Watch: Ocean Race yachts attacked by orca as behaviour spreads to Scotland

The Ocean Race has released an amazing video of yet another orca attacking a yacht. It was taken by competitor Team Jajo, off Gibraltar, last week (22 June 2023).

Two of the VO65 boats racing in The Ocean Race VO65 Sprint had direct encounters with orca on the same afternoon.

Team Jajo and Mirpuri Trifork Racing both reported being approached by orca around 1450 UTC. The teams subsequently confirmed there were no injuries and no damage to the boats, despite the orca pushing up against or in at least one case ramming into the boat and nudging or biting at the rudders.

“We got hit by some orcas,” says team JAJO skipper Jelmer van Beek. “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team. We took down the sails and slowed down the boat as quickly as possible and luckily after a few attacks they went away… This was a scary moment.” Immediatly after the attack, the boat had dropped from second to fourth place as it’d slowed so much.

On the video – which contains some high velocity swearing – one crew member can be heard saying “We’ve had this before, they’re way less aggressive.”

A statement from the Ocean Race says: ‘Fortunately for The Ocean Race boats today, the orca encounters were brief and relatively benign, although no doubt frightening, but with no damage to the people, boats or animals.’

Orca attacks yacht in North Sea

This incident off Gibraltar follows the first reported recent incident in UK waters. Last week an orca repeatedly rammed a yacht in the North Sea.

Dr Wim Rutten, a 72-year-old retired Dutch physicist and experienced yachtsman, was sailing solo from Lerwick to Bergen in Norway.

“I said: ‘Shit!’” Rutten told The Guardian. The whale hit multiple times, creating “soft shocks” through the aluminium hull.

“What I felt [was] most frightening was the very loud breathing of the animal,” he says. The orca stayed behind the boat “looking for the keel. Then he disappeared … but came back at fast speed, twice or thrice … and circled a bit.

“Maybe he just wanted to play. Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line.” (Rutten was fishing with a single line off the back of the seven-ton boat.)

Dr Conor Ryan, a scientific adviser to the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, who has studied orca pods off the Scottish coast, told the Guardian: “I’d be reluctant to say it cannot be learned from [the southern population]. It’s possible that this ‘fad’ is leapfrogging through the various pods/communities.”

Ryan suggests there may be “highly mobile pods that could transmit this behaviour a long distance”.

In May 2023, MIN reported that a matriarchal figure – named White Gladis – was supposedly teaching the orca this behaviour in the Gibraltar Straits. Some scientists have suggested the orca attacking yachts may be a reaction to trauma following a previous collision White Gladis experienced with a boat, or being trapped in fishing nets.

Read about and watch the past three years of incidents involving orca in MIN’s archives.