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Ayacht navigating the Strait of Gibraltar recently sank after a pod of orcas launched a dramatic attack, marking the latest incident in a series of troubling encounters with these killer whales. Robert Powell, the British yachtsman affected, said that "these (orcas) were not playing" and described the attack as "well-organized and coordinated" in a social media post. Powell and two other occupants of the yacht, called Bonhomie William, had to be rescued by Spanish coastguards on Wednesday 24 after orcas disabled the vessel's steering and subjected it to severe buffeting. However, Volker Deecke, a professor of wildlife conservation at the...

Orcas relentlessly battered a yacht in a “terrifying” two-hour attack that didn’t end until the $128,680 vessel sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. ... they were not playing at all, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat, and they knew how to sink it... “Their sole intention was to sink the boat ... The five orcas circled the 39-foot sailing boat and took turns smashing it to bits .. in a coordinated assault Powell compared to the carnage of wolves. ... The pod of five first focused on the rudder,...

Team JAJO had some special –– and terrifying –– visitors while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar as part of the 2023 Ocean Race on Thursday. A group of orcas, otherwise known as killer whales, surrounded the Dutch crew’s yacht, first circling the boat and then ramming into it. “This was a scary moment,” Jelmer van Beek, Team JAJO skipper, said, according to the Associated Press. “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team.” Some of Team JAJO’s crew banged...

Lead author Alison Towner inspects the carcass of a great white shark....Marine Dynamics/Dyer Island Conservation Trust/Hennie Otto =================================================== Frequent readers of CNET Science will remember Port and Starboard, the duo of killer whales from a story we published in June, which detailed research showing great white sharks were being hunted by the whales off the coast of South Africa. New aerial footage, released on Monday, shows one member of the murderous pair -- Starboard -- actually making a kill. The footage was released on YouTube as part of a new study, led by Alison Towner, published on Oct. 3 in...

Scientists believe that the damage to boats is being done by just a few juvenile males

Reports of orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar have left sailors and scientists confused. Just what is causing such unusually aggressive behaviour? When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters. But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without...

Just when you think orcas couldn't possible be any more awesome, they get even better. A study in 2019 showed these whales are really good at scaring off the most feared beast in the sea. Yep. Orcas have toppled the great white shark off their 'apex predator' throne. A team of marine scientists found that great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) will make themselves extremely scarce whenever they detect the presence of orcas (Orcinus orca). "When confronted by orcas, white sharks will immediately vacate their preferred hunting ground and will not return for up to a year, even though the orcas...

At the bottom of the world, in some of the roughest seas, live mysterious killer whales that look very different from other orcas. Now, for the first time, scientists have located and studied these animals in the wild. The orcas are “highly likely” to be a new species, says Robert Pitman, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The scientific team made the finding in January about 60 miles off the coast of Cape Horn, Chile..

A rare sighting in the animal kingdom continues to mesmerize marine biologists and whale watchers in the Monterey Bay. For the fourth day in a row, whale watchers on Sunday spotted an abnormally large pod of killer whales feasting on the carcasses of two gray whales, according to Nancy Black from Monterey Bay Whale Watch. Killer whales are famous for their violent attacks and relentless feeding practices, but to see this type of behavior and this amount of mammal-eating creatures just off the coast of Monterey is "pretty rare," Black said. "This won't happen everyday," she said. The first gray...

SeaWorld announced on Thursday it would ends its killer whale breeding program, and those currently at its parks would be the last. The Orlando-based theme park has faced dwindling attendance and years of criticism over its treatment of the captive marine mammals as well as pressure from animal rights activists to end public exhibition of killer whales altogether. SeaWorld, which operates parks in San Diego, Orlando and San Antonio, said in November it would replace its signature 'Shamu' killer whale shows in San Diego with displays focused on conservation.

The California Coastal Commission has banned SeaWorld from breeding captive killer whales in San Diego. The ban is one of the conditions SeaWorld must uphold as it doubles the size of the tanks used to hold the animals at the park. Animal rights activists praised Thursday's decision, which will see 11 orcas remain at the tourist attraction.

SeaWorld reported a wider loss in its fourth quarter of $25.4 million as attendance to its theme parks continued to fall - due in part to the documentary 'Blackfish,' which criticizes the company's treatment of killer whales. Its shares fell in premarket trading Thursday. SeaWorld has been battling negative publicity after a 2013 documentary, 'Blackfish,' suggested that its treatment of animals may have led to the deaths of trainers.

Jaws may have terrified you at the cinema, but the iconic great white would have been dwarfed by Carcharocles megalodon, the largest shark in the history of the planet. The giant creatures lived between 23 million and 2.6 million years ago and scientists are divided over how and why the species perished. Now, details of fossils from the huge shark that lived alongside the dinosaurs have been studied for the first time in an attempt to solve this mystery.

Kayaker experiences the rush of a lifetime when killer whales swim around and under her kayak as she paddles around the San Juan Islands in Washington.

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a 2009 federal decision that called for reducing the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in order to protect salmon and other species. The 2009 environmental review by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that continuing to pump water from the delta at such a high rate would threaten several endangered salmon species and killer whales. Some of the state’s biggest water agencies, including Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District, had challenged the 2009 federal decision. …

A pod of killer whales appears to be trapped in a small pool of water surrounded by ice in Hudson’s Bay. In a number of videos shot by local residents near Inukjuak, Que., the whales are seen taking turns continuously coming up for air. The first video was posted on Tuesday on Facebook by local residents to try to get the attention of authorities to help the whales who appear to be in distress. It is believed the orcas became stranded on Monday and are still there.

If you've ever wanted to watch killer whales perform for your benefit, book your trip to SeaWorld now! If the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has its way, those poor whale slaves won't entertain tourists much longer ...This story serves up too many fantastic quotes to ignore. Like one commenter on the case, I’m not surprised; it is PETA we’re talking about, after all. Yet, somehow, they always manage to be more over-the-top than before. The organization sincerely claims that SeaWorld is in violation of the 13th amendment’s ban on slavery because it holds five orcas – Tilikum,...

Can killer whales sue SeaWorld for enslavement? A lawsuit filed Wednesday by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other "next friends" of five SeaWorld killer whales takes that novel legal approach. The 20-page complaint asks the U.S. District Court in Southern California to declare that the five whales -- Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka, and Ulises -- are being held in slavery or involuntary servitude in violation of the 13th Amendment. A PETA statement said the lawsuit is the first of its kind in contending that constitutional protections against slavery are not limited to humans.

The killer whale who mauled and drowned a female trainer at Orlando's SeaWorld last year will begin performing in front of crowds again on Wednesday. Tilikum will participate in the park's main killer whale show, titled "Believe," SeaWorld officials said. The whale has not performed since Feb. 24, 2010, when he snatched trainer Dawn Brancheau from a shallow pool ledge and thrashed her around underwater, killing the 40-year-old in front of a horrified audience. The deaths made headlines worldwide, led SeaWorld to spend millions making safety upgrades and sparked federal and civil lawsuits against the water park. SeaWorld Animal Training...

About a week before the 2008 election, Tom Brokaw sat in front of Charlie Rose on PBS stating we really don’t know much about Barack Obama. The two then exchanged back and forth all the things the mainstream media failed to ask Obama or dig up as we headed into the election just a few days later. This was the sad assessment of the state of the media and its bias leading into election day. The mainstream media failed to report on Obama’s college days, his birth certificate, his drug use, his associations with Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall...