There is no record of an orca killing a human in the wild. Still, two boats were reportedly sunk by orcas off the coast of Portugal last month, in the worst such encounter since authorities have tracked them. That is a conundrum. Up to now, scientists have assumed that only a few animals are involved in these encounters and that they are all from the same pod, reports GPB.
Scientists don’t know the reason, but they have some ideas
Scientists hypothesize that orcas like the water pressure produced by a boat’s propeller. “What we think is that they’re asking to have the propeller in the face,” de Stephanis says. So, when they encounter a sailboat that isn’t running its engine, “they get kind of frustrated and that’s why they break the rudder.”
Even so, that doesn’t entirely explain an experience Martin Evans had last June when he was helping to deliver a sailboat from Ramsgate, England, to Greece.
About 25 miles off the coast of Spain, “just shy of entering the Strait of Gibraltar,” Evans and his crew mates were under sail, but they were also running the boat’s engine with the propeller being used to boost their speed.
As Evans was on watch, the steering wheel began moving so violently that he couldn’t hold on, he says.
