Orcas becoming strategic in their attacks, says boat captain ambushed twice

Captain Dan Kriz says killer whales are getting faster and more strategic in their attacks on boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal.

For weeks, the world has been watching with interest as groups of orcas, also known as killer whales, appear to be ambushing boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.

But now, a boat captain is speaking out, saying that after his boat was attacked for a second time he now thinks these groups of orcas know “exactly what they’re doing.”

Captain Dan Kriz, a sailor with Reliance Yacht Management, had his first orca encounter in 2020.

“I was sailing with my delivery crew through the Strait of Gibraltar delivering a yacht when I was surrounded with a pack of eight orcas, pushing the boat around for about an hour,” Kriz told Newsweek. “We were one of the first boats experiencing this very unusual orcas’ behaviour.”

While the whales caused significant damage to the boat’s rudder, leaving them stranded and needing a tow to the nearest marina, a similar attack three years later has cemented his belief that orcas are now intentionally disrupting sea vessels.

Kriz said that he was delivering a catamaran on April 15 of this year near the Canary Islands when he began to feel the boat being jostled by creatures below.

“My first reaction was, ‘Please! Not again,’” Kriz told Newsweek.

“First time (in 2020), we could hear them communicating under the boat,” the captain said. “This time, they were quiet, and it didn’t take them that long to destroy both rudders.