A group of killer whales sank a yacht off the port of Tanger-Med in the north of Morocco last week, after a 45-minute attack on the vessel caused irreparable damage and leakage, Polish tour agent Morskie Mile said, CBS News reported on Monday.
The crew of the nautical tourism group were crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow waterway linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, which separates the southern tip of Europe from northern Africa, when the orcas started ramming the rudder. Despite the efforts of a search-and-rescue squad as well as the Moroccan Navy, the boat could not be saved.
None of the crew members were hurt, and those on board the sinking boat were already safe and in Spain by the time their Facebook post went public.
What appear to be intentional attacks by killer whales to capsize vessels off the coasts of Spain and Portugal have more than quadrupled in the last two years.
“Nobody knows why this is happening,” Andrew W. Trites, professor and director of Marine Mammal Research at the University of British Columbia, told CBS News in May.
Between July and November 2020, GTOA documented 52 nautical contacts with orcas between the Strait of Gibraltar and Galicia. The number of accidents increased in the years that followed, with 197 registered in 2021 and 207 recorded in 2022, according to GTOA, primarily harming sailboats.