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A BRIT has revealed how he survived a horror orca attack after five of the dangerous beasts spent two hours ramming his £100,000 yacht.
Robert Powell, 59, was targeted by a pod of killer whales in the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday when they started to circle his doomed 39ft boat “like wolves” before smashing it up.
Solarpix
Solarpix
The ship was left so badly damaged in the attack that it soon began filling with water before tragically sinkingSolarpix
The Brit and two crew members were on board the Bonhomme William between Vilamoura, in Portugal, and Greece when the animals left them on a sinking ship.
The orcas are said to have disabled the yacht‘s steering, tipping the boat over, with water gushing on board.
Spanish coastguards rushed to the scene between the southern towns of Tarifa and Barbate in a dramatic rescue operation.
London-based managing director Robert showed his yacht sinking into the sea in agonising social media posts.
The Bonhomme William now tragically sits 130ft below the Mediterranean Sea.
After safely making it back to dry land by alerting the authorities, Robert spoke on just how terrifying the whole ordeal was.
He said the whole crew felt like “sitting ducks” as they watched the sea beasts wreck havoc as they sat waiting to be rescued for hours..
Describing the harrowing attack Robert said: “Once the rudder was disabled, all five orcas circled the boat. And one by one they kept coming in and ramming in various different places.
“They’d ram the keel, ram the stern. The boat, with no rudder, just goes around in circles. They were circling. It was like watching wolves hunt.
“They were taking it in turns to come in – sometimes two would come in at the same time and hit it. So obviously pretty terrifying.
The yacht captain says he was left shocked by the pure violence of the attack as he rubbished any claims suggesting the orcas were playing around.
He continued: “To me they were not playing at all, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat and they knew how to sink it.
“Their sole intention was to sink the boat, and that was it.”
The attack could have come from a notorious pod of whales led by an orca dubbed ‘White Gladis’ – which is thought to have been attacking seafarers for at least three years.
Orca attacks on boats travelling through the Strait of Gibraltar – also known as Orca Alley – were first reported in 2020.
Orca attacks on sailing ships in the Mediterranean have increased recently – with another boat being sunk in May in the Straights of Gibraltar after getting rammed.
Robert believes the pod that attacked him could be the same that has been terrorising the seas for years as he feels the creatures planned the attack like experts.
My initial reaction was that I’d hit a rock or fishing net – or I’d hit something submerged – and it shuddered the whole boat. It was a big hit.
Robert PowellWhen the yacht was first struck by one of the orcas, Robert was left in disbelief as the boat “shuddered”.
He said: “All of a sudden I felt something really hard hit the bottom of the boat.
“My initial reaction was that I’d hit a rock or fishing net – or I’d hit something submerged – and it shuddered the whole boat. It was a big hit.
“Whilst I was looking around the boat to see if I could see anything – I was doing about five to six knots – it got hit again.
“On the second hit, I looked over the back of the boat and I could see the dark shape of a killer whale in the water. That killer whale was accompanied by two others.
“At this stage, these three were fairly young, fairly smallish juveniles, and they were hitting the rudder really violently and hard.”
Robert said the pod of three whales managed to disable the rudder, which controls the boat’s steering, after around 15 to 20 hits.
“Probably about an hour and a half into the attack, I heard the hull split. They hit the middle of the boat and I heard something crack,” he continued on about his nightmare.
“I went down below decks and they’d split the hull – and there was water coming in the main living area of the boat right in the centre.”
His miraculous survival came from the Brit already planning on how to survive orcas.
Despite him losing his yacht, Robert says he tried his best to scare them off by throwing fire crackers in the water and turning off the ship’s engine.
RECENT ATTACKS
A killer whale gang furiously attacked and sunk a boat near a Moroccan port last year in November.
The Polish company that was operating the boat said all attempts to rescue the yacht failed before it sunk.
The operator said the crew were “safe, unharmed, and sound” following the bizarre incident.
They said in a statement: “Despite attempts to bring the yacht to the port by the captain, crew and rescuers from the SAR (Search and Rescue), port tugs and the Moroccan Navy, the unit sunk near the entrance to the port of Tanger Med.”
Another incident took place in August when a boat full of panicked tourists was attacked by a pod of killer whales.
Footage showed the horrified holidaymakers surrounded by several orcas just off the coast of Sesimbra, Portugal.
Last year, Brit couple Janet Morris, 58, and Stephen Bidwell, 58, from Cambridge, were involved in a whale attack that lasted for an hour.
On May 2, around six orcas reportedly rammed the hull of the Bavaria 46 cruiser yacht they were travelling on, on the Strait of Gibraltar.
Janet and Stephen were stunned when they were alerted with the cry of “orcas!”
Stephen told The Telegraph: “It was an experience I will never forget.
“I kept reminding myself we had a 22-ton boat made of steel, but seeing three of them coming at once, quickly and at pace with their fins out of the water was daunting.”
Janet added: “We were sitting ducks.”
“A clearly larger matriarch was definitely around and was almost supervising,” Stephen added, furthering speculation that it was White Gladis.
The captain of the boat, Greg Blackburn, from Leeds, dropped the mainsail to make the vessel feel “as boring as possible”.
The group of whales and their gang leader eventually lost interest – after causing thousands of pounds worth of damage.
Why are orcas attacking boats?
WHILE researchers are unsure exactly why killer whales have been attacking boats in the strait, many theories have been put forward.
Some experts suggest it could be a playful manifestation of the animals’ curiosity.
But others fear a “critical moment of agony” such as a collision may have sparked aggression towards boats.
Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, told LiveScience: “That traumatized orca is the one that started this behaviour of physical contact with the boat.”
Some even speculate White Gladis may now be spurring fellow killer whales on.
Orcas are the largest members of the oceanic dolphin family.
Although they never attack humans, the apex predators can take down large groups of whales, hence the name killer.
What makes them a unique marine mammal is that they often hunt in lethal pods and family groups of up to 40 individuals – and feast on fish, dolphins, seal lions, seals, sharks and stingrays.
The carnivores can grow up to 32feet long and weigh up to six tons – and are immediately recognizable by their distinctive black-and-white colouring.
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