Spain has ordered small boats to avoid part of the coast south of the country after reports of more than 50 encounters with noisy killer whales, including as many as 25 incidents in which boats had to be towed to shore.
A two-week ban prohibits most vessels 15 meters or less from sailing near the coast between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate. This is second time in 13 months that the Spanish transport ministry has taken action to deal with a wave of extraordinary encounters with orcas which baffled scientists.
The forbiddenLast year's iction applied to an area several hundred kilometers to the north. At the time the ministry said that the measure was motivated by the involvement of killer whales in "several incidents in the coastal area of Galicia, mainly involving sailboats ". Authorities did not provide the exact figure for the number of boats affected.
The most recent order was aimed at prevent "other incidents with orcas " the ministry said in a statement. “Since March 27 - the date of the first meeting [this year] - cetaceans have had 56 interactions with small sailboats, sometimes causing rudder failures. Up to 25 cases required rescue services Spanish maritime age of towing ships to port.
The order to give the area a large place came a day after three separate encounters with orcas were reported in the area within five time. Two of the ships sustained damage to their rudders and had to be towed to port, according to the Spanish Maritime Rescue Service.
Reports of lapping with highly sensitive cetaceans along the coasts of Spain and Portugal started surfacing in July and August of last year, with the data link sailors sharing stories of governance garlic that had been rammed and boats that had been turned 180 degrees or tilted to the side.
Describing the behavior as very unusual, scientists struggled to explain the meetings. "These are very strange events ", cetacean researcher Ezequiel Andreu Cazalla told the Guardian last year. "But I don't think these are attacks. The scientists were careful in characterizing the encounters, as the accounts did not come from qualified researchers.
Several of the scientists pointed out the stress on Gibraltar's endangered killer whales as they navigate a major shipping route Food scarcity, injuries and pollution have left the population on a razor's edge, reduced to less than 50 individuals.
The timing of the encounters, which seemed to start as a sailor traffic resumed after two months of noise reduction during the pandemic, resulted in e marine biologist to speculate that orcas might expressing anger as big game fishing, whale watching and fast ferries return to the water.
Others have linked encounters with several rowdy orcas who may have gotten carried away while playing. "We are not their natural prey," Bruno Diaz, biologist at the Local Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute, told the Associated Press last year. "They having fun - and maybe these orcs are having fun to cause damage. ”
In October, a task force of Spanish and Portuguese experts said they had identified three orcas present in 61% of incidents and suggested that the behaviors " unprecedented can be linked to an "previous aversive incident between the orcas and a ship.
"At this time, we have no clear evidence of when this happened, neither can we say for sure what type of boat may have been involved, nor if the incident was accidental or deliberate, ”he noted in a statement.
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