'Very scary' killer whale warning as boats 'rammed' in holiday hotspot

A warning has been issued after repeated attacks on boats by killer whales.

The incidentsoff the coast of Spain were described as “very scary” after two rammings occurred just minutes apart. Several orca pods have been spotted in the waters of Galicia in northwest Spain in recent weeks.

The first attack occurred off the coast at O Grove, situated on the mouth of the Arousa estuary, an area hugely popular with tourists. The orcas destroyed the rudder of the ‘San Pedro’ vessel at around 6:15pm that evening.

"It was a quarter past six in the evening when we felt two knocks and when we looked, we saw that there were two orcas and that the rudder was destroyed," the skipper told Spanish newspaper Faro de Viga.

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When he looked closely, both he and the other four crew members onboard "saw that there was an orca about seven metres long and a smaller one swimming next to it".

San Pedro, a wooden galleon, was on his way to meet other traditional boats from Combarro at the time. She had slowed down to set sail and was sailing on one of its motors. After the attack, the boat had to be towed into dock by Maritime Rescue. No-one was hurt.

When a rescue ship had towed San Pedro to safety, it went back out to sea as another boat had raised the alert after suffering a leak as a result of an attack by orcas off the island of Ons. It was also towed back to port. The same orcas, a mother and her calf, are thought to have been involved in this second incident.

"The truth is that we were very scared; we were actually really 'scared' when we realised that the killer whales were hitting the boat," said one crew member.

The whales feast on a diet of bluefin tuna and octopus, but experts say there are “frequent interactions” between orcas and boats at the moment because they are moving between North Africa, southern Spain, the Cantabrian Sea and the coast of France.

"This coming and going means that there are frequent interactions between these cetaceans and recreational boats, as has happened again in the waters of O Grove and moments later, also in Ons," said one scientist.

Bruno Díaz López, doctor in Ecology who directs the Institute for the Study of Bottlenose Dolphins (BDRI), said this was “normal behaviour” for the orcas. He urged boats in the area to operate with caution.

"All this is due to absolutely normal behaviour on the part of wild animals, which as such are unpredictable and move continuously, play and have behaviours that can be dangerous for humans,” he said. “That is why we insist on asking for caution and demanding that recreational ships do not approach.”

He continued: "We already explained last year that, in one way or another, killer whales will be in Galicia until autumn, as they come and go between southern Spain and France chasing prey such as tuna, so it is inevitable that sometimes they will bump into boats or enter the estuaries."

He says that in the most common group on the Galician coast, there are "three especially active specimens that seem to have become accustomed to interacting with boats and will continue to do so".