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Whale attacks on boats: Game, revenge on humans or more?

2023-06-28 15:22:33Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA SILKE BALLWEG
Whale attacks on boats: Game, revenge on humans or more?
Orca whale

Scientists are puzzling over why a group of orca whales are damaging and even sinking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar. Many of them say that we are not dealing with aggression, but with a new tendency of whales.

At first only a single orca whale was seen leaping into the water and diving between the double masts of the 14 meter long catamaran. "When we saw it, it looked like it was looking for something," said Amy, who was on the boat herself with the four-year-old team. They were coming from Greece to cross the Strait of Gibraltar.

A few minutes later the whale returned again, with another whale. Later the number of animals surrounding the boat reached five or six, Amy says.

Orca whales are reported to have attacked boats in the Strait of Gibraltar or along the Iberian Atlantic coastOrca whales are reported to have attacked boats in the Strait of Gibraltar or along the Iberian Atlantic coast

Whale attacks on boats: Game, revenge on humans or more?
Orca whales have been reported to have attacked boats in the Strait of Gibraltar or along the Iberian Atlantic coast

"I wasn't afraid," says the young woman. At that moment she was not very clear that in the meantime there had been hundreds of incidents similar to what she experienced. Some of the boats were even so badly damaged by the whales that they sank. But so far no one has lost their life.

Sailboaters have been reporting whale attacks on their boats in the Strait of Gibraltar or along the Iberian Atlantic coast since mid-July 2020. This unprecedented behavior in whales has first appeared to two or three animals, while the number of Iberian whales, which have begun to like to surround the boats, bite the oars and play with them as if with balls, has reached 16.

Orcas, also called killer whales, killer whales, or killer whales, belong to the dolphin family. They live as long as humans and during this time they maintain social contact with their group. Different populations of orcas occur everywhere, both in the icy waters of the Antarctic and in the waters of the Tropics, they occur in coastal waters as well as in the open sea.

Scientists have seen that each group has developed its own preferences for food, language and behavior. So far only Iberian whales have developed a preference to surround boats.

After 20 minutes the whales left Amy's boat. But in those 20 minutes the team experienced an emotional voyage, where the fascination of the animals' display and their great strength was exchanged for excitement and the question of how damaged the boat would be at the bottom at all. "It may sound funny, but at no point did we think the animals were attacking us," says Amy. It was more like a game.

Whale attacks on boats: Game, revenge on humans or more?
Orca whales are curious and want to play

Why do whales surround boats?

Even for biologist Monika Wieland Shields, this is the most likely explanation for the behavior of orca whales.

"If they were to attack, the damage would be much greater," says the animal behavior researcher and director of the Orca Behavior Institute, a scientific organization that studies the behavior of two groups of whales off the U.S. coast. of Washington State.

However, the thesis is being discussed among scientists whether animals want to take revenge for the injustices they have suffered. In the past, whales have often been killed by harpoon darts or other encounters with humans. There is a lot of ship traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar, the noise is very stressful for the animals. In addition, Iberian whales compete with humans for their main food: tuna fish. But all this had not yet induced the animals to attack man on purpose.

In the 1960s and 1970s, baby animals were caught off the coast of Washington and taken from their mothers and pulled out of the water, Wieland Shields said. "If there was something that would ignite aggression, then I would think that such a situation would be the trigger," says the biologist. But at that time there were even divers in the water and the dolphins did nothing to them.

Which is not to say that deliberate retaliation is completely ruled out as a possibility for surrounding boats. But Wieland Shields has no evidence for this thesis. Her and other experts' explanation of whale behavior is based on decades of observations by animal researchers that dolphins and orcas tend to develop new habits.

In the 1980s a dolphin off the coast of Washington began carrying a dead salmon over its head. It wasn't long before the other dolphins also began to adorn themselves with a salmon that they wore as a hat. The following year the fascination with head covering began to wane until it disappeared altogether.

Even buoys or nets left in the water by shrimp fishermen are sometimes turned into toys for whale games. For a certain time many whales do the same, until they lose interest and the buoys disappear into the sea or go out of fashion. "Especially juvenile whales behave like this," says Wieland Shields.

Curiosity, desire to experiment, and rude behavior that easily crosses boundaries are adolescent behaviors. This may also apply to orcas.

"We tend to believe that certain behaviors are only human," says behavioral researcher Wieland Shields. This idea I have often found to be wrong.

"For a long time we thought that only humans use tools or that culture is only human. The more we study other species, the more we see that this is not true," says Wieland Shields. For the behavioral biologist, it is not too much to draw parallels between juvenile whales and young humans.

Why do whales become aggressive?

"The brain of whales is capable of very complex emotions," explains Wieland Shields. Curiosity, pleasure, the desire to play, are part of the spectrum of feelings they have as well as frustration, fear or anger. The latter is especially visible in captive whales that are kept in isolation.

Although no fatal attacks by free-living orcas on humans have been documented so far, the list of orca attacks held at zoos such as Sea World in which humans have been seriously injured or killed is long.

Whale attacks on boats: Game, revenge on humans or more?
Protest for the release of whales that are kept in zoological parks

For Wieland Shields, the behavior of orcas and dolphins held in captivity shows the complexity of their personalities: although the tolerance level of some animals is high, some animals cannot adapt to life in concrete pools and daily restrictions.

Therefore for Wieland Shields it is clear: "When conditions are difficult enough, they can provoke such anomalous behavior." For the biologist, this also means that, if the Iberian whales really had plans to sink the boats, then they would not have a hard time./ DW

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