Killer whales rampaging off Portugal...

[cosmickid]

So i remember hearing a few stories about Orcas attacking boats off the coast of Portugal. A little bit of reading indicates that people first started to notice it in 2020, but I just heard about it recently so I thought it was something that just started to happen. It's weird because it does seem to be confined to the area where Portugal and Northern Spain's coasts meet and nowhere else in the Atlantic that I'm aware of...

They are always sailing vessels and the attack usually focusses on the rudder...An earlier account...

Have rogue orcas really been attacking boats in the Atlantic?

In the past six months there have been at least 40 incidents involving Orcas off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.

www.bbc.co.uk

Now here's an account of an actual sinking from Aug 3, some 15 days ago when a party of 5 had to abandon ship and be saved by the Portuguese Coast Guard...

Orcas Attack and Sink Sailboat With Five on Board, Miles From Coast

Scientists have observed killer whales approaching fishing boats, having learned that the fishing lines could provide an easy meal.

www.newsweek.com

Now this is what sparked my interest this afternoon. I'm watching you tube and I see this video dated Aug 2 and it's some sort of travel vlog involving a guy who is sailing. I've never heard of the guy before but the scenery looked interesting so I started to half heartedly watch on my tv while doing other things on my computer. I see this pretty cool sequence where these dolphins are basically swimming along with the guy as he is sailing, and I'm half listening and I hear him say something about plans to meet up with friends at some point along the Algarve coast. So I discover for the first time that he's sailing off the coast of Portugal...

So he shows this pizza he's getting ready to cook, and I thought he was going to go into some sort of cooking bit. About the same time, I see this Orca suddenly appear, and the guy is just filming and it seems that the Orca is just curiously approaching the boat. But all of a sudden the whole atmosphere shifts and suddenly this Orca is going berserk and ramming into the boat. Then the guy mentions that it appears the Orca is intentionally attacking his rudder, and suddenly I'm making all the connections to other incidents. So I google and the story about the boat being sunk on Aug 3 pops up, and I go back and look at the date the video was published and it's Aug 2, the day prior to the sinking I had read about. So the incidents in this video predated events to happen to another vessel in that area within what I assume is the next few days and the coincidental nature of the situation kind of freaked me out...

It was obviously the last thing the guy in the video ever expected, and it seems he was extremely lucky to be able to contact the Coast Guard and have them relay instructions to him (like dropping his sails) that possibly defused the situation and calmed the killer whale down before it ended up sinking his boat.. And what's really eirie is that this guy didn't make a huge issue of the incident overall and mainly saw it as an inconvenience and encounter with a "pesky fish" that resulted in having to repair his rudder. But the reality is that in less than 24 hrs after he uploaded this video, another completely different group of people travelling in the same general area had much more serious encounter with a whole pod of Orcas with consequences that could have easily been very tragic...

This is very long, but the attack is over around the 13 min mark and that's about the point where I stopped watching...

 

[Eppy99]

I’ve kayaked off the San Juan Islands and found myself within 200ft of killer whales. At first it was a bit frightening but they never had interest in our kayaks. It’s one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. This video is some scary stuff though.

 

[SqueakyClean]

I've went kayaking in the Keys a few times. One time, in 3 foot deep crystal clear water, a 5 foot bull shark came within feet of my kayak. I could have reached out and touched his fin.

Now, I was likely not in any real danger, but let me tell you, we all like to think of ourselves as brave, but when actually faced with a predator of equivalent size to you up close, it is scary as bleep.

 

[mrhighlife]

I've went kayaking in the Keys a few times. One time, in 3 foot deep crystal clear water, a 5 foot bull shark came within feet of my kayak. I could have reached out and touched his fin.

Now, I was likely not in any real danger, but let me tell you, we all like to think of ourselves as brave, but when actually faced with a predator of equivalent size to you up close, it is scary as bleep.

We completely take for granted being the Apex until we aren't.

 

[cosmickid]

I've went kayaking in the Keys a few times. One time, in 3 foot deep crystal clear water, a 5 foot bull shark came within feet of my kayak. I could have reached out and touched his fin.

Now, I was likely not in any real danger, but let me tell you, we all like to think of ourselves as brave, but when actually faced with a predator of equivalent size to you up close, it is scary as bleep.

Does any of this look familiar?

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

So i remember hearing a few stories about Orcas attacking boats off the coast of Portugal. A little bit of reading indicates that people first started to notice it in 2020, but I just heard about it recently so I thought it was something that just started to happen. It's weird because it does seem to be confined to the area where Portugal and Northern Spain's coasts meet and nowhere else in the Atlantic that I'm aware of...

They are always sailing vessels and the attack usually focusses on the rudder...An earlier account...

Have rogue orcas really been attacking boats in the Atlantic?

In the past six months there have been at least 40 incidents involving Orcas off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.

www.bbc.co.uk

Now here's an account of an actual sinking from Aug 3, some 15 days ago when a party of 5 had to abandon ship and be saved by the Portuguese Coast Guard...

Orcas Attack and Sink Sailboat With Five on Board, Miles From Coast

Scientists have observed killer whales approaching fishing boats, having learned that the fishing lines could provide an easy meal.

www.newsweek.com

Now this is what sparked my interest this afternoon. I'm watching you tube and I see this video dated Aug 2 and it's some sort of travel vlog involving a guy who is sailing. I've never heard of the guy before but the scenery looked interesting so I started to half heartedly watch on my tv while doing other things on my computer. I see this pretty cool sequence where these dolphins are basically swimming along with the guy as he is sailing, and I'm half listening and I hear him say something about plans to meet up with friends at some point along the Algarve coast. So I discover for the first time that he's sailing off the coast of Portugal...

So he shows this pizza he's getting ready to cook, and I thought he was going to go into some sort of cooking bit. About the same time, I see this Orca suddenly appear, and the guy is just filming and it seems that the Orca is just curiously approaching the boat. But all of a sudden the whole atmosphere shifts and suddenly this Orca is going berserk and ramming into the boat. Then the guy mentions that it appears the Orca is intentionally attacking his rudder, and suddenly I'm making all the connections to other incidents. So I google and the story about the boat being sunk on Aug 3 pops up, and I go back and look at the date the video was published and it's Aug 2, the day prior to the sinking I had read about. So the incidents in this video predated events to happen to another vessel in that area within what I assume is the next few days and the coincidental nature of the situation kind of freaked me out...

It was obviously the last thing the guy in the video ever expected, and it seems he was extremely lucky to be able to contact the Coast Guard and have them relay instructions to him (like dropping his sails) that possibly defused the situation and calmed the killer whale down before it ended up sinking his boat.. And what's really eirie is that this guy didn't make a huge issue of the incident overall and mainly saw it as an inconvenience and encounter with a "pesky fish" that resulted in having to repair his rudder. But the reality is that in less than 24 hrs after he uploaded this video, another completely different group of people travelling in the same general area had much more serious encounter with a whole pod of Orcas with consequences that could have easily been very tragic...

This is very long, but the attack is over around the 13 min mark and that's about the point where I stopped watching...

View embedded media

My understanding is that these are supposed to be exceptionally intelligent and well-behaved animals and attacks on humans are very very rare.

The part where the coast guard asked him to lower his sails - and that having defused the situation - makes me think that the orca are mistaking the boats as something else?

 

[cosmickid]

Does any of this look familiar?

View embedded media

This guy shoots some (imho) terrifying video of Great Whites and people interacting off the SoCal coast by virtue of his drone. This is why I don't go into the ocean...

 

[cosmickid]

My understanding is that these are supposed to be exceptionally intelligent and well-behaved animals and attacks on humans are very very rare.

The part where the coast guard asked him to lower his sails - and that having defused the situation - makes me think that the orca are mistaking the boats as something else?

Yeah the idea that it's some sort of confusion based behavioral issue is discussed with one of the researchers in (IIRC) that first BBC article which I think marked the 2020 start of the incidents. it's really strange how they just sort of seemed to exhibit the weird rudder based animosity within the past 2 yrs, after it seemingly not being a factor beforehand. Also, the way the same pod type of behavior is exhibited by a single juvenile Orca in the guy's video...

Also the location, the way it seems to be basically confined to that area, despite Orcas existing in many other places...

It kind of seems reminiscent of the mariner's tale about the curse and enduring bad luck that was ignited by a single boat's crew mistreating an albatross...

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

Yeah the idea that it's some sort of confusion based behavioral issue is discussed with one of the researchers in (IIRC) that first BBC article which I think marked the 2020 start of the incidents. it's really strange how they just sort of seemed to exhibit the weird rudder based animosity within the past 2 yrs, after it seemingly not being a factor beforehand. Also, the way the same pod type of behavior is exhibited by a single juvenile Orca in the guy's video...

Also the location, the way it seems to be basically confined to that area, despite Orcas existing in many other places...

It kind of seems reminiscent of the mariner's tale about the curse and enduring bad luck that was ignited by a single boat's crew mistreating an albatross...

Or it’s that the boats look the same in that area and are confusing the orcas.

 

[SqueakyClean]

Does any of this look familiar?

View embedded media

That video was much worse. At least in my encounter, the water was so shallow and the water was so clear that I could keep an eye on him the whole time. It's a lot scarier when you know he's there but you can't see him.

 

[cosmickid]

Or it’s that the boats look the same in that area and are confusing the orcas.

The boats are from all over the world, they just happen to be attacked while in Portuguese waters. I found this video today of a yacht that was attacked back in 2020-2021. At that time, the Coast Guard told these folks to cut the engine and all power, and to rely strictly on the sails. So maybe the possible solutions have evolved from then to present day as well...

This banging is incredibly loud. I wonder what would happen if people on the vessels started to throw food to them, as a way of trying to win them over?

 

[cosmickid]

That video was much worse. At least in my encounter, the water was so shallow and the water was so clear that I could keep an eye on him the whole time. It's a lot scarier when you know he's there but you can't see him.

I found myself yelling out a warning to the guy and telling him to get his ass out of there. Obviously I knew he survived (since he posted the video) but the footage is just so frightening that I got swept up in the suspense.

No idea what would posses him to be out there in that tiny kayak in the first place...

 

[snarlcakes]

So i remember hearing a few stories about Orcas attacking boats off the coast of Portugal. A little bit of reading indicates that people first started to notice it in 2020, but I just heard about it recently so I thought it was something that just started to happen. It's weird because it does seem to be confined to the area where Portugal and Northern Spain's coasts meet and nowhere else in the Atlantic that I'm aware of...

They are always sailing vessels and the attack usually focusses on the rudder...An earlier account...

Have rogue orcas really been attacking boats in the Atlantic?

In the past six months there have been at least 40 incidents involving Orcas off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.

www.bbc.co.uk

Now here's an account of an actual sinking from Aug 3, some 15 days ago when a party of 5 had to abandon ship and be saved by the Portuguese Coast Guard...

Orcas Attack and Sink Sailboat With Five on Board, Miles From Coast

Scientists have observed killer whales approaching fishing boats, having learned that the fishing lines could provide an easy meal.

www.newsweek.com

Now this is what sparked my interest this afternoon. I'm watching you tube and I see this video dated Aug 2 and it's some sort of travel vlog involving a guy who is sailing. I've never heard of the guy before but the scenery looked interesting so I started to half heartedly watch on my tv while doing other things on my computer. I see this pretty cool sequence where these dolphins are basically swimming along with the guy as he is sailing, and I'm half listening and I hear him say something about plans to meet up with friends at some point along the Algarve coast. So I discover for the first time that he's sailing off the coast of Portugal...

So he shows this pizza he's getting ready to cook, and I thought he was going to go into some sort of cooking bit. About the same time, I see this Orca suddenly appear, and the guy is just filming and it seems that the Orca is just curiously approaching the boat. But all of a sudden the whole atmosphere shifts and suddenly this Orca is going berserk and ramming into the boat. Then the guy mentions that it appears the Orca is intentionally attacking his rudder, and suddenly I'm making all the connections to other incidents. So I google and the story about the boat being sunk on Aug 3 pops up, and I go back and look at the date the video was published and it's Aug 2, the day prior to the sinking I had read about. So the incidents in this video predated events to happen to another vessel in that area within what I assume is the next few days and the coincidental nature of the situation kind of freaked me out...

It was obviously the last thing the guy in the video ever expected, and it seems he was extremely lucky to be able to contact the Coast Guard and have them relay instructions to him (like dropping his sails) that possibly defused the situation and calmed the killer whale down before it ended up sinking his boat.. And what's really eirie is that this guy didn't make a huge issue of the incident overall and mainly saw it as an inconvenience and encounter with a "pesky fish" that resulted in having to repair his rudder. But the reality is that in less than 24 hrs after he uploaded this video, another completely different group of people travelling in the same general area had much more serious encounter with a whole pod of Orcas with consequences that could have easily been very tragic...

This is very long, but the attack is over around the 13 min mark and that's about the point where I stopped watching...

View embedded media

Cosmic, I had a similar experience with a killer whale in West Lafayette, Indiana one night. It didn’t matter how many drinks I had, she still made me fear for my life. She even ate my free hot dog and bag of popcorn, at Jake’s.