Atlantic Orcas Teach Their Calves How to be Pushy Jerks

Aug 3

Aug 3 Atlantic Orcas Teach Their Calves How to be Pushy Jerks

The Summer of Annoying Orcas continues as rambunctious killer whales continue to “play” with sailboats off the Spanish coast by ramming them, sometimes causing real damage. Scientists studying the odd behavior say that young orcas in the pod might be learning how to harass boats by copying their elders.

“It's only a game. It isn't revenge [against boats], it isn't climate change, it's just a game and that's it,” Renaud de Stephanis, a scientist based on the south coast of Spain, tells BBC News.

De Stephanis, president of Conservation, Information and Research on Cetaceans, has been monitoring the 60 or so orcas that swim off the Iberian coast; they’ve tagged two of them so they can track the pod by satellite. The Spanish government maps pod movements to let sailors know how to avoid them.

Complicating the human efforts to live and let live, the orcas are apparently teaching their young how to be jerks. The killer whales tend to target boats’ rudders, ramming them repeatedly until they snap.

“There's foam inside the rudder that went into the water and the orcas were pushing it around with it on their noses - like a toy,” explains French sailor Lou Lombardi, whose boat was harassed by five orcas for eighty minutes while his rudder was destroyed. “I had the feeling they were training each other. There were two calves, and the adult would do it, then watch while the calf did it – like they were transmitting something.”

The killer whale watchers fear that sailors might begin taking matters into their own hands to protect their boats, which cannot end well. The Spanish government hopes that advance knowledge of where the pod is located will prevent any bloody encounters.

Nuria Riera, an artist who volunteers with the conservation and whale-watching group Firmm, says what we’re all thinking: “We have to remember that the sea is their home – we're the intruders.”