the orcas are fed up

welcome to yacht hunting season

We are now in the middle of spring and barreling toward summer. This means a few things are starting to happen. Flowers are blooming. Baseball season is in full swing. People are leaving the house to do various outdoor activities after about six months of watching Netflix inside with sweatpants on. Some people, at least. And some of those people have boats. 

Which poses a problem, for them, especially if they live near and/or are sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar, the sliver of water that separates the southernmost part of Spain from the northernmost point of Morocco, where the Atlantic Ocean starts to trickle into the Mediterranean Sea. And the reason it poses a problem for them is because the orcas who also live in that area are just outrageously fed up.

From an article in The Guardian last week:

An unknown number of orcas have sunk a yacht after ramming it in Moroccan waters in the strait of Gibraltar, Spain’s maritime rescue service has said, in the latest in a series of similar incidents involving the animals.

Two things are worth noting here:

• Yes, we will get to the “series of similar incidents” part of this, don’t you worry about that

• It is actually kind of okay to find this a little funny because everyone was fine and the only casualty was the yacht

Here, look. 

The passengers reported feeling sudden blows to the hull and rudder before the boat started taking on water. After alerting the rescue services, a nearby oil tanker took them onboard and transported them to Gibraltar. The yacht was left adrift and eventually sank.

Right, so on the one hand this must have been a terrifying experience in the moment and not something I suspect I would have enjoyed at all. But on the other hand, these people will be dining out on this “a pod of orcas sunk our yacht” story at various Mallorcan dinner parties for the rest of their damn lives. 

“One time I saw a bear in my yard and it was terrifying.”

“Oh you think THAT’S terrifying? Listen to this…”

Nice to have that in your pocket. Maybe not as nice as having a yacht. Decent consolation prize. 

But anyway, yes, this is not the first time an orca has sunk a boat in the Strait of Gibraltar. It is not even the fourth or fifth. It has been happening a lot, actually, for a few years now. The New York Times first wrote about it all back in 2020. We are now going on four full years of orcas waging war on humanity via yacht bonking. It’s fascinating. 

Over the past two months, orcas have damaged about a dozen pleasure boats off the Iberian Peninsula from the Strait of Gibraltar to the coast of Galicia, the most northerly point in Spain, baffling marine biologists and sailors.

Although there have been no reports of injuries — at least for humans — scientists and the Spanish authorities have struggled to interpret the interactions.

This is where it gets good, though. Scientists straight up do not know exactly why this started happening out of nowhere in the summer of 2020. Or why it has continued apace ever since. 

“Some people are saying they are being playful, and they might be, but they’re playing rough,” said Pete Green, the director of a yacht company who had a boat towed to the Galician port of A Coruña after an orca damaged the rudder this month.

Orcas just bored in the ocean and destroying boats for kicks. This is actually kind of relatable. To me, at least, a man who spent half of high school flinging pencils into the ceiling tiles while various teachers attempted to explain math equations. Maybe the orcas have ADHD, too. Something to consider. 

And while we consider it… here’s another article about orcas attacking yachts. 

A British sailor had the rudders of his yacht ripped off by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar, the latest of several killer-whale incidents in the area in recent weeks.

Here’s where it gets wilder, though.

"There was a very large whale pushing along the back of the boat, trying to bite the rudder," he told BBC Radio 4, adding that the big orca, along with four smaller killer whales, repeatedly bumped against the yacht.

So if we read between the lines a little bit here, this is what we’re looking at:

• Bored orcas wrecking yachts for fun

• Possibly teaching their children or younger siblings how to do it, too

Which is pretty funny, like one of those scary news stories about dangerous new fads teens are into. (“TONIGHT AT 11: IT’S CALLED YACHT BONKING AND YOUR KIDS MIGHT BE DOING IT.”) But still not as funny as “ORGANIZED ORCA REVENGE OPERATION.” And it brings me great pleasure to inform you that this is now on the table thanks to a biologist named Alfredo. 

Dr. Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist who authored a paper published last year on the phenomenon, believes the incidents originated with a female orca known to scientists as White Gladis. The theory goes that White Gladis had a traumatic encounter involving a boat and started to behave defensively against other boats, and her fellow orcas picked up the behavior.

[tune of “Black Betty”]

WHOA-OH

WHITE GLADIS

BAM A LAM 

YEAH-AH

WHITE GLADIS

BAM A LAM

Orca researcher Dr. Conor Ryan told The Guardian that it’s plausible that “highly mobile” orca pods are spreading the behavior northward.

“It’s possible that this ‘fad’ is leapfrogging through the various pods/communities,” he said.

Okay, our two theories so far:

• Orcas are bored and wrecking boats for fun

• Orcas are out for blood and their leader, White Gladis, is indoctrinating their youth with class warfare and siege tactics

Honestly, either one works for me. It does not work so much for the sailors of the world, however, who are frantically looking for ways to navigate this important waterway without getting attacked by sea-based predators who may or may not be trying to avenge their leader. Which brings us to, well, this…

Like many venturing around the Iberian Peninsula, Mr. Rutsch had browsed Facebook groups, Telegram chats and other online platforms where sailors have been swapping tips on a relatively recent phenomenon: How do you get orcas to leave your boat alone?

Okay, think about the dumbest idea you can imagine a Facebook group coming up with to deter orca attacks. Give yourself a few minutes. 

…

…

Did you come up with “blast heavy metal music into the ocean to try to scare them away?”

Of course you didn’t. But someone sure did. 

This time, to deter them, the crew also tried another idea that had been passed along: booming a curated playlist of heavy metal — titled “Metal for Orcas” — through an underwater speaker.

Bullet points again:

• Incredible

• Just a massive round of applause for the deeply pure dude logic on display here

• Yes, of course they made a “Metal for Orcas” Spotify playlist, which I recommend you blast at your next barbecue, if only as a conversation starter when someone asks about the music you’re playing 

All of which raises an important question: Did the heavy metal music work to prevent the orca attacks? 

No. 

Of course not. 

I literally opened this whole newsletter with a story about another attack last week. 

In fact, it all kind of backfired. 

Andrew Trites, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, told Business Insider that using brash and blaring tunes to avoid orcas could help the whale find the boats.

"Initially, the playing of loud sounds underwater might mask the signature sounds of sailboats — but ultimately the whales would catch on and use it to more easily locate vessels playing it," Trites said.

To recap: Orcas have been destroying yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar for almost half a decade and the best plan humanity has come up with is “idk blast rock music at them,” which did nothing but create an underwater orca mosh pit that puts the boats in even more danger. 

Three notes in conclusion:

• You would be hard-pressed to find a story out there that brings me more joy than this one

• I will continue to monitor the situation forever

• If you or someone you know is making a docuseries about all of this, I am available to appear as one of the talking heads

Thank you.

 

The Thing About Megalopolis

This is the trailer for Megalopolis, the big huge sweeping movie that Francis Ford Coppola has been working on for 200 years (ballpark figure) and financed with $120 million of his own wine money (somehow accurate figure). The movie premiered at Cannes this week. I did not see it because Cannes is very far away and I do not even want to drive to New Jersey if I can avoid it. The reviews are all over the place. The only thing people seem to agree on is that he’s taking a massive swing at something. That’s the part I want to talk about. 

I think this is… cool. Whether the movie is actually any good is kind of beside the point to me. Like, it would be great if it’s good, and I would like it to be because I like good movies. (“I like good movies” — Brian Grubb, culture expert.) But even if it’s not, I just think it’s cool that Francis Ford Coppola — director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now — took nine figures of a wine fortune he made as a side hustle and said “I am going to make the wildest thing you maniacs have ever seen.”

He talked about this aspect of it all in his press conference at Cannes and said some interesting things. Things like, for example, this…

“My children, without exception, have wonderful careers without a fortune. We are fine. It doesn’t matter. All of you here: The money doesn’t matter. What is important are the friends. A friend will never let you down. The money may evaporate.”

… which is admittedly a much easier thing to say when you’ve made nine figures of wine money but is still a pretty solid attitude to have. And I do think it’s funny that he was prompted to say it because there has been a non-zero amount of chatter about how this is all burning up his children’s inheritance. I assure you that you do not have to concern yourself with that. There’s something noble about giving your kids all the resources and support you can and then telling them to go figure it out. They’ll be fine. And if not, the $120 million might not have solved anything anyway.

He also said this. 

“When I die, I got to do this. I got to see my daughter (Sofia) win an Oscar, and I got to make wine and I got to make all the movies I wanted to make. And I’m going to be so busy thinking about what I got to do that when I die I won’t notice it.”

This is what I mean. I do hope the movie is good. I hope it’s big and ambitious and messy and all of it. But I just like the thing where it even exists at all. What’s the point of making a wine fortune if you can’t spend the back half of your life making weirdo art projects with Giancarlo Esposito, you know? It’s better than spending all the money on a yacht or something, both because art can be enjoyed by the rest of society and because, as of this writing, a movie has yet to be destroyed by pods of rampaging orcas.

Little something called a callback right there.

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— the tricky part of writing a weekly newsletter is that I read the big juicy interview with Kevin Costner six days ago and was like “oh, I bet I have things to say about this,” but then a lot of other things happened and I lost momentum and I got distracted and wrote about the orcas instead

— I forgot to mention this in the Megalopolis section but here’s an interview with Aubrey Plaza where I learned that her character in the movie is named Wow Platinum

— Young Sheldon ended this week and I watched exactly zero episodes of it but I still enjoyed Noel Murray’s big look back at it

— I have rarely if ever said the phrase “I am jealous of the Detroit Lions” but having the Detroiters guys around to film little videos for you is pretty awesome

@detroitlionsWe hired a couple Detroiters to help us unveil this year’s schedule. #DetroitLions #NFL #TimRobinson #SamRichardson #IThinkYouShouldLeave

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— Connor O’Malley dropped  his whole new standup special on YouTube and it is completely deranged and chaotic and I enjoyed it very much 

— I do not want to watch the docuseries about the goddamn Dallas Cowboys

— I do, however, want to watch the John Wick spinoff about Donnie Yen’s character

— I want to watch Phoebe Waller-Bridges Tomb Raider series, too

— Shogun and Mr. And Mrs. Smith are both coming back for additional seasons and, if recent history has taught us anything, it will only be a matter of time until Jon Hamm appears in one or both of them

— raccoon on the field

— tacos are now, for legal purposes, officially sandwiches

— NASA’s oldest astronaut is going back to space 

— dog-petting journalism

— scorpion smuggling 

— a collection of every lower-third graphic from Everybody’s In LA, which is a blast to click through (“David Letterman: Mister Beard Man”) and also a great excuse to post this screencap, which I would ask you to assume is implied every time you read one of these blogs

Okay, that’s it for this week, Please share and subscribe and avoid the Strait of Gibraltar.