18 August 2023 , 14:58
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This is the moment a panicked group of tourists call for help after a pod of killer whales surrounded and attacked their boat during a cruise.
Phone footage shows the frightened boaters trapped aboard the damaged 'Santa Barbara' off the coast of Sesimbra, Portugal, on the afternoon of 9th August. In the video, a woman can be seen phoning authorities and asking for help, saying they are stranded one mile from land.
She can be heard saying (in Portuguese): "We're being attacked by orcas off the coast of Sesimbra. We're about a mile from Sesimbra. We have several orcas around our sailboat." The rest of the group looks out to the water in apparent fear as at least three orcas continuously circle around their boat.
In the meantime, the woman can again be heard saying she's "tired of calling" and that nobody is answering. Some of the passengers appear to be teenage boys. The boaters were reportedly rendered helpless after the animals damaged the rudder and part of it fell off. Desperate to get away, they reportedly dumped diesel in the sea in an attempt to keep the orcas away.
In the video, a crew member can be seen spilling some type of liquid over the stern of the sailboat. The commander of the Maritime Police, Marco Serrano Augusto, said they received an alarm at around 7:00pm. Augusto said: "The boat skipper said that in 20 years of sailing, he had never interacted with orcas. He added that when help arrived, there were no visible signs of pollution and warned that spilling fuel into the sea is prohibited by law.
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Orcas attacking the tourist boat in Sesimbra in Setubal, Portugal (CEN)
Crewmen then poured some kind of liquid out into the water (CEN)Emergency crews later towed the sailboat to the port, local media said. No injuries have been reported. The Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF) said that all sailors, in case of orca sighting, need to turn off the engine to discourage the animals from approaching. As of July, the ICNF has banned tourist vessels from actively approaching orcas, in order to avoid serious consequences.
An ICNF spokesperson said: "Although the reasons for this recent and repetitive behaviour towards the vessels are unknown, it is known that the initial interactions, conducted by a small group of juvenile killer whales, are currently carried out by a broader group of animals."
According to the Grupo de Trabalho Orca Atlantica (GTOA) - a team of Spanish and Portuguese marine life researchers who study orcas near the Iberian Peninsula - more than 200 interactions between orcas and boats were recorded in 2022 off the coast of Portugal and Spain. The reasons behind the killer whales' sudden interest for sailboats so far remain a mystery to the scientific community.