Orcas are attacking boats. But to say they’re ‘fighting back’ is all too human | Elle Hunt

These incidents are spreading - and along with them, bogus narratives casting the killer whales as marine avengers

In the opening sequence of the BBC's original Blue Planet series of 2001, TV's first real look at life within the world's oceans, a pod of orca are shown hunting a grey whale and her calf. Over and over, the killer whales jump on the calf, pushing it under the waves, determined to drown it. Once it is finally dead, after a six-hour battle, they eat only its lower jaw and tongue.

I vividly remember watching this as a 10-year-old in 2001 and thinking: I wouldn't like to take on a killer whale. Lately, however, their attention seems to have turned uncomfortably close to home. In the past few years, a pod of orcas has been ramming boats in the waters off south-west Europe at seemingly increasing rates. From 52 such interactions" recorded in 2020, there were 197 in 2021, 207 last year and a steady number so far this summer. In three cases, the orcas have damaged boats so badly that they have sunk.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

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