Orcas sink $128K yacht in Mediterranean attack: 'Like watching wolves hunt' | Hacker News Reader

Orcas sink $128K yacht in Mediterranean attack: 'Like watching wolves hunt'

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36 pointskeepamovin76 comments

I'm a skipper and I recently spoke with other skippers who do these routes often.

All orca attacks happen of 20mt+ deep waters. It's common knowledge that in the hot orca areas you must be in shallow waters (20mt or less).

As in all orca attacks so far, also this one was on a hot area and on deep waters.

What kind of nautical unit is mt?

I don't see it anywhere on the unit table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

Meters

its meters. Depth calculations are usually in meters. I think that might even be true in US coastal waters?

US coastal waters use fathoms.

Ah, I was guessing feet, so I couldn't find anything.

Apparently, the US is literally the only country not to use meters for depth: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathom

I had assumed as much, but wasn't sure.

After all, the US uses not only different units (mi vs km, yards vs meters) but also different symbols for the same units (kph vs km/h, sqm vs m², "klicks" vs km). I've even seen americans use "mt" for metric tons.

They're looking for something that has been experienced earlier after an accidental attack once. May be some food, may be cocaine (like the sharks or the bear), may be alcohol which was in de water after such a crash.. the animals are too get hurt by the actions, so it's clearly not for fun. But, it may be compared with collaboration among other species to get food. May be the orcas are looking at the boats as crows on nuts..

Interesting idea

> “It’s only a matter of time before someone shoots one of these killer whales,” Powell ominously warned.

There's no "animal lovers only" screening for boat ownership, and the captains & owners of small boats are often very invested in them (emotionally and/or financially). Reasonable assumption: The shooting started a while ago, it's only scale-up and media coverage that are matters of time.

Most of the countries along that coastline (where you would dock, the other side is like Libya) have rather strict laws about the keeping of firearms, which makes shooting somewhat less likely.

> somewhat less likely.

Very well put.

Though (as others have pointed out), common small firearms are not well-suited to this use case. Might you know about the legality of spearguns, or similar weapons?

I'd guess that small explosive charges - typically used for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_fishing - would be both "obvious", and easily available to those least inclined to lawful behavior. And it'd be easy enough to check whether their use would attract real naval or coast guard attention.

It’s the same as farmers with wolves, coyotes, lynx, etc: shoot, shovel, shut up —just without the shoveling.

That is, if you get the predator before it gets your object of value, the data point is lost.

We have always been at war with Oceania.

I remember there was a story of an American sailing yacht which got reported for shooting at the orcas. (Someone heard the shots and used AIS to report the boat to the coastguard) Spanish police entered the boat, found the weapons and last I read they are currently awaiting trial for smuggling weapons and possesion of illegal firearms.

It is rare for boats to have guns, as transporting guns between countries is a very difficult affair.

Edit, found a source: https://euroweeklynews.com/2023/08/18/sailboat-crew-denounce...

Despite what hollywood movies say, you can’t shoot at underwater objects, the velocity is either completely killed or the bullet shatters.

If theyre breaching the surface, the amount of flesh you’d have to pierce to get a kill shot would be a lot. Maybe it would deter them but I think it’d just make them angry and would be a dumb idea.

I read one theory to why these attacks happen that seems plausible to me. The Mediterranean has a lot of noise from boats that disturb the marine life. Imagine living 24/7 in a construction site. I think they are angry and desperate.

Orca attacks don't happen in the Med. They happen in the Atlantic ocean.

You read the article or headline? "2-hour Mediterranean Sea attack"

It happened in the Strait of Gibraltar

Article is wrong. They mainly (like this one) happen in the Strait of Gibraltar on the ocean side. I think it never happened inside the Med so far.

TFA is about an Orca attack in the Mediterranean

Looks like TFA is wrong. According to other sources, the attack happened near Tarifa and Barbate in Spain, which are on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/12019114/spain-orca-yacht-sink-...

This has a map showing attacks and they are definitely also happening in the Mediterranean.

I can definitely be wrong but I wouldn't trust this map. I can't find any reference of attacks near Ibiza online.

next commenter will claim you can't trust The Sun anymore, what's wrong with people?

They're attacking exclusively sailboats, which are silent. Granted, not many motor yachts are transiting the straits and those that do tend to be larger than 40 feet, but some do. Their method of attack (disable the rudder) is also only effective on sailboats (the rudder is much, much larger and consequently easier to break.)

I'm really not sure that's the reason. Someone else in this thread had an idea that they were trying to replicate a prior result (obtaining something desirable from a disabled yacht) but I'm inclined to believe they're just being dicks. And why not? We hunt for sport. And we know that orcas engage in play, even quite cruel play with cornered seals. It could be adolescent orcas challenging each other, like pelagic ding dong ditch.

EDIT: The boat in the article was motoring, not under sail. So strike the word "silent" for "a lot quieter than a motorboat."

Can you buy a yacht for $128k? Maybe a very old one. Not sure about the European boat market.

Today 2500 Euro is enough.

https://www.marktplaats.nl/l/watersport-en-boten/kajuitzeilb...

Yacht can just mean 40 foot boat

Technically, anything over 26 feet can be a yacht.

TIL 'technically' is the new 'ackshelly'

It wasn't meant in that way, as the definition includes parent's 40ft example.

Having said that, I now can't find a source that 26ft is the cutoff. I'll retract the statement pending source.

It's a 39 foot sailboat

128k is a pretty expensive one. I've done week long holidays on much cheaper boats.

The cost of boats is more in maintenance and storage, which tends to be 10-20% of the price of the boat per year.

Really don’t buy the “this is a rogue pod of juvenile orcas that are just playing.”

The fact they seem to deliberately target the rudder first in most of these attacks doesn’t really seem like “play” it seems like an intent to do damage. Why? Who knows, we haven’t figured out how to communicate with them.

The idea that what they’re doing is deliberately destructive and the idea that they’re playing are not mutually exclusive.

Yes exactly. Teenage humans frequently do monumentally stupid and destructive stuff because they're bored or want to impress peers. Everything on a continuum from egging and TP'ing houses to keying cars, graffiti/tagging, breaking windows on abandoned buildings, shoplifting, vandalizing public structures, breaking into cars, stealing cars and joyriding, to actual gang murder.

Humans don't handle news story with neutral actors well. We're very conditioned to expect motivated overtly good/bad characters in all stories so people don't handle the possibility well that some things are just agents of chaos. Similar to the recent assassination attempt.

> Why?

Why any species with the slightest ability to memorize would (counter)attack humans?

One can only wonder.

Humans are not particularly known to treat wildlife that well.

Yeah. I don't think we can ascribe harmless benevolent animal motivations to them. Orcas have much larger brains than us. They're apex predators, aggressive physically and sexually. It's likely that this type of behavior is like a hoodlum gang.

I'm all for animals. I just don't think you need to be "animal behaviorist apologists" for anything. People who always blame humans / explain away animal behaviors under some mistaken ideal that animals are always good, humans are at fault.

When you look at ships undersides or near water line in general there really isn't that many interesting parts. With sailing yacht you have keel and rudder, maybe propeller. Hitting keel doesn't do that much, but rudder can offer interesting tactile feedback. Kids love to break things, why don't same go for animals.

Same with humans, with animal what is interesting? The big blob at middle or tangly bits like ears or tail?

Imagine this happening on a longer sail where help might be much further away, that’s kinda scary

I definitely would not be surprised if this ends up in people being prepared for these attacks in the future, if this keeps occurring, and I’m afraid that won’t do good for the orcas.

I dare to suggest that in a very early incident, the owners of a yacht fired a gun on the whales and killed one. Then, the pod is attacking any similar yacht around the area.

Is that behavior unique to killer whales? Of course not. Crows also attack people - https://mothership.sg/2024/07/crow-attack-tampines-hdb-bleed...

In every case of crow attacks, someone had pruned earlier the city trees and in the process the crow chicks fell from the nests and died.

A group of crows is called a murder.

> I dare to suggest that in a very early incident, the owners of a yacht fired a gun on the whales and killed one. Then, the pod is attacking any similar yacht around the area.

Unhinged speculation aside, What kind of gun could possibly kill a whale?

I’ve had this thought since reading about Orcas attacking yachts; it seems inevitable that the humans will do what they usually do when threatened. You can buy a fifty-caliber rifle fairly readily in the US which I believe will disable most vehicles when fired at the engine block. I’m far from an expert but I suspect that will severely injure just about any mammal.

And obviously humans hunted even large whales historically, so the techniques and equipment must be known to some.

Unsure, but it’s a bit of a secret that people in the area carry guns to protect from orcas..

[flagged]

filed under heartwarming news

What's your beef with a random boat owner, both of you?

Probably something to do with the typical series of events that unfold before becoming the "owner" of a $128K yacht.

Sorry but 128k for a yacht is not a lot of money and should be achievable by anyone who is willing to work hard.

I think you mean to say "is currently achievable by anyone willing to exploit hard" considering most of these people own far more than just the $128K yacht.

These acts have lasting repercussions on everybody else in the world, and very rarely ever originate from "hard work."

Are you serious? Many of the people yachting with (fairly midrange) boats are retired professionals with a passion for sailing.

Many times people pool their money together.

It's a good predictor of class, and most in that position exploited their way upward, and/or inherited from those who did so. It's not so much a moral failing as it is a systemic one, because we can rearrange the pieces on the Monopoly board and still get the same predictable rent-seeking behavior.

I don’t think you ever met real oceanic vagabond. People you see in marinas isn’t them - marinas are super expensive.

I think you'll find that the vast majority of people who work very hard have no hope at all of affording $128k for a luxury item.

Maybe you just mean it's not a lot of money for very well paid people?

> Go team Beast!

It's all fun and games until someone brings a shotgun aboard.

This isn't a bunch of yahoos on a party boat in Corpus Christi Bay. Where is a yacht owner in the Mediterranean going to get a shotgun, and would such a tiny weapon even be effective against a half dozen 8000 lb whales, anyway? I have a hard time believing it'd be worth the risk of getting caught by authorities with an illegal firearm onboard.

> I have a hard time believing it'd be worth the risk

Well, isn't that nice, we get to do a Gedankeexperiment.

You get choose between the two following scenarios:

    - bringing a shotgun onboard, using it to defend your life by at least inflicting pain to the attacking beast and trying to chase them away. Oh, and yeah, maybe paying a 300 euro fine for trying to make sure you come back home alive.

    - not bringing a shotgun aboard, getting pummeled, sunk and either eaten or drowned. But sure, you'll not be fined 300 euros.

I know what I'd do.

Oh, and

> where is a yacht owner in the Mediterranean going to get a shotgun

LOL.

Any large coastal city suburb in either Spain, France or Italy ?

Go orcas!

I wonder why we suddenly see this in news. Orcas learned how to sink sailing boats around a decade ago, and seems to teach the technique to other pods. What to do is also known, move the rudder and fins back in the boat, open a gas jerrican, spread the gas around the boat and wait.

> move the rudder and fins back in the boat

What does that mean?

Not sure but retracting outboard devices out of water?

Short of a 10' dinghy I can't think of any boat where you can remove the rudder and even if 'fin' means 'centerboard' that's still dinghy stuff. Nobody (bar a once-a-generation daredevil) is dinghying across the Atlantic.

There are a number of 40+ foot boats with centerboards, e.g., the Wellington 44 (first that came to mind). Rudders removable underway are less common, but not unknown. Additional rudders like you might find on a non-integrated autonav/windvane system can frequently be moved out of the water. Same with emergency rudders. Still, non-standard language here.

You may be interested to know about the annual trans-atlantic rowing races, where crews compete on boats as small as 6m (Rannoch 10 solo) to cross from the Canaries to Antigua. 40+ crews of 1-5 are scheduled to compete this year.

Not quite 10 foot dinghies, but still impressive in a "mildly unhinged" way. Nothing but respect for these folks.

Oh interesting - I'm familiar with the combination shoal keel/centerboard from daysailers like the Montgomery 17 but wasn't aware of it at the scale of something like the Wellington. I can imagine that being very popular out in the Bahamas (in common with most of the planet it's somewhere I haven't sailed, which is probably why I'd never come across that.)

Point taken on the auxiliary rudder/autopilot hydrovane though damage to that isn't going to sink the boat.

And yes, totally agree with your thoughts on those rowers!

Glad we could get something out of the low alpha end of the thread. Thanks for the knowledge there.

Hydrovane! That's the bloody brand. Couldn't think of it before first cuppa. Agreed it won't sink the boat, but it might reduce the appeal of the boat as a toy (or not... Wish we knew why this was happening.)

Planning a long-term Bahamas-/ICW- capable trip for family, or I probably wouldn't know about those either.

Fair winds and following seas, friend.

You too! Enjoy the cruise.

And I had an unfair advantage - I was already drinking my first cup.

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