How likely \u2013 really \u2013 is your yacht to collide with a whale? We report on a new approach to reduce the chance of whale strikes, plus what sailors can do\u201cWhen a 45-tonnes Sperm Whale is on starboard tack, it has right of way. It also has right of way when it\u2019s on port tack!\u201d the legendary French ocean sailor Olivier de Kersauson once said.
\nFew would argue with him, and no yacht is a match for a whale. Thanks to the vulnerability of rudders, keels, rudder posts or even foils, the spectre of crashing into a large, solid sea creature in deep water has haunted seafarers long before Moby Dick was written in 1851.
\nFor years, reported incidents of cruising yachts colliding with whales were so rare that the risk was supposed to be vanishingly unlikely. The only sailors that did seem to regularly report collisions were ocean racers. Many of those accounts were unclear if they\u2019d hit a whale, a sunfish, a submerged container, or if the carbon boats had simply suffered structural failure.
\nSome close encounters were recorded. In 2012, during the Miami to Lisbon leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, Chuny Bermudez was helming the VO70 Camper when he spotted a whale just off the port bow, slaloming at 20 knots to avoid it. \u201cIt would have been a bad day for both the whale and for us,\u201d observed Camper\u2019s media crew Hamish Hooper. \u201cWith reflexes like a cat [Bermudez] narrowly missed what would have been the equivalent of a runaway freight train colliding with a truck.\u201d
\nOther skippers \u2013 and whales \u2013 were not so lucky. During a 2016 New York to Les Sables d\u2019Olonne Transat race, the fleet had to route around a Whale Exclusion Zone and TSS off Nantucket. Nevertheless solo skippers in the race reported over a dozen collisions in the first 24 hours between their IMOCAs and unidentified objects, now assumed to be marine mammals.
\nIn 2017 Vend\u00e9e Globe skipper Kito de Pavant was racing in the Indian Ocean when he captured a violent collision with a sperm whale on video, the whale shown surfacing in the wake of his IMOCA Bastide Otio after the crash. The impact destroyed areas of the hull and part of the keel, causing de Pavant to abandon ship to a research vessel. It left no doubt of the devastating potential of a whale strike mid-ocean.
\nNo-one really knows why orcas have been targeting yachts. Photo: David Smith
\nChanging views
\nThings have changed in the decade since. Foiling advances means IMOCAs and Ultims are sailing faster than ever before, but also with more vulnerable hull protrusions. Avoiding underwater collisions became a hot topic among racing teams keen to improve reliability.
\nThen in 2020 orcas began seemingly attacking yachts around Gibraltar, for no knowable reason. Suddenly there were numerous Orca whale strike incidents reported, and dozens of cruising yachts pulling into Spain with rudder damage. Scientific and media attention turned to the conundrum, trying to identify causes of the behaviour, or methods to drive the orcas away.
\nAnd there has also been a more fundamental shift in how we see marine life. Cannoning into majestic, possibly endangered, whales is not just expensive and dangerous, it\u2019s becoming unacceptable.
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Damian Foxall has been at the forefront of this rethinking process. Foxall is an ocean racer with 10 round the world races and numerous records to his name, and is co-founder of the Marine Mammal Advisory Group (MMAG). \u201cIt\u2019s a perspective [change] for the sailing community to move from \u2018We can sail wherever we want to\u2019, to being ocean stewards rather than ocean users,\u201d he explains.
\nAfter that 2016 transat, Foxall realised the problem was being wildly underreported.
\n\u201cThrough my own experiences, I think I\u2019ve had about 10 or so collisions or strikes of various types, certainly some with big marine mammals.
\n\u201cI reached out to the International Whaling Commission and asked for their current marine strike log related to the sailing sector, and I received reports of 60 strikes, which went way back to the 1800s. I realised, well, I\u2019ve got 10. So it\u2019s not that we\u2019re not even underreporting. We\u2019re not actually reporting at all.\u201d
\nCamper\u2019s close call with a whale in the 2012 Volvo Ocean Race. Photo: Camper\/Volvo Ocean Race
\nHow many whale strikes?
\nFoxall and the MMAG is currently working to compile a comprehensive log of collisions, near misses and sightings by sailors of whales and marine mammals. The last time such a survey was conducted was by German marine biologist Dr Fabian Ritter in 2012. Ritter identified 111 collisions and 57 near misses.
\nWorryingly, seven sailing vessels sank after those collisions. That data has been incorporated into the MMAG database, along with any historic incidents or individual accounts Foxall and his team can trace through contacts.
\nMMAG is also calling on all sailors \u2013 racing or cruising \u2013 to share their experiences through a global survey.
\n\u201cThe log starts all the way back with The Essex in 1819, right up to the present day. We\u2019ve moved from 60 reports to closer to 1,000, which are not just cetaceans or marine life, but includes other objects. Though typically, if you hit a log, you might forget it, but if you hit a whale, you don\u2019t.\u201d
\nBesides the strike log, observations by marine biologists and known migration routes can be used to calculate areas of risk, and where necessary to route yachts away. This has been a step-change for ocean racing.
\nImproved data, including strike log, migration route studies and sightings can make route planning safer. Photo: David Akers\/Getty
\nAhead of last year\u2019s IMOCA transats \u2013 the last big qualifiers before the Vend\u00e9e Globe \u2013 data from flights over the waters off New York by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was analysed. \u201cJust one flyover identified 30 big animals on the surface within 4-6 hours. That was information that we were able to feed back to the race organisers, and then ask the question, \u2018Are you happy to have your fleet racing through that area when we know it\u2019s an area of high biodiversity, high risk?\u2019,\u201d explains Foxall.
\nThe decision was made to finish the incoming transat and start the eastbound NY-Vend\u00e9e race more than 100 miles offshore, rather than have the fleets sail past the iconic Statue of Liberty \u2013 a huge reduction in potential commercial value, as Foxall points out. \u201cBut whether you come from what is now my perspective as friends of the marine mammals, or if you\u2019re coming from the perspective of, \u2018I just don\u2019t want to break my bloody boat before the Vend\u00e9e Globe,\u2019 they both want the same thing.\u201d
\nThis could potentially also make waters safer for cruising sailors. Areas around the Azores and Cape Verdes were designated marine biodiversity exclusion zones during the last Vend\u00e9e Globe and Ocean Race \u2013 similar to the moving ice exclusion zones that round the world race organisers deploy.
\nOne way to try to convince the Orcas to leave your rudder alone. Photo: Jorn Grote
\nBut they are also popular routes for Atlantic cruisers. Foxall says this is one of the next areas of work: \u201cCan we \u2013 or do we need to \u2013 do a global risk assessment as it relates to typical sailing routes, cruising rallies and migrations of yachts, and identify those areas that are most at risk? To suggest areas to be more careful in or even avoid where it\u2019s justified.\u201d
\nSee, trace, and avoid
\nLatest tech has a big role to play in recording and sharing the location of strikes or near-misses \u2013 and avoiding them. A \u2018Hazard Button\u2019 reporting system has been created for Adrena and Expedition navigation systems \u2013 similar to an MOB button. Originally developed in the IMOCA fleet, it alerts other skippers nearby, as well as race organisers (who can pass the info to boats using other navigation software), and geo-tags the incident.
\nFoxall says another major project is going on in the US to develop an NMEA protocol to improve reporting, \u201cSo whether you\u2019re using Garmin, the Hazard Button system, WhaleAlert, Raymarine, Navico\u2026 we\u2019re all exchanging the same bit of information and meaning the same thing.\u201d
\nThings are moving quickly: MMAG is working to integrate their log into the well-established WhaleAlert app, and Foxall says a new version of the WhaleAlert app will be coming out this March with more detailed European data. In February PredictWind also added a new Whale Watch feature to its DataHub, using information from WhaleAlert to share sightings reported in the previous three days within a 100-mile radius of yachts using PredictWind forecasting.
\nMost IMOCAs now carry the masthead SEA.AI camera system (formerly OSCAR), which is designed to see and detect potential hazards. The technology has its limitations \u2013 not least visibility on high speed yachts \u2013 but is self-learning and improving rapidly.
\nIberian orca are known to hit and bite rudders. Photo: Team JAJO\/Ocean Race Europe
\n\u201cUnderwater, there\u2019s also some quite good technology which can probably be scaled down to sailing vessels, including forward-facing sonar. When you say sonar and marine mammals everyone puts up red flags, but that specific technology has been designed at a frequency and intensity which has minimal impact on sealife and still delivers useful information,\u201d explains Foxall.
\nThe one area of technology which is not widely being developed is that of \u2018pingers\u2019. Once heralded as a potential solution and trialled on some racing yachts, pingers are now outlawed in most areas due to the disturbance they cause marine mammals.
\nFoxall believes they are ineffective and a technological dead-end. \u201cThere\u2019s the fact that species are frequency-specific. And even if they can hear a pinger, does it actually elicit the right reaction? Certain animals, you bang a gong and they come for dinner! Or they get nervous and they come to the surface. Maybe some of them can learn that gong means \u2018Boat! Stay away\u2019. But it\u2019s really a lot of pseudoscience, and in fact, some very clear science proves that it doesn\u2019t work.\u201d
\nMap showing areas of most orca activity, though incidents have also occurred in Biscay, off north Africa and the Atlantic islands. Photo: Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atl\u00e1ntica
\nAvoiding orcas
\nUnlike most incidents in the strike log, the well-publicised occurrences of orcas biting or hitting sailing yachts off Spain and Portugal are not random collisions. Instead they are the result of orcas seeking and \u2013 although marine conservationists are careful not to describe them as \u2018attacks\u2019 \u2013 deliberately making contact with rudders and keels, sometimes violently.
\nBut the same principles \u2013 applying data to keep yachts away from orcas rather than the reverse \u2013 can mitigate the risk. The Grupo Trabajo Orca Atlantica (GTOA) and Cruising Association (CA) have been asking sailors transiting the area to report strikes, or safe passages without strikes. Over five seasons their combined results give a fairly comprehensive picture of the frequency of orca incidents, their time of year and location.
\nOf over 675 interactions reported, 62% resulted in no damage, 33% in moderate damage and 15% in severe damage. In the last three years, two boats have sunk each year. No sailor has been hurt in any of the incidents, beyond some bruising.
\nAccording to John Burbeck, the Cruising Association\u2019s Orca Project lead, the submitted reports have enabled analysts to rule out many variables when trying to work out which boats are most susceptible. Monohull or multihull, yachts motoring or sailing, weather and sea state, time of day, even the colour of antifoul have all been examined with no meaningful conclusions drawn.
\nThe Iberian orcas are not the only cetaceans believed to have deliberately struck yachts. Dr Michael Poole, a marine mammal specialist based in French Polynesia, gathered reports of whales behaving curiously in the 1980-90s in the Pacific. Photo: Megan Whittaker\/Alamy
\nThe only two consistent factors are that orcas mostly make contact with vessels with rudders, particularly spade rudders (ie sailing yachts not powerboats, though some small fishing vessels are reported to have been hit). And, Burbank says, there have been no reported interactions in water less than 20m deep.
\nThe orcas\u2019 typical seasonal migration pattern is also well documented. Typically the pods follow Bluefin tuna as they spawn from the Mediterranean in summer out of the Gibraltar Straits, up the Portuguese Atlantic coast, and into the Bay of Biscay. There are some exceptions: in 2023 the tuna were later than usual to leave the Med, which meant the orcas were hunting unusually far east, with reports of boats damaged as far as Malaga. It was also a year that saw higher numbers of incidents with yachts.
\nSkippers planning ahead can view CA data which lists the total number of encounters over eight areas from Marbella to Biscay, month by month since 2020, and identify whether the time of year and route they are intending to transit is statistically likely to be high or low risk. For short-term planning the GTOA has a traffic light warning system based on live and recent reports to illustrate the immediate perceived risk level.
\nPhoto: Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atl\u00e1ntica
\nOther precautions
\nIf planning to stick to the 20m contour line to reduce the risk of encountering orcas, there is a lot of fishing gear, pots etc in the area. It\u2019s advised to transit the busiest areas in daylight to reduce the risk of entanglement, and consider buddying with another boat in case of any issues. It also goes without saying, to allow enough time to avoid inclement conditions \u2013 tragically four sailors died when their yacht was rolled and beached while sailing close inshore in severe weather near Peniche, Portugal, in 2023 (it\u2019s not known if they were attempting to avoid orca).
\nIf your yacht is approached by orca, Burbank advises there are only two legal deterrents: throwing sand into the water (it\u2019s believed this can confuse the orcas which use echo location to find rudders), and making loud noises \u2013 playing the yacht\u2019s stereo full blast, blaring foghorns, hitting a metal pipe and so on. Deploying any type of firecracker or flare is not allowed, or anything that could hurt an orca as they are a protected species.
\nWhile most \u2018pingers\u2019 are forbidden, a new \u2018acoustic startle device\u2019 is being developed in conjunction with GenusWave which is designed to mirror the orca\u2019s own communication and uses a reportedly species-specific frequency. The device was originally due to be trialled in September 2024 off Cascais, but the orca pod wasn\u2019t spotted in the area. Trials are scheduled again this summer.<\/p>\n
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The post New approach to reduce the chance of whale strikes in yachts appeared first on Yachting World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How likely \u2013 really \u2013 is your yacht to collide with a whale? We report on a new approach to reduce the chance of whale strikes, plus what sailors can do\u201cWhen a 45-tonnes Sperm Whale is on starboard tack, it … <\/p>\n