On orca alley – Francis Gooding in LRB:

“Since summer 2020, orcas near the Strait of Gibraltar and around the Iberian Peninsula have been interfering with boats. Sailing boats are the most common target, and the whales use significant force on them: approaching from the stern, a group of orcas will inspect the boat carefully, swimming alongside it and turning upside down to look at the hull and steering gear, before starting to push the craft around. Sometimes they ram the hull with their heads. They take particular interest in the rudder, which they push with their bodies or grip with their teeth to control the boat. In some cases, the rudder is bent at the stock, split apart or snapped off completely, disabling the craft.
A handful of boats have sunk after these encounters, though this does not seem to be the aim, and the whales tend to depart once the boat stops moving or they have damaged it; perhaps the game is then finished. No one has yet been harmed. It isn’t clear exactly how many whales are involved, but at least eleven individuals of a small population of around forty have been identified as taking part. All the individuals known to have engaged in the behaviour are given the code name ‘Gladis’ by the marine biologists studying the interactions: Gladis Gris, Gladis Negra, Gladis Lamari and so on; juveniles often take the lead but an older female, Gladis Blanca, has participated in the greatest number of incidents. The yachting community now refers to the area as ‘Orca Alley’; a Facebook group set up in 2021, Orca Attack Reports, has attracted 54,000 members, and there are two dedicated apps for reporting sightings or interactions.” (…)

“The orcas no doubt have their reasons for messing about with boats, and speculation about what these might be is mostly simplistic and anthropomorphising. This even goes for the ‘traumatic event’ or ‘ecological disturbance’ hypotheses, which are both crudely mechanistic and presume broadly human-like motives and responses. Orcas are subtle enough for these to be plausible reasons, but there is simply no way of knowing their motives, or what they get out of it. The widespread characterisation of the interactions as ‘attacks’ is heavily loaded, and highly contestable; an open letter from a group of marine biologists published last month asked that people refrain from such interpretations, saying that the idea that orcas were ‘attacking’ vessels was ‘lacking a basis in science or reality’, and could put the whales at risk of ‘punitive responses by mariners or managers’. ‘In the absence of further evidence, people should not assume they understand the animals’ motivations,’ the researchers wrote. ‘Science cannot yet explain why the Iberian orcas are doing this ... It is unfounded and potentially harmful to the animals to claim it is revenge for past wrongs or to promote some other melodramatic storyline.’ The boat ramming is as likely, they think, to be socialising and play as anything else. The orcas may simply have found a fun new pastime, and might just get bored of it one day, like the salmon hats or porpoise bullying.”

(…)

“The Iberian orcas hunt tuna; their technique involves pursuit at speed until the fish are exhausted. This limits the size of the fish they can catch: the biggest tuna are too strong and can outlast the whales’ endurance (about half an hour). But the longlines used by the fisheries snag larger tuna than the orcas can chase down and, since carefully pulling a big fish off a hook is far easier and more profitable than chasing a middling one, the Iberian whales regularly steal from the lines, to the annoyance of the fishermen. This kind of behaviour is common around the world, and bottlenose dolphins, orcas and sperm whales are mostly responsible. Perhaps not coincidentally, these three species are also considered to have the most complex communities of all cetaceans.”

(…)

“Orcas may have had impacts on the ocean not dissimilar to the ways early humans affected terrestrial ecosystems, and as far as ecologically destructive overkilling goes, it is even possible that the deep history of the orca as a hunter contains a parallel with the rapacity of human behaviour. The appearance of orcas around ten million years ago correlates with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of more than half the known species of cetaceans, seals and sirenians (dugongs and manatees) from the fossil record. As with the widespread extirpation of terrestrial megafauna from areas colonised by humans during the Pleistocene, one hypothesis is that orcas, as they expanded into new marine ecosystems, hunted many existing sea mammals to extinction. It ‘seems very likely’, Whitehead and Rendell say, that ‘killer whales have eradicated whole species, perhaps many species.’”

(…)

“Old Tom was eventually betrayed by a crew led by Captain John Logan, who did not respect the law of the tongue, and tried to haul in a young humpback without allowing the orcas their due. Old Tom struggled against the whalers, losing some teeth in the process: when he was washed up dead sometime later, there were abscesses in his jaw where his teeth had been broken, and he seemed to have died of starvation. Logan, mortified by what he had done, provided the initial funding for the Eden Museum.”

Read the article here.

It’s good to know that not only humans are responsible for the eradication of species.

The collaboration between orca and humas has not come to an end, see the orca alley. Perhaps it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call the game the orcas are playing with the boats collaboration but I’m willing to give the orcas the benefit of the doubt.