet been weaned off their mothers’ milk when they were captured. All the belugas seem to be in distress, he says. He explains that workers at the facility regularly break up ice as it forms in the pens so the animals can surface, which they must do to breathe and stay alive. The belugas are “used to living in ice,” he says. “But they’re not used to being held in a 12-by-10-meter [space] with men crashing shovels over their heads.”

It’s even worse for the orcas, Lisitsyn says. Although they’re conditioned to live in cold water, he says, they typically migrate south during the winter. He captured video showing several orcas with skin lesions on and around their dorsal fins. Lisitsyn and marine scientists who reviewed the footage say that the lesions could be frostbite from exposure to prolonged cold, a fungal or bacterial infection stemming from the stagnant water, or both.

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Veterinarian Tatyana Denisenko, a professor at the Moscow-based Academy of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology, who visited the facility with Lisitsyn, took samples from the water and from the orcas’ lesions. “The skin of most of the 11 killer whales is thickly seeded with various microorganisms,” she says. She says this suggests that food left in the pens may be rotting and infecting the orcas’ skin.

Denisenko, Lisitsyn, and others are particularly concerned about one young orca named Kirill, who had been acting very lethargically and exhibited extensive skin lesions. Lisitsyn says he fears for Kirill's survival.

TRAPPED IN LEGAL LIMBO

The fate of these animals is in the balance. Authorities might seize them for rehabilitation and release back into the wild. Or they may rule that the companies that caught them did not act illegally and are free to sell the animals to aquariums. But Russian aquariums don’t have the capacity to take the orcas, and it’s illegal to export them abroad, says Dmitry Glazov, who serves as deputy chair of Russia’s Moscow-based Marine Mammal Council , an NGO that unites scientists in the field to study the conservation of marine mammals.

Elven killer whales captured from the wild also are confined to sea pens. The skin of most is "thickly seeded with various microorganisms," says a veterinarian who was allowed access and took samples.

The third possibility: The animals will die.

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Lisitsyn and others allege that the belugas and orcas were sourced illegally and that the central government must act to save them. On February 1, three NGOs, including Sakhalin Watch, filed a lawsuit against three Russian government agencies, alleging that under Russian law, they’re obligated to confiscate illegally sourced wild animals and return them to their natural habitat. “The state is the rightful owner of the animals and must seize these animals and let them back into the wild,” Lisitsyn says.

One of the four companies that claims ownership of the animals, Bely Kit, says that it caught the orcas and belugas legally. Anton Pekarsky, a lawyer for the company, confirmed Bely Kit’s plans “to deliver the animals to aquariums in Russia and abroad” this year. It would not release them into the wild unless ordered by a court, he wrote in an email. Two of the other companies, Afalina and Oceanarium DV, told local media that they also complied with the law. The fourth company, Sochi Dolphinarium, did not respond to a request for comment.

Whether Russian authorities are actively pursuing an investigation is uncertain. Oxana Fedorova, head of Save Dolphins, a Moscow-based cetacean welfare group, says the case has passed from agency to agency and is now under the jurisdiction of the Investigative Committee of the Khabarovsk Region, a local government agency responsible for pursuing criminal cases. “From the legal point of view, it’s completely unclear what is happening” with the animals, says Glazov.

John Ford , a professor of zoology and orca expert at the University of British Columbia, in Canada, reviewed the footage taken by Lisitsyn. He says that with proper medical screening and careful treatment to restore the orcas to health, they could be returned to the wild. If released together near Srednyaya Bay, he says, “they’d likely form their own social group, at least in the short term, and the younger animals could benefit from the hunting skills of the older individuals.” (Lisitsyn says the same applies to the belugas.)

But, says Ford, “the longer these killer whales are held in this substandard facility, the more difficult it will be to adapt back to a life in the wild.”

Related Topics

• ANIMAL WELFARE
• WILDLIFE CRIME
• ORCA (KILLER WHALE)
• BELUGA WHALE
• ANIMAL CRUELTY

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Fruit vendors awarded more than $2.8 million after 2022 Woodland Hills attacks

WOODLAND HILLS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Two local street vendors have been awarded more than $2.8 million after a man attacked them in Woodland Hills .

A jury on Wednesday found Daniel McGuire guilty of assault and emotional distress for the 2022 attacks. Video captured the moment McGuire hacked apart one stand and yelled at the vendors to leave.

In one incident, he destroyed a vendor's fruit stand with an axe .

The vendors' attorneys called the verdict a major win that sends a clear message that violence and hate against street vendors will not be tolerated.

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