[imagesource:youtube]

Killer whales don’t take any shit.

They are likely all psychopaths or Scorpios, but either way, they are cruel geniuses that are concerned with their own survival, no matter what.

While a few infamous South African orcas have been spotted ripping out the livers of sharks with surgical precision and driving that population down to detrimental levels, a few were reportedly also swarming and attacking two adult grey whales off the coast of California not so long ago.

New reports have now come in about a pod of killer whales in the Strait of Gibraltar, off the coast of Morocco, pounding any boat that passes in an attempt to sink it.

Apparently, one vengeful female killer whale named White Gladis has been schooling her gang to attack yachts around the area, having already struck three boats, two of which sank.

Per The Telegraph, researchers believe that Gladis is seeking revenge after being traumatised by a collision with a boat or being trapped in illegal fishing nets. The ringleader is showing the others how to ram boats too, and they seem all too eager to follow her lead:

On May 2, six of the apex predators slammed into the hull of a Bavaria 46 yacht, which was sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar, near Tangier in Morocco.

The hour-long attack left Cambridge couple Janet Morris, 58, a business consultant, and Stephen Bidwell, 58,  a photographer, who were on board for a sailing course, in awe.

Mr Bidwell said he would never forget the experience, at one point feeling like his 22-ton boat made of steel could easily go down like a dingy upon “seeing three of them coming at once, quickly and at pace with their fins out of the water”, a sight he described as “daunting”.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw them,” said Ms Morris, 58, “We were sitting ducks.”

“A clearly larger matriarch was definitely around and was almost supervising,” Mr Bidwell told the Telegraph before conceding he could have come face to face with White Gladis herself.

“The experience left us in awe of nature and her power”.

Only after causing extensive damage worth thousands of pounds, did the whales lose interest and allow the boat to limp back to port.

The Straits is a vital travel route to reach the Mediterranean from Gibraltar and seems to be teeming with pissed-off orcas.

In November last year off the coast of Portugal’s port Viana do Castelo, a French-crewed vessel sank after orcas “cracked” its hull and it took on water.

Then, just two days after Mr Bidwell’s brush with the bully whales, a pod of three orcas attacked and sank a third sailboat, piercing its rudder off the coast of Spain. Here’s Werner Schaufelberger, the captain of that boat, describing the orcas tactics:

“The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side,” he told Yacht, a German publication.

“The two little orcas observed the bigger one’s technique and – with a slight run-up – they, too, slammed into the boat.”

The crew were rescued but the boat sank at the port entrance of Barbate after it was towed to shore.

Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and representative of the Atlantic Orca working group, said that the “traumatised orca is the one that started this behaviour of physical contact with the boat”:

This “critical moment of agony” made Gladis aggressive towards boats, and that aggressive behaviour is now being copied by other orcas, he told LiveScience.

Orcas teach each other well. In David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet II footage show orcas working together to cause waves that knock seals off icebergs and into the water.

To all the orcas in the world, I do not condone yachts either, and I also support the immediate and unconditional release of all sea mammals from captivity, especially those in your family. Just saying.

[source:telegraph]