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A pod of killer whales rammed and sank a sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.[Regnum] A pod of killer whales sank a sailing yacht after ramming it in the Moroccan waters of the Strait of Gibraltar.newspaper reported this on May 13.  It is specified that the sailing yacht Alboran Cognac, 15 meters long, with two people on board, collided with killer whales on the morning of May 12. People said that the animals behaved aggressively, attacking and ramming the ship. As a result of the killer whale attack, the ship's hull was damaged and water leaked inside. After alerting emergency services, a nearby oil tanker took the sailors on board and took the ship to Gibraltar. However, the yacht still sank. Experts have speculated that the killer whales in question are a subpopulation of about 15 individuals known as "Gladys." They live between the north of the Iberian Peninsula and the Strait of Gibraltar and are not the first to attack and sink ships. The first documented incident of this kind occurred in May 2020, and a total of seven such cases have been recorded, including the one that occurred on May 12. Killer whales sank five sailing boats and two Moroccan fishing vessels. According to the Atlantic Killer Whale Working Group (GTOA), the Gladys subpopulation has interacted with vessels at least 673 times. Zoologists suggest that this behavior could be either playful curiosity of marine mammals or a deliberate attack on the “competitors” of killer whales’ favorite prey – bluefin tuna. Earlier, IA Regnum reported that a group of Red List killer whales was trapped in Japanese territorial waters in the north of the country. Marine mammals became trapped in drifting ice off the coast of Hokkaido and were unable to reach open water. On February 7, Rosrybolovstvo offered the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture assistance in rescuing killer whales trapped in the ice. The service indicated that they have the necessary competencies and experience for this. Earlier on the same day, the Secretary General of the Japanese government, Yoshimasa Hayashi, announced contacts with Russia on the situation with killer whales stuck in the ice. However, later the Foreign Ministry representative offices in Vladivostok and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk stated that they had not received any requests from Japan for assistance in rescuing marine mammals. Posted by: badanov 2024-05-15 |
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