A retired Dutch physicist is reporting that an orca rammed his sailing yacht multiple times on Monday off the coast of the Shetland Islands in Scotland, marking the first time such an incident has occurred in the North Sea.
The news comes amid an uptick of orca attacks against boats off the Iberian peninsula that has garnered international headlines and a slew of theories.
Wim Rutten, 72, first told Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant about the incident. He said he initially thought he was being tailed by a big dolphin on his solo sailing trip from the Shetland Island to Bergen, Norway.
Rutten was fishing for mackerel off the back of his boat when he saw a black fin appear behind him. Soon enough he was face to face with a massive orca that was ramming itself into the stern of the boat.
Rutten told The Guardian that the whale stayed behind the boat before disappearing. The mammal then returned and came at the boat even faster, crashing into it two or three more times before circling the vessel.
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The orca created “soft shocks” through the aluminum hull as it rammed into the yacht, but Rutten said the scariest part of the ordeal was the sounds it made.
“What I felt most frightening was the very loud breathing of the animal,” he said.
A researcher with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Jeroen Hoekendijk, said that Rutten’s encounter was “extra special” because it marks the first time an orca has been known to interact with a boat off the coast of Norway.
When Rutten was targeted he immediately thought of the recent news of orcas attacking boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal.
Killer whale research organization Atlantic Orca Working Group has found that events like this have tripled in the last two years, with more than 200 in 2022 compared to 52 incidents in 2020. So far this year, 57 more incidents of orcas ramming boats have occurred.
As for why orcas have their sights set on human boats, no one knows for sure.
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“Maybe he just wanted to play. Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line,” Rutten posited.
Biologist and wildlife conservationist Jeff Corwin told CBS News that the behaviour boils down to the “incredible intelligence” of orcas and he believes older whales are teaching their young pod members these destructive tendencies.
“What we’re seeing is adapted behaviour. We’re learning about how they actually learn from their environment and then take those skill sets and share them and teach them to other whales,” he said.
Some researchers have theorized that a single, revenge-obsessed orca is teaching others to attack boats after she was injured by one in the past, but not everyone is convinced by this theory.
“They could crush the boat in a heartbeat if they wanted to,” Sébastien Destremau, a captain who was involved in a similar attack on May 22, previously told Newsweek. “But they were not aggressive, they’re not wanting to have a piece of you.”
Rather, Destremau told the outlet he thinks parent orcas might be teaching their young how to hunt using boats as the learning prop.
Andrew Trites, professor and director of Marine Mammal Research at the University of British Columbia, is hesitant to throw out a theory.
“It is a total mystery, unprecedented,” he said, adding that while orcas appear to be the only species of whale attacking boats, he’s unsure what is acting as the positive reinforcement for these behaviours.
— with files from Global News’ Michelle Butterfield
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