Avoiding Orcas

Sailing with dangerous animals

In Australia, we have sailed for many years in waters inhabited by potentially dangerous animals such as estuarine crocodiles, various species of sharks and, of course, all sorts of deadly jellyfish. More recently, while cruising around Svalbard we were able to add polar bears and walrus to this illustrious mix. And now, we are entering waters inhabited by another animal that has been playing havoc with sailing yachts in recent years; namely the Iberian orca (or killer whale).

Iberian killer whales

The Iberian killer whales are a small group of approximately 50 orcas (Orcinus orca) that live along the Atlantic coasts of southwestern Europe and northern Marocco. For reasons that are unknown to all but themselves, but widely speculated upon amongst humans, a few individual orcas started attacking sailing yachts and fishing boats in 2020, damaging or breaking their rudder and rendering the vessels unnavigable. While the exact number of damaged vessels is not known, at least six vessels have sunk following a killer whale attack since 2021. Interestingly, around 15 of these orcas are now known to have attacked boats suggesting that they are learning this behaviour from each other.

Our killer whale experiences

We have both seen plenty of killer whales while living in Vancouver in the 1990’s; from high up from the decks of BC ferries, from whale-watching boats, from smaller dinghies and from the shore. We also saw them on Yuma while crossing the Barents Sea from Norway to Svalbard in 2023. They are seriously large animals when observed from the deck of your own sailboat in a big, cold, grey sea! Their dorsal fins were taller than us and their body lengths were only a little shorter than Yuma’s 12m. Luckily for us though they had yet to learn from their Iberian cousins how much fun it is to attack rudders and they kept on swimming towards Russia.

Where are these Iberian orcas?

Five years since the first reported attacks off the Iberian coast, there is now a lot more information out there as to where and when the killer whales may attack sailing yachts. These killer whales feed on bluefin tuna so the short answer is that they go where the tuna goes; which is the Strait of Gibraltar in late winter and spring, along the Iberian Atlantic coast in summer, and the Bay of Biscay in autumn. Unfortunately, not all orcas travel together, so there is always some uncertainty as to where they may be popping up. Nevertheless, the hotspot for attacks centres around the Gulf of Cadiz south to Morocco and towards the Strait of Gibraltar, particularly in spring.

While there has been a great deal of breathless commentary about these killer whales and the risk they pose to yachts, it is only a very, very small proportion of boats that have had a negative interaction with these animals. This means that the probability of an encounter is low and that the probability of damage or worse yet a sinking is even lower still. Nevertheless, even if the risk is low, if the consequences can be catastrophic, it is usually a good idea to take some precautions.

What do you do?

Like a lot of things to do with cruising on a small sailing boat, and indeed in life in general, it is all about risk management. There is no such thing as a zero-risk activity, so the best thing is to manage those risks as best you can. For example, when crossing an ocean, you use the trade winds rather than taking off during cyclone season. When coastal cruising, you check the weather forecast and tide tables before you decide to depart.

One of the main recommendations coming out of the five years of information gathered to date is to try and avoid sailing through areas where orcas have recently been reported, and if that can’t be avoided, to stay in waters shallower than 20m. The latter is possible in some areas where the seafloor drops away gradually (e.g. Gulf of Cadiz) but not in others because of steep drop-offs and rocky coastlines (e.g. Galicia). But even when it is possible to stay in close to shore, other dangers, such as fishing nets and buoys which are common in shallower waters along this coastline, need to be considered. A boat that has to go in to deeper water because of dangers like these needs to get back into shallow water again as soon as possible.

What to do if an attack occurs?

This is where it gets tricky as various sources provide guidance on actions to take if an attack occurs, and these proposed actions are not always consistent. For example, one set of recommendations suggest that you should drop the sails and stop the boat to make the rudder ‘uninteresting’ because of the lack of water flowing over it (something other dolphins clearly enjoy). Another set of recommendations suggest that you should do exactly the opposite and get as far away from the spot as possible because the orcas are probably more interested in nearby tuna than in the boat. Perhaps the choice between these two approaches hinges on whether you can see evidence of the animals feeding or not. Other options include throwing sand into the water and hanging objects behind the boat to interfere with their access or enjoyment of the rudder.

We haven’t yet settled on our likely approach but we are steadily approaching the geographical point where these decisions will have to be made. Needless to say, we hope that we can completely avoid the Iberian orcas in the first place, and that the next orcas we see will be supremely uninterested in Yuma and, hopefully, well away from the Iberian coast.

PS: We have no photos of killer whales, hence some random underwatershots of other dangerous and not-so-dangerous animals.