The Orcas Who are Teaching Each Other to Put the 'Killer' in 'Killer Whales' Have Attacked Yet Another Boat

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As any writing class will tell you, all stories ever told are one of three things: Man vs. Man. Man vs. Himself. Man vs. Nature. And that last one makes for the greatest tales ever told because we understand other humans and ourselves to one extent or another. But Nature is a vast, unfathomable mystery that we have not yet begun to solve. Primordial forces are always conspiring against us, to extents we cannot comprehend. 

Take, for instance, the animal kingdom. We have no idea how much of a threat the critter world is to us. Sure, we can study their behavior. Try to measure their intelligence. Even dissect them and examine their brains. But in the end, we can't really understand them. And every once in a while, we'll find them rising up against us in ways that challenge our limited ability to make sense of it. 

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Decades ago, there was a widespread elephant uprising, with incident after incident of the big fellas growing sick of humans' crap and stomping the life out of their puny overlords. The X-Files even did an episode about it, where Mulder suggested they were communicating telepathically. Which was one of the most plausible theories Scully ever called bullshit on. 

More recently, the apes have been heard from. Machete-wielding monkeys terrorizing villages. Baboons carpet-bombing hikers with exploding rocks. And now, another of the smartest species on the planet have begun attacking the only humans they have access to, our seafaring population:

And make no mistake, these attacks are anything but random. They are coordinated. They are organized. And they are happening with more and more frequency. And the orcas just struck again:

Source - A British sailor has told how she endured a night of terror after her yacht was wrecked by killer whales which continuously rammed into the vessel for over an hour off the coast of Spain.

A video shared by April Boyes, 31, shows a group of orcas honing in on the yacht before attacking it with a heart-stopping thud, prompting one crew member to scream in terror.

The group of predators, which is said to have been 'taught' to attack vessels by a female killer whale called White Gladis, are seen surrounding the yacht off the coast of Gibraltar yesterday before repeatedly slamming into it. …

In terrifying scenes, with the predators now invisible under the cover of darkness, the attacks became more frequent. …

Ms Boyes said of the terrifying ordeal: 'What started off as a seemingly unique encounter ended with orcas breaking off our rudder from the boat, then proceeding to tear bits off the boat for an hour.

'A huge hole in the gull meant we had water ingress to other parts of the boat and the engine room and I can honestly say it was a scary experience. We are all safe, I'm feeling grateful for the coastguard.' …

The incident follows at least 20 orca attacks on small vessels in the Strait of Gibraltar this month alone. 

And this week it emerged that a female killer whale called White Gladis, thought to have been left traumatised by a collision with a boat, has taught other orcas to attack vessels around Gibraltar. 

Just out of a sense of concern for one of our fellow land-based mammals, let's pause a moment to check on April Boyes to see if she's alright:

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Very well then. She appears to be in one piece. Shipshape, as it were. That's a relief.

Getting back to these leviathans, we underestimate the threat they pose at our peril. We've got a rapidly growing fleet of highly intelligent, perfectly evolved murder submarines operating off the coast of Europe. Every time you step onto a boat, you're conceding home ocean advantage to them. And it's only a matter of time before these attacks spread to our shores. 

White Gladis is to these orcas what Caesar was in the Planet of the Apes films. Except whales don't have to learn how to talk like he did; they already do. Right under our noses. With a language we don't understand. And with the ability to communicate over vast expanses of ocean. Maybe White Gladis saw the BlackFish documentary like the rest of us did and wants vengeance. (I wouldn't blame her; that was brutal.) But whatever her beef, she has basically declared war, and we'd better start preparing ourselves for the battle that is already upon us. 

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So gird your loins. Keep the harpoons at the ready, because it's about to get all Moby Dick up in this piece. Very soon it's going to be us or the killer whales. Greenpeace won't like it. But if we don't stop this now, we'll be the endangered species.