VIDEO. Why are orcas approaching sailboats more and more often in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean ?

Depuis 2020, des orques tentent d’interagir avec des voiliers sur la péninsule Ibérique, (image d’illustration). MAXPPP – mediadrumworld.com

Cela fait maintenant 4 ans que les scientifiques ont constaté de plus en plus "d’interactions" entre des orques et des voiliers sur la péninsule Ibérique, des interactions qui ne cessent de faire questionner.

Chance encounters. Since 2020, off the coast of Portugal and Spain, scientists have noticed that orcas are getting closer and closer to sailboats. They specify that these are not attacks but rather interactions.

"We didn't see them coming"

"These encounters are quite new, but they have been more frequent over the past 2 years, explains the Gard skipper Kito de Pavant at La Provence. < em>Yet there, we did not expect it, the zones of interactions are identified, further south in Spain and especially in summer. This is very surprising."

According to the browser, "it’is healthy for animals to remind us that they exist, wildlife takes their place".

To make the group of young orcs leave without hurting them, he lit smoke bombs, so as not to hurt them, but only to keep them away.

A play or a defense?

In the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, Galicia, and along Portugal, the recorded interactions are becoming more and more numerous: around fifty in 2020, and more than 200 in 2022.

But what pushes orcas to interact with sailboats ? Two hypotheses were mentioned, that of the game; and that of defense after a trauma of one of the members of the group who would have taught his peers to hunt.

A second theory which does not convince Pierre Robert de Latour, a French specialist in orcas requested by our colleagues, and for whom the latter have never had a mind& nbsp;de "revenge". 

The scientist advises stopping the boat before being spotted by the orcas. We still have to spot them before them.