Iberian orcas have been ramming and damaging boats off Spain and Portugal over the past six years, and although orcas have been injured by boats, researchers say the behavior is likely play, not revenge. A study in Marine Mammal Science noted that most interactions were initiated by juvenile orcas and involved gentle nudging and social behaviors, including bringing food to researchers.
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Sailors have had enough. They’ve hurled homemade explosives at the critically endangered animals and even fired shotguns at them. The boaters are fending off what they believe are deliberate assaults by killer whales waging a vendetta after being struck by yachts and getting tangled in fishing gear. But are the giant cetaceans really out for blood?
Not according to a recent study in Marine Mammal Science. Based on underwater footage and firsthand observations, scientists conclude the killer whales aren’t trying to harm humans. Instead, they probably just want to play.
Theories abound over why Iberian orcas (Orcinus orca) began to batter boats. The most sensational holds that the whales are exacting revenge for injuries inflicted by humans. Orcas can become entangled in nylon fishing lines as they try to pry away hooked bluefin tuna, sometimes gashing their sides or amputating a fin. Recreational boats also soar through their waters, risking collisions. Popular culture holds that a supposed matriarch, White Gladis, was hit by a yacht; traumatized, she began to teach younger whales to dish out payback.
Not all researchers are on board. “This notion of retaliatory behavior is absolutely ridiculous,” says Jared Towers, a killer whale scientist at Bay Cetology who wasn’t involved in the current study. “Wild orcas that get harmed don’t attack; they swim away.”
Other scientists suspect the animals are training their young to hunt, using the boats to practice the coordination and motor skills they’ll need for capturing prey. But the orcas’ boat interactions show very different tactics compared with hunting, which involves behaviors such as high-speed chases and erratic underwater movements, notes Janek Andre, an orca researcher at WeWhale who did not participate in the new work.
Joana Castro, a marine ecologist at the Marine Environment Research Association (AIMM), has found a more benign explanation. Over the past 8 years, she and her colleagues have analyzed seven encounters they’ve filmed during routine surveys of large sea animals along the southern coast of Portugal in their single-engine, 6.5-meter inflatable boat. Orca interactions with the vessel ranged from light touches to full-on high-speed ramming that knocked some students—who’d tagged along on the expeditions—to the floor, says Guilherme Estrela, a skipper and biologist at AIMM. To get a picture of what was happening underwater, brave participants plunged hand-held GoPros below the surface.
In a few videos, the orcas could be seen opening their mouths or blowing bubbles—behaviors scientists often associate with aggression, Castro says. But the rest of the evidence seemed to fit more with the idea that the animals were simply playing: Almost all the actual boat contact was made by juveniles—“teenagers who do reckless things”—and never adult males, Rose says. And the animals’ contact was often simple touching or gentle nudging, Castro adds. Sometimes, they would show their bellies—a friendly posture—while pushing the boats.
Some of the orcas also came bearing gifts. In 2021, for example, 3-year-old Eli dragged a chunk of tuna in her mouth to show the researchers. “That’s supersocial and bonding in their own system,” Castro says. “A killer whale does not do that to an enemy.”
Andre has had similar experiences with Estrella—the one boaters call White Gladis—and her 5-year-old son Atlas, who bears deep scars from a 2025 propeller strike. “If you want to avenge yourself, you don’t bring food, you know?” he says.
Play usually gets its start in exploratory behavior, and Castro and her colleagues appear to have caught those early origins as well. In a brief clip from 2018, 2 years before the ramming incidents started, 6-year-old Lua nudges the boat’s inflatable pontoons as his little sister Sintra watches intensely. “At first, we didn’t make a lot of it,” Castro says. “But then, well, it escalated.” Both Lua and Sintra would later become confirmed boat rammers.
Regardless of the killer whales’ true intentions, the behavior has concerned scientists and conservationists, especially because Iberian orcas—a genetically distinct subgroup of about 40 individuals—are critically endangered. The animals are learning to play a game that could get them killed, Castro’s team says, either by angry boaters or by propellers and other dangerous boat equipment.
Experts offer different solutions, from boats speeding up so they won’t be rammed to stopping dead in their tracks when a whale approaches. But Andre says the best strategy is to avoid the orcas altogether. “Don’t engage them; don’t call their attention,” he says. “Just stay away.”
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