Two sailors rescued after ‘cool, calm and collected' orcas ram yacht

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

Sailors encountering orcas in British waters have been warned to switch off their engines and lower their sails or risk being rammed after the animals targeted a yacht in Spain.
Two sailors were saved by the Spanish coastguard after their vessel, Azurea, was targeted by the orcas off the coast of the Basque country on Monday afternoon.
The French yacht was rammed about 2pm local time, two nautical miles from the Basque coastal town of Deba in northern Spain.
The coastguard rescued the pair, one of whom was aged 60, after they sent out a mayday distress call. Both were taken 'safe and sound' to the port of Getaria. Rescuers said such incidents were 'uncommon' so far north in the Atlantic.
While such incidents are rare in the Basque Country, they are a well-known phenomenon further south in the province of Galicia and in the 'orca alley' of the Strait of Gibraltar, where boats have been sunk.
The orcas approach from the stern and hit the rudder before losing interest once they have stopped the boat in a phenomenon that scientists have struggled to fully explain. It is thought the orcas responsible for the incidents number 15 out of a pod of 50 whales.
This latest incident comes in the same month that wildlife experts confirmed the first ever sighting of Iberian orcas in Cornish waters.
In 2023, a killer whale barged into a fishing boat near Shetland in Scotland in what was the first and, so far, only orca attack in British waters since the phenomenon began.