Killer whales attack another sailboat off Spain, prompting complex rescue that injures crewmember

Orcas slammed into a sailboat off the coast of northwestern Spain on Sunday, damaging its rudder and prompting a complicated rescue operation that left one crew member seriously injured, officials said, marking the latest incident of the predators attacking a vessel in the region. 

It wasn’t known exactly how many orcas — also known as killer whales — were involved in the attack near O Roncudo along the rocky cliffs of the Spanish province of Galicia. Spain’s maritime rescue service said two people on board the boat, called the Amidala, sent out a mayday at around 4 p.m. GMT to the dispatch center in Cape Finisterre, an area also marked by rocky shores and, at the time, rough seas.

The man and woman who crewed the Amidala haven’t been identified by name, but the rescue service described them as Belgian nationals. Their boat sailed under the Finnish flag.

Another vessel with the Spanish maritime rescue service sailed for hours to the Amidala through adverse weather, which included waves nearly 10 feet high and winds of up to 40 miles per hour, the rescue service said. While arranging the towing operation that would allow the rescue vessel to slowly pull the sailboat to a port at Camariñas, the woman on board the Amidala seriously injured her hand and was airlifted back to land. The towing mission eventually ended with the sailboat docked just before 9:30 p.m.

Manuel Capeáns, who leads the rescue coordination center in Cape Finisterre, in a statement commended the Amidala’s crew and everyone involved in the recovery for successfully completing the operation in such harsh conditions. 

The incident on Sunday is just the latest in a string of accounts of orcas severely damaging sailboats in Spanish waters and across the surrounding region. In May, a sailing yacht sunk after killer whales attacked it in the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea between southern Spain and Morocco. The unknown number of orcas in that ordeal slammed into the vessel carrying two people and caused a water leak, according to Spain’s maritime rescue center. Those crew members were rescued by a passing oil tanker.

Orca attacks on sailboats have apparently become more common in recent years. Reports of killer whale interactions with humans more than tripled over the last two years, according to a research group called GTOA, which documents such incidents in and around the Atlantic Iberian Peninsula. 

The group said it has recorded hundreds of those interactions since 2020, although researchers noted that orcas’ behavior in the Strait of Gibraltar and Bay of Biscay — another hotspot for killer whale interactions — dropped significantly between January and May of this year compared with the last three years’ average figures over those same months.

Sailors have resorted to everything from throwing sand in the water to setting off fireworks to blasting thrash metal music in efforts to ward off the encroaching predators.