Orca Encounters Now Sinking Boats – New Learned Behavior ?

Orcas attacking boats is a fairly new learned behavior pattern occurring off of Portugal for the last few years. However, now these orca encounters are increasingly leading to sinking boats.

Here recently, an encounter with a pod of 7 orcas resulted in the sinking of a yacht. A French Benetau Oceanis 393 was recently sunk 14 miles off the coast of Portugal.

After about 45 minutes of bumping and biting at the boat the crew heard a loud noise as the boat cracked and began taking on water.

The yacht Smousse took on water when its keel was pulled away by orcas. It sank 20 minutes later. Fortunately, all aboard were rescued by a nearby yacht that was only 1hr away.

Watch the following clip to see how this turn of events that lead to the yacht’s sinking.

Read on for more more details below about how these orca encounters with sailboats have been increasing and leading to more boat sinkings.

Footage from November 1 shows the orcas circling and bumping the vessel, called Smousse while crew members Elliott, Augustin, Roman and Corentin were on board.

Augustin said that when they heard the boat shaking and a loud noise at the back of the yacht, they realised they were surrounded by orcas.

As the attack continued, the boat eventually began to crack because of the force of the orca’s jaws and the killer whales ripped a hole in the hull of the 40ft boat.

Augustin went to the back of the boat and realised it was fast filling with water and the men had to flee.

The crew members put out a distress call and gathered on the top of the boat as it sank around 14 miles west of the port of Viana do Castelo.

They were all uninjured and rescued by a Swedish boat nearby and a search and rescue team from Viana do Castelo Lifesaving station arrived.

The yacht had sailed on October 30 from the Galician port of A Coruña.

H/T – Dailymail.co.uk

Read for more detail here on Dailymail.co.uk.

While there have been reported over 200 attacks as highlighted by the following article, this is not the first sinking caused by orcas. . The following article highlights a similar incident occurring months earlier that resulted in a yacht sinking by orcas followed by a subsequent attack on another boat the same day. Read for further details on this here at businessinsider.com

Additional information about similar attacks can also be found here on npr.org.

Images Source: YouTube Clips

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