In areas of the Strait of Gibraltar and the Galician coast there have been several cases of killer whales colliding with boats, mainly sailboats. “We have already identified these interactions before, but since 2020, let’s say, the novelty of physical contact has been introduced,” explains Alfredo López, from the Orca Atlántica work group.

For the crew members of a sailboat that was navigating through the Strait, the impact was so strong that broke the rudder and pierced the hull. In fact, they had to bail out water with a bomb that was thrown at them from a helicopter until they were towed away.

The risk, they insist, is not only for the boats, but also for the animals, which can come even to die. “We identified 35 specimens of the Atlantic killer whale subpopulation and they are very few, it is too small a population and the loss of one specimen would be very negative,” says López. For this reason, the Government has promoted the satellite marking orcas to minimize these interactions.