Posts claim orcas sunk 1,000 boats for revenge. Here's what we know

In August 2025, posts on social media declared that orcas near Spain had sunk their 1,000th boat. The posts were a reference to a group of orcas near the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and Portugal are located. The whales began receiving international attention in 2020 for a series of attacks on small vessels such as sailing yachts. Those attacks continued in the years that followed.

A since-deleted Facebook post with more than 27,000 reactions claimed "scientists finally understand why" the orcas were attacking the vessels: they were allegedly seeking revenge for the death of a calf.

The post read in part:

Until recently, the motive was a mystery, but new research has traced the behavior back more than a decade to a single traumatic event. Somewhere off the coast of Morocco, a female orca calf was struck and killed by a boat. Researchers believe her family, known to scientists as the "Gladis" group, never forgot. This matriarch-led pod began targeting vessels shortly afterward, and over time the behavior spread across generations. Young orcas were observed watching, learning, and eventually joining in.

The same story of vengeful orcas successfully sinking their 1,000th boat received 5,000 likes on Threads (archived) and more than 2,000 likes on Instagram (archived).

(Facebook page StoryTime)

These posts were false. As of this writing, the orcas near Spain have sunk six boats since 2020, according to the best available records. While a theory that the whales might be acting out of revenge exists, scientists believe the most likely explanation is that they're playing.

According to the most up-to-date data kept by the Cruising Association and GT Atlantic Orca (GTOA), a conservation group for the protection of the Iberian Peninsula orca population, about 15 orcas in a total population of less than 50 have caused damage to boats, sinking six in the process. There were no records of an orca seriously injuring a human in any of these attacks.

There were about 665 interactions between orcas and vessels around the Iberian Peninsula between January 2020 and May 2025, according to a June 2025 report from the Cruising Association and GTOA. GTOA defined an interaction as whenever an orca approached, observed and/or touched a ship.

"Considering the apparent calmness of the animals in the videos reviewed, some scientists prefer to speak of interactions or negative interactions (in the event of damage to boats) rather than attacks," said a June 2023 article on Whales Online, a magazine the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals publishes.

The Cruising Association said in August 2025 that scientists were still uncertain why the orcas were "attacking" or interacting with ships in this way, but that they suspected it may be a form of play. This was consistent with the 2023 Whales Online article, which said that many scientists believed the most plausible reasoning for the orcas' behavior was that it was a learned, playful behavior. According to this hypothesis, the orcas have been interacting with boats to play and seek bodily sensations, which may explain why calves have often been seen with their mothers during boat contacts.

Whales Online wrote that there are records of orca populations following "fads," such as when a population of orcas on the U.S. West Coast started wearing dead salmon on their heads in 1987 after seeing others do it first.

The other, less popular main hypothesis that scientists considered was that the orcas were indeed acting in revenge, according to Whales Online. However, even this hypothesis differed from the story in the social media posts. The actual revenge hypothesis that scientists considered was that a ship injured the matriarch among this group of whales, who then developed a certain level of awareness of her attacker.

Snopes has previously fact-checked other claims about orcas, including one that allegedly displayed aggression fit for the "killer whale" nickname.