Teen orcas ramming boats likely just playing

Scientists seek to explain incidents near Europe

Hundreds of dangerous boat-ramming incidents over the past five years have cast orcas as deepsea villains plotting to take back the ocean.

But the killer whales causing mayhem off Europe’s Iberian Peninsula might actually just be bored teenagers — at least, that’s the leading theory among a group of more than a dozen orca experts who have spent years studying the incidents.

Since 2020, members of a small group of killer whales have rammed into at least 673 vessels off the coasts of Portugal, Spain and Morocco — causing some to sink. The Spanish and Portuguese governments responded by tasking a group of experts with determining what was causing the whales to strike rudders, which are used to steer ships, and how to stop it.

The group, which includes biologists, government officials and marine industry representatives, on Friday released a report outlining their hypothesis: The orcas just want to have fun, and in the vast — and rather empty — open waters, the boats’ rudders are a prime toy.

“This looks like play,” said Naomi Rose, a senior scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute who was part of the working group.

In most cases, the scientists found, the orcas approaching the vessels come from a group of about 15, mostly juvenile, whales. They typically approach slowly, almost as if to just bump the rudders with their noses and heads. But even young orcas average between three and four metres long, so the rudders

(THEY) HAVE ALL THIS LEISURE TIME ON THEIR HANDS.

would often get damaged or destroyed when the whales touched them, said Alex Zerbini, who chairs the scientific committee at the International Whaling Commission, a global body focused on whale conservation.

“There’s nothing in the behaviour of the animals that suggests that they’re being aggressive,” said Zerbini, who is also part of the working group.

Though orcas are known for their whimsy antics — like using jellyfish, algae and prey as toys — the researchers believe their playfulness has reached new levels in the Iberian Peninsula because of the rebound in the bluefin tuna population, their main source of food. In past decades, when orcas faced a tuna shortage, much of their time was spent trying to hunt down food. But once the tuna population bounced back, whales suddenly “have all this leisure time on their hands,” Rose said.