Orca attack - Sailboat with two crew members sank after colliding with a group of orcas

At around 5pm on Thursday 23 July 2026, the sailing yacht Idem was 1.3 nautical miles off Estaca de Bares — the northernmost point of the Iberian Peninsula, in Mañón, A Coruña province, Galicia — when a pod of orcas rammed her and damaged her rudder. She began taking on water and, despite the crew's efforts, eventually sank. Both crew members were picked up unhurt by a nearby motor vessel and brought safely into the port of Cariño. It was the fourth orca interaction reported in Galician waters that day; responding authorities found a second sailboat had also had a brief rudder interaction nearby, with only minor damage, and it continued under its own power to Viveiro. A helicopter checked the area afterward for any pollution from the sunken yacht. Since 2020, a subpopulation of orcas has been ramming sailboats and targeting their rudders off the Iberian coast, mostly in the Strait of Gibraltar and off Portugal, Morocco, and Galicia — a pattern researchers still don't fully understand. Idem's loss is one of the more serious outcomes of that pattern: the rudder damage this time was severe enough, and the flooding fast enough, that the boat couldn't be saved, even though both crew got off safely.