Four crew members have been rescued from a yacht which sunk 25km from Viana do Castelo on Portugal’s north west coast, after reportedly being damaged following an encounter with a pod of Orca.

Published 1 year ago

According to a report on the Portugal Resident website, the yacht which was sailing under a French flag, sent out a distress call shortly after midday on 1 November, 2022.  All four crew members aboard the stricken vessel were rescued by another sailing boat in the vicinity, which picked up on the distress call before a search and rescue team from Viana do Castelo Life-Saving station arrived.

A statement by Viana do Castelo Maritime Police has said it will be “issuing an advice to navigation for questions of safety”, presumably in the coming days.

This is the second orca incident this year which has ended with a vessel sinking. A similar incident involving Orca and a yacht off the port of Sines occurred in July 2022.

A Nightmare for Sailing Boats

Orca ‘interactions’ – as scientists studying the phenomenon like to call them – have become a new nightmare for sailing boats transiting the western Iberian peninusula in southern Europe. After more than two years of increased interactions, no one appears to have worked out why they are happening, or how to stop them.

Up until July 2022, interactions were limited to just damage, according to the Portugal Resident News website. The orcas’ ‘playing’ with rudders of sailing boats essentially left them stranded, but otherwise intact. ‘The worst that happened’ was a wait for rescue, and then an expensive repair bill.

But that changed in July this year as a family’s boat sank after a late-night ‘interaction’.
 Reports at the time said that the five people on board managed to flee in a dinghy, having radioed ahead for help. A fishing boat, Festas André, was close by and went straight to the rescue. This incident took place about six nautical miles from Sines, in southern Portugal.

After the incident, the Portuguese Navy notified those who sighted the orcas to immediately turn off their engines. “In the event of sighting these mammals, all sailors are advised to turn off the engine, in order to inhibit the rotation of the propeller, and immobilise the rudder door, thus demotivating these mammals to interact with the moving structures of the boats.”

Guidelines have been issued by a number of organisations, on what yachts should do when approached by orcas on passage, and now the Cruising Association have taken matters into their own hands to try and determine some pattern to these interactions, and repelling strategies that work.

Reports Requested

The Cruising Association says that “Since 2020 there has been a new pattern of behaviour within a population of orcas that feeds on and follows the migration of tuna exiting the Mediterranean from the Strait of Gibraltar and heading West and North around the Iberian Peninsula over a period of several months.”

Now the CA is looking to compare data received from interactions against the same data set reported by boats on passage through the affected areas without an interaction

Anyone on the following passages in 2022, including uneventful ones, is asked to log a report with the CA.

• June – between Cadiz and Tarifa;
• July and August – between Cabo Trafalgar and Tarifa;
• August – between Cabo Trafalgar and Tarifa and between Muros and Cabo Ortegal;
• September – between Sines and Figueira Da Foz;
• October – between Sines and Figueira Da Foz.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Related News:

• Second Sailing Boat Sinks after Interaction with Orca (Portugese Resident)
  
• Se hunde frente a Viana do Castelo un velero francés tras una interacción con orcas (La Voz de Galicia)
  
• Boat sinks after Interaction with Orca (Marine Industry News)
  
• Noonsite Orca and Yachts page (for more news and links).
  

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Related Links:

• Cruising Association Orca Interaction Report Form
  
• RYA Orca (Killer Whale) Guidelines (RYA)
  
• Atlantic Orca Working Group
  
• ICNF Recommendations Not to Approach Orca
  

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Noonsite has not independently verified this information.