yacht sinks portugal

Orcas sank three boats off the coast of Portugal, but don't call them 'killer' just yet

Three recent incidents of orcas seemingly attacking and sinking boats off the southwestern tip of Europe are drawing intense scrutiny over whether the animals deliberately swarmed the vessels and if they are learning the aggressive behavior from one another.

Encounters between orcas, or killer whales, and boats have been increasing since 2020, though no human injuries or deaths have been reported. In most cases, the whales have not sunk the boats.

The string of incidents since 2020 prompted one scientist in Portugal to say the attacks may indicate that the whales are intending to cause damage to sailing vessels. Others, however, are more skeptical, saying that while the behavior may be coordinated, it’s not necessarily coordinated aggression.

“I think it gets taken as aggression because it’s causing damage, but I don’t think we can say that the motivation is aggressive necessarily,” said Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington state.

At least 15 interactions between orcas and boats off the Iberian coast were reported in 2020, according to a study published last June in the journal Marine Mammal Science .

In November 2020, Portugal’s National Maritime Authority issued a statement alerting sailors about “curious behavior” among juvenile killer whales. The statement said the whales may be attracted to rudders and propellers and may try to approach boats.

The subsequent sinkings have caused more alarm.

The most recent encounter occurred on May 4 off the coast of Spain. Three orcas struck the rudder and side of a sailing yacht, causing it to eventually sink, as was reported earlier this month in a German publication called Yacht .

One theory put forward by Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, suggested that the aggression started from a female orca that was perhaps struck by a boat — a traumatic experience that caused her to start ramming sailing vessels. López Fernandez, who co-authored the June 2022 study published in Marine Mammal Science, told Live Science that other orcas may have then picked up that behavior through social learning, which whales have been known to exhibit.

But Shields said orcas have not historically been known to be aggressive toward humans, even when they were being hunted and placed in captivity.

“They’ve certainly had reason to engage in that kind of behavior,” she said. “There are places where they are shot at by fishermen, they’ve watched family members be taken from their groups into captivity in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And if something was going to motivate direct aggression, I would think something like that would have done it.”

Shields added that there are no clear instances of killer whales exhibiting what could be thought of as revenge behavior against humans.

She said the recent attacks on boats are likely more consistent with what’s known as “fad” behavior, which describes novel but temporary conduct from one whale that can be mimicked by others.

“It’s kind of a new behavior or game that one whale seems to come up with, and it seems to spread throughout the population — sometimes for a matter of weeks or months, or in some cases years — but then in a lot of cases it just goes away,” she said.

In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, Shields and her colleagues have observed fad behavior among Southern Resident killer whales who started carrying dead salmon around on their heads for a time before the behavior suddenly stopped.

Shields said the behavior of orcas off the Iberian coast may also be temporary.

“This feels like the same type of thing, where one whale played with a rudder and said: ‘Hey, this is a fun game. Do you want to try it?’ And it’s the current fad for that population of orcas,” she said.

While Shields did not dismiss the trauma response theory out of hand, she said it would be difficult to confirm without more direct evidence.

“We know their brains are wired to have really complex emotions, and so I think they could be capable of something like anger or revenge,” she said. “But again, it’s just not something that we’ve seen any examples of, and we’ve given them plenty of opportunities throughout the world to want to take revenge on us for various things. And they just choose not to.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

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Killer whales are 'attacking' sailboats near Europe's coast. Scientists don't know why

Scott Neuman

An orca pod seen in the Strait of Gibraltar in 2021. Renaud de Stephanis/CIRCE Conservación Information and Research hide caption

An orca pod seen in the Strait of Gibraltar in 2021.

Ester Kristine Storkson was asleep on her father's small yacht earlier this month, sailing off the coast of France, when she was violently awakened.

Scrambling on deck, she spotted several orcas, or killer whales, surrounding them. The steering wheel swung wildly. At one point, the 37-foot sailboat was pushed through 180 degrees, heading it in the opposite direction.

They were "ramming the boat," Storkson says. "They [hit] us repeatedly ... giving us the impression that it was a coordinated attack."

"I told my dad, 'I'm not thinking clearly, so you need to think for me,'" the 27-year-old Norwegian medical student says. "Thankfully, he is a very calm and centered person, and made me feel safe by gently talking about the situation."

After about 15 minutes, the orcas broke off, leaving father and daughter to assess the damage. They stuck a GoPro camera in the water, she says, and could see that "approximately three-quarters of [the rudder] was broken off, and some metal was bent."

A screen grab from a video of the encounter between a pod of orcas and the Storkson boat. Ester Kristine Storkson/ hide caption

A screen grab from a video of the encounter between a pod of orcas and the Storkson boat.

For any vessel, losing steering at sea is a serious matter and can be dangerous in adverse conditions and some sailboats have had to be towed into port after orcas destroyed their rudders. Fortunately, the Storksons had enough of their rudder left to limp into Brest, on the French coast, for repairs. But the incident temporarily derailed their plan to reach Madeira, off northwest Africa, part of an ambitious plan to sail around the world.

There is no record of an orca killing a human in the wild. Still, two boats were reportedly sunk by orcas off the coast of Portugal last month, in the worst such encounter since authorities have tracked them.

The incident involving the Storksons is an outlier, says Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research, a cetacean research group based in Spain. It was farther north -- nowhere near the Strait of Gibraltar, nor the coast of Portugal or Spain, where other such reports have originated.

That is a conundrum. Up to now, scientists have assumed that only a few animals are involved in these encounters and that they are all from the same pod, de Stephanis says.

"I really don't understand what happened there," he acknowledges. "It's too far away. I mean, I don't think that [the orcas] would go up there for a couple of days and then come back."

These encounters — most scientists shun the word "attack" — have been getting the attention of sailors and scientists alike in the past two years, as their frequency seems to be increasing. Sailing magazines and websites have written about the phenomenon, noting that orcas seem to be especially attracted to a boat's rudder. A Facebook group , with more than 13,000 members, has sprung up to trade personal reports of boat-orca encounters and speculation on avoidance tactics. And, of course, there are no shortage of dramatic videos posted to YouTube.

Scientists don't know the reason, but they have some ideas

Scientists hypothesize that orcas like the water pressure produced by a boat's propeller. "What we think is that they're asking to have the propeller in the face," de Stephanis says. So, when they encounter a sailboat that isn't running its engine, "they get kind of frustrated and that's why they break the rudder."

Even so, that doesn't entirely explain an experience Martin Evans had last June when he was helping to deliver a sailboat from Ramsgate, England, to Greece.

About 25 miles off the coast of Spain, "just shy of entering the Strait of Gibraltar," Evans and his crew mates were under sail, but they were also running the boat's engine with the propeller being used to boost their speed.

As Evans was on watch, the steering wheel began moving so violently that he couldn't hold on, he says.

"I was like, 'Jesus, what's this?'" he recalls. "It was like a bus was moving it. ... I look to the side, and all of a sudden I could just see that familiar white and black of the killer whale."

Evans noticed "chunks of the rudder on the surface."

Jared Towers, the director of Bay Cetology, a research organization in British Columbia, says "there's something about moving parts ... that seem to stimulate them."

"Perhaps that's why they're focused on the rudders," he says.

The population of orcas along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts is small and de Stephanis believes that the damage to boats is being done by just a few juvenile males.

If so, they may simply outgrow the behavior, de Stephanis says. As the young males get older, they will need to help the pod hunt for food and will have less time for playing with sailboats.

"This is a game," he speculates. "When they ... have their own adult life, it will probably stop."

An orca calf, photographed in the Strait of Gibraltar, in 2021. Renaud de Stephanis/CIRCE Conservación Information and Research hide caption

An orca calf, photographed in the Strait of Gibraltar, in 2021.

Towers says such "games" tend to go in and out of fashion in orca society. For example, right now in a population he studies in the Pacific, "we have juvenile males who ... often interact with prawn and crab traps," he says. "That's just been a fad for a few years."

Back in the 1990s, for some orcas in the Pacific, something else was in vogue. "They'd kill fish and just swim around with this fish on their head," Towers says. "We just don't see that anymore."

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Three killed as yacht capsizes off Portugal

This photograph taken on November 3, 2023, shows waves crashing on rocks in front of the casino as Storm Ciaran hits the region, in Biarritz, southwestern France . – At least 12 people were killed as Storm Ciaran battered Western Europe with record winds of up to 200 kilometres per hour, causing travel mayhem with closed ports and flight and rail disruptions. The French weather service said storms would continue into November 3, notably in the southwest of the country and on the island of Corsica. (Photo by GAIZKA IROZ / AFP)

Three people died when a sailing boat capsized on Friday and ran aground on a beach in central Portugal, where the coast has seen heavy swells caused by Storm Ciaran, naval authorities said.

The Danish-flagged pleasure boat capsized around a kilometre off one of the beaches at Santa Cruz, in the municipality of Torres Vedras, around 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Lisbon, the National Maritime Authority (AMN) said in a statement.

The victims, two men and a woman whose ages and nationalities were not immediately known, were found dead on the shore near the wreckage of the boat and were not wearing life jackets, Portuguese Navy spokesman Jose Sousa Luis told AFP.

The yacht had left the port of Peniche, around 30 kilometres north of Santa Cruz, on Friday morning with three people on board, he added.

Portugal was not directly affected by Storm Ciaran, which has claimed a dozen lives elsewhere in Europe.

But the National Meteorological Institute (IPMA) has placed the country’s central and northern coastal regions on red alert due to the very rough seas, with waves that can exceed seven metres (23 feet) in height.

A new storm, named Domingos by the Spanish meteorological agency, was due to pass off Portugal on Saturday and Sunday, with waves that could reach up to nine metres high, according to the IPMA.

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‘I thought I was going to die’: Holidaymakers share terrifying experience as tourist boat sinks in the Algarve

The vessel was returning from a tourist trip to the famous benagil sea cave, article bookmarked.

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A tourist boat off the coast of the Algarve capsized on Monday (20 February), leaving passengers in fear for their lives.

The vessel was sailing about 600 metres off the Portuguese coast, south of Alfanzina lighthouse, in the municipality of Lagoa, when it began taking on water.

Passengers onboard included British nationals and comprised 36 adults and four children.

Dramatic pictures show the boat, which was returning from a trip to the famous Benagil sea cave, upturned and mostly underwater.

An alert was received at around 1.25pm with members of the Portimao Maritime Police and Ferragudo Lifeguard Station immediately despatched to the scene.

Upon arrival, they found all the passengers wearing life jackets in the boat.

All passengers were rescued with the aid of a nearby tourist boat and the Ferragudo Lifeguard Station boat.

Troy French from London, who was onboard the vessel, described the incident as “a really bad experience and very scary”.

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Speaking to the Daily Mail , he said: “I was on the phone to some of my colleagues back in England and then I looked behind me and there was lots of water coming into the boat.

“The crew started to panic and they started lifting some emergency things up and the water started going into the engine and it was smoking.

“They got everyone to move to the front of the boat and then the back of the boat was sinking, sinking, sinking to the point where everyone just started jumping into the water.”

He added: “A lot of peoples' life jackets were failing and weren't activating when people were going into the water.

“I'm a confident swimmer but I was swallowing water and I was panicking for people whose life jackets weren't working properly. I'm just so glad that everyone made it out to safety.”

Mr French’s friend, Lila Evangelista, also from London, was onboard and is unable to swim.

She said: “I thought I was going to die.

“The water wasn't really high to start with and I was calm but then it started rising very quickly and I began to panic.”

In a statement , authorities confirmed that passengers were then taken to Portimao Marina, where paramedics, Portimao volunteer firefighters, Lagoa volunteer firefighters, Civil Protection officers and the Portuguese Red Cross were waiting.

“Some were showing signs of hypothermia and they were evaluated then assisted by the medical teams at the scene, although they didn't require special medical assistance,” it read.

The Portimão Maritime Police have opened an investigation to find out what happened.

At present, it is not known what caused the accident.

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Three killed as yacht capsizes off Portugal

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Three people died when a sailing boat capsized on Friday and ran aground on a beach in central Portugal, where the coast has seen heavy swells caused by Storm Ciaran, naval authorities said.

The Danish-flagged pleasure boat capsized around a kilometre off one of the beaches at Santa Cruz, in the municipality of Torres Vedras, around 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Lisbon, the National Maritime Authority (AMN) said in a statement.

The victims, two men and a woman whose ages and nationalities were not immediately known, were found dead on the shore near the wreckage of the boat and were not wearing life jackets, Portuguese Navy spokesman Jose Sousa Luis told AFP.

The yacht had left the port of Peniche, around 30 kilometres north of Santa Cruz, on Friday morning with three people on board, he added.

Portugal was not directly affected by Storm Ciaran, which has claimed a dozen lives elsewhere in Europe.

But the National Meteorological Institute (IPMA) has placed the country's central and northern coastal regions on red alert due to the very rough seas, with waves that can exceed seven metres (23 feet) in height.

A new storm, named Domingos by the Spanish meteorological agency, was due to pass off Portugal on Saturday and Sunday, with waves that could reach up to nine metres high, according to the IPMA.

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Sailboat sinks in Portugal, killing 4

Saturday, 04 Nov 2023

LISBON, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Four people died in the sinking of a sailboat off the coast of Portugal on Friday, the Portuguese National Maritime Authority (AMN) reported.

The accident occurred at Formosa Beach, 60 km north of Lisbon. Commander Jose Sousa Luis, spokesperson for the AMN, confirmed that it was a Danish-flagged sailboat and victims are still being identified.

According to him, three bodies, two men and one woman, were washed ashore without life jackets and with cardiac arrest. Resuscitation maneuvers were performed without success.

"When the sailboat was being removed, because the sailboat ran aground and was being removed to serve as evidence for the maritime accident inquiry, another body was discovered inside the sailboat. It is the body of a woman," Luis told Lusa news agency.

Lisbon was under a red alert for sea agitation caused by Storm Ciaran, with waves forecasted to reach seven to eight meters in significant height, and the potential to reach a maximum height of 14/15 meters.

According to the Portuguese National Meteorological Agency (IPMA), a new storm named Domingos is expected to cross Portugal on Saturday and Sunday, with waves reaching up to nine meters.

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Orcas sank a third boat. Scientists think these 'brutal' attacks may be trauma-driven.

• Orcas keep attacking sailboats off the coasts of Spain and Morocco.
• Earlier this month two attacks were reported where one ended up sinking the boat.
• Scientists can't explain the attacks but one leading theory points to a single, traumatized orca.

Orcas are targeting sailboats near the Iberian Peninsula, and nobody knows why.

Most of the attacks involve multiple orcas ramming the boat but it remains afloat. In several cases, however, the animals have managed to sink entire boats.

The third case of orcas sinking a boat happened earlier this month off the Iberian coast, LiveScience reported .

"The attacks were brutal"

Skipper Werner Schaufelberger was sailing at night off the coast of Spain when three orcas started to attack his boat.

"At first I thought we had hit something. But then I quickly realized that it was orcas attacking the ship," Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht .

"The attacks were brutal. There were two smaller and one larger orca. The two little ones shook the rudder while the big one kept running and then rammed the ship from the side with full force," he added.

The Spanish coast guard rescued Schaufelberger and the rest of the crew and towed the boat to port, where it sank right before reaching port.

Related stories

It's important to note that the vast majority of interactions with orcas don't end with a sunk boat. These attacks near the Iberian Peninsula may be due to a single, traumatized orca that has taught this behavior to other, fellow orcas, LiveScience reported.

"The orcas are doing this on purpose, of course, we don't know the origin or the motivation, but defensive behavior based on trauma, as the origin of all this, gains more strength for us every day," biologist Alfredo López Fernandez at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and representative of the Atlantic Orca Working Group, told LiveScience. 

Other orca attacks

Schaufenlberger wasn't the only victim this month. On May 2, Greg Blackburn thought his boat was hitting rough waves when the thumps began as he sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar near Tangier, Morocco, according to 9News .

But as the jolts continued, and the rudder seemed to resist his steering, Blackburn looked down and saw two orcas repeatedly ramming his boat, and soon two more joined in.

"There's not a lot you can do at that point," Blackburn, a sailor from the UK, told 9News. "After reading reports and knowing what has been going on, just thought we were in for a ride now."

Another pair of notable orca attacks occurred last July, when a pod of orcas struck a sailboat off the coast of Portugal and, just hours later, targeted another vessel in the same area, according to reports.

Orca attacks are becoming more common

A collaboration of researchers has recorded more than 200 reports of "interactions," where orcas approach or touch a vessel, along Portugal and Spain's Iberian Peninsula since 2020.

Insider previously reported in 2020 about a series of aggressive actions by orcas along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. At the time, scientists had different theories: The killer whales could be acting out of curiosity, mischief, territoriality, or trauma.

López Fernandez suspects that one, traumatized female orca may be to blame. Her name is White Gladis and, according to LiveScience, she may have experienced a collision with a boat or entrapment during illegal fishing. The incident changed something in Gladis.

"That traumatized orca is the one that started this behavior of physical contact with the boat," López Fernandez told LiveScience.

Whatever the reason for the growing number of attacks — whether it's Gladis or something else — if you encounter an orca in the wild there are some guidelines for what to do:

• Keep a low profile on deck. Don't excite the orcas.
• Contact authorities on VHF 16, or by phone on 112

If the orcas ram your boat, secure yourself to something because the last thing you should ever do is enter the water when orcas are nearby.

Correction: May 9, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the nature of the 200 orca incidents reported since 2020, as well as the origin of that statistic. Those reports were of interactions between orcas and boats, not necessarily attacks. And that number comes from a collaboration of scientists collecting reports, not from local media outlets.

This post has been updated with new information. It was originally published on August 13, 2022.

Watch: Orcas are under threat from man-made noise pollution. These scientists are fighting to protect them.

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Tourist boat sinks in the Algarve

A vessel, with 36 people on board, including four children, sank this afternoon following water leaking on board. The boat was sailing about 600 metres off the coast, south of Alfanzina lighthouse, in the municipality of Lagoa

By TPN, in News , Algarve · 20 Feb 2023, 16:57 · 4 Comments

Following an alert received at 1h25 pm, through the Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Centre of Lisbon, with about 40 people on board, had a water leaking on board and was at risk of sinking, elements of the Local Command of the Maritime Police of Portimão and the Ferragudo Lifeboat Station were immediately deployed to the scene. Several tourist boats also diverged to the site.

According to the Maritime Police website , on arrival at the scene they found the victims in the water, with life jackets on, having been promptly rescued with the support of a tourist boat that was nearby and the boat of the Ferragudo Lifeboat Station. The victims, a total of 36 people, including four children, were then transported to the marina of Portimão, where were waiting for workers of the INEM , the Voluntary Fire Department of Portimão , the Voluntary Bombeiros of Lagoa , the Civil Protection and the Portuguese Red Cross .

The victims, who showed some signs of hypothermia, were then assisted and assessed by the medical teams on site, without the need for further medical assistance.

The injured vessel was later removed from the scene by a company hired by the owner.

At the scene were several elements of the Local Command of the Portimão Maritime Police, the Ferragudo Life-Saving Station, the INEM, the Portuguese Red Cross, the Regional Command of Civil Protection and the Municipal Civil Protection System of Portimão, as well as the Portimão Volunteer Fire Department and the Lagoa Volunteer Bombeiros.

As for the cause of the accident, The Portugal News contacted Portimão Maritime Police , who said they had opened a maritime accident investigation process to find out what happened. For now, there is no evidence about what caused the accident.

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We were on one of the tourist boats (Atlantis tour company) that helped rescue the people in the sea, 4 tourist boats arrived to the scene by 1.36pm and the 4 boats co-ordinated together to rescue all of the 36 people from the sea, pulling them out of the water onto each of the boats. Thankfully we had some empty spaces on the boat and carried 6 of the rescued passengers back to Portimao on our small ridged inflatable boat (rib). Thankfully everybody helped and worked together, it was touching to see how great we are when it comes to helping one another in emergencies.

By Michelle Stephenson from Alentejo on 20 Feb 2023, 20:34

There needs to exist way more auditing on these boa operators and the staff they employ.

By Diogo F. from Lisbon on 21 Feb 2023, 10:17

What does Mr Diogo know about the cause of the incident? Apparently an investigation is no longer needed? In that case I trust he will share his wisdom with the maritime authorities.

By Peter from Other on 21 Feb 2023, 12:59

Thank God, there were no seriously injured people and there was a coordinated effort by the rescue teams and tourist boats to get all the 36 people to safety.

By Lisa from Other on 21 Feb 2023, 19:13

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Three killed as yacht capsizes off Portugal

• A Danish-flagged pleasure boat capsized off the coast of Santa Cruz, Portugal, due to heavy swells caused by Storm Ciaran, resulting in the deaths of three people who were found without life jackets.
• The central and northern coastal regions of Portugal have been placed on red alert due to rough seas and waves exceeding seven meters in height. Storm Ciaran has claimed multiple lives across Europe .
• Another storm named Domingos is expected to pass off Portugal, with waves reaching up to nine meters high, adding to the already disrupted travel conditions.

Sailboat sinks in Portugal, killing 4

LISBON, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Four people died in the sinking of a sailboat off the coast of Portugal on Friday, the Portuguese National Maritime Authority (AMN) reported. Read full story

Three people died when a sailing boat capsized on Friday and ran aground on a beach in central Portugal, where the coast has seen heavy swells caused by Storm Ciaran, naval authorities said.

Three people died when a sailing boat capsized on Friday and ran aground on a beach in central Portugal, where the coast has seen heavy swells caused by Storm Ciaran, naval authorities said. The Danish-flagged pleasure boat capsized around a kilometre off one of the beaches at Santa Cruz, in the municipality of Torres Vedras, […]

LISBON - Three people died when a sailing boat capsized on Friday and ran aground on a beach in central Portugal, where the coast has seen heavy swells caused by Storm Ciaran, naval authorities said.

Sailing boat sinks off Portugal

Vor der Küste von Portugal ist am Freitag ein dänisches Segelboot untergegangen. Dabei kamen zwei Männer und zwei Frauen ums Leben. Zum Zeitpunkt des Unglücks tobte das Sturmtief „Ciaran“, das hohe Wellen und heftigen Wind verursachte. Laut den Behörden ereignete sich der Unfall einen Kilometer vom Formosa-Strand entfernt. Drei der Todesopfer wurden am Freitagnachmittag ohne Rettungsweste und mit Herzstillstand an den Strand gespült. Sofort eing…

Storm Ciaran: three dead in Portugal in the sinking of a Danish sailboat

A sailboat flying the Danish flag ran aground on a beach in central Portugal on Friday. Its three crew members were found dead. They were not wearing life jackets Three

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Cargo ship carrying thousands of luxury cars to U.S. sinks in Atlantic Ocean

Updated on: March 2, 2022 / 12:13 PM EST / CBS/AP

A large cargo vessel carrying luxury cars from Germany to the United States sank Tuesday in the mid-Atlantic, 13 days after a fire broke out on board , the ship's manager and the Portuguese navy said . The cars on board the Felicity Ace included Porsches, Lamborghinis and Bentleys, the Wall Street Journal reported .

Navio mercante "Felicity Ace" afunda fora da Zona Económica e Exclusiva Portuguesa Hoje, durante o reboque, que se tinha iniciado no dia 24 de fevereiro, o navio "Felicity Ace" perdeu estabilidade tendo vindo a afundar-se. Notícia completa em https://t.co/dxKBKcyN2o pic.twitter.com/yZygL537uk — Marinha (@MarinhaPT) March 1, 2022

Volkswagen, which said last week the damage to the vehicles was covered by insurance, confirmed the ship had sunk. Insurance experts said the incident could result in losses of $155 million, Reuters reported.

The Felicity Ace sank about 250 miles off Portugal's Azores Islands as it was being towed, MOL Ship Management in Singapore said in a statement. A salvage team had put out the fire.

The 200-meter-long vessel listed to starboard before going under, the ship's manager said.

Joao Mendes Cabecas, the captain of the nearest port on the island of Faial, told Reuters the ship sank as efforts to tow it began due to structural problems caused by the fire and rough seas.

"When the towing started ... water started to come in," he told Reuters. "The ship lost its stability and sank."

The Portuguese navy confirmed the sinking, saying it occurred outside Portuguese waters at a depth of about 30,000 feet. A Portuguese Air Force helicopter evacuated the 22 crew members when the fire first broke out, setting the ship adrift.

Ocean-going tugboats with firefighting equipment had been hosing down the ship's hull to cool it.

It wasn't clear exactly how many cars were onboard the ship, but vessels of the Felicity Ace's size can carry at least 4,000 vehicles.

European carmakers declined to discuss how many vehicles and what models were on board, but Porsche customers in the United States were being contacted by their dealers, the company said.

"We are already working to replace every car affected by this incident and the first new cars will be built soon," Angus Fitton, vice president of PR at Porsche Cars North America, Inc., told The Associated Press in an email.

The ship was transporting electric and non-electric vehicles, according to Portuguese authorities. Suspicion on what started the fire on Feb. 16 has fallen on lithium batteries used in electric vehicles, though authorities say they have no firm evidence about the cause.

Authorities feared the ship could pollute the ocean. The ship was carrying 2,000 metric tons of fuel and 2,000 metric tons of oil. It can carry more than 17,000 metric tons of cargo.

The Portuguese navy said in a statement that only a few pieces of wreckage and a small patch of oil was visible where the ship went down. The tugboats were breaking up the patch with hoses, it said.

A Portuguese Air Force plane and a Portuguese navy vessel are to remain at the scene on the lookout for signs of pollution.

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The yacht Grazie Mamma II carried its crew along the coastlines and archipelagos of the Mediterranean. Its last adventure was off the coast of Morocco last week, when it encountered a pod of orcas.

The marine animals slammed the yacht’s rudder for 45 minutes, causing major damage and a leak, according to Morskie Mile , the boat’s Polish operators. The crew escaped, and rescuers and the Moroccan Navy tried to tow the yacht to safety, but it sank near the port of Tanger Med, the operator said on its website.

The account of the sinking is adding to the worries of many sailors in the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where marine biologists are studying a puzzling phenomenon: Orcas are jostling and ramming boats in interactions that have disrupted dozens of voyages and caused at least four boats in the past two years to sink.

The largest of the dolphin family, orcas are playful apex predators that hunt sharks, whales and other prey but are generally amiable to humans in the wild . The orcas hunting in the Strait of Gibraltar are considered to be endangered , and researchers have noticed an upsurge of unusual behavior since 2020: A small group of the marine animals have been battering boats in the busy routes around Portugal, Spain and Morocco.

While most interactions occur in the waters of southwestern Europe and North Africa, an orca also reportedly rammed a yacht some 2,000 miles north off the coast of Scotland, according to The Guardian.

“Orcas are complex, intelligent, highly social,” Erich Hoyt, research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation and author of “Orca: The Whale Called Killer,” said. “We’re still at the early stages of trying to understand this behavior.”

Researchers have pushed back at the idea that orcas are attacking vessels. Instead, they theorize that the rudders of boats have become a plaything for curious young orcas and that the behavior has become a learned fad spreading through the population. Another hypothesis, according to biologists who published a study on the population last June, is that the ramming is an “adverse behavior” because of a bad experience between an orca and a boat — though researchers tend to favor the first.

It is unclear what will stop the ramming, whether it’s playful or otherwise, a point that has left anxious skippers traveling these parts sharing advice in Facebook groups dedicated to tracking such interactions .

“It’s been an interesting summer hiding in shallow waters,” said Greg Blackburn, a skipper based in Gibraltar. Orcas slammed into a boat he was commandeering in May and chewed at the rudder, he said, though the vessel was able to return to shore.

The encounter left an impression: On a recent trip to Barcelona, Mr. Blackburn had to pass through a patch where orcas had been sighted the week before. “I genuinely felt sick for about three hours,” he said, “just watching the horizon constantly for a fin to pop up.”

Conservationists, maritime rescue groups and yacht clubs are partnering to navigate the challenge of preserving an endangered population and helping sailors avoid calamity. The Cruising Association, a club supporting sailors, has recommended safety protocols for orca encounters, such as disconnecting the boat and staying quiet. Skippers have offered one another anecdotal advice to deter attacks, including throwing sand into the water and banging loudly on the boat.

Before leaving shore, seagoers can also consult digital platforms that now track reported orca sightings and interactions in the region. This can help them avoid the animals, or charter a route closer to shore, said Bruno Díaz López, a biologist and the director of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute based in Galicia, Spain.

“We suggested the boats stay in shallow waters,” he said, adding that they had noticed more boats changing their journeys. “Maybe the trip takes longer, yes. But it is worth it.”

Mr. Blackburn, the skipper, said he had heard of people resorting to throwing firecrackers into the sea to try scare the animals away, adding that the boats served as people’s homes on the ocean. “At the end of the day, if you’re protecting your home what are you going to do?”

But the ocean is the orcas’ home, and conservationists say scaring the animals is not a solution.

“It is not about winning a battle, because this is not a war,” Mr. López said. “We need to be respectful.”

The post Orcas Sink Fourth Boat Off Iberia, Unnerving Sailors appeared first on New York Times .

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Cargo Ship Felicity Ace Sinks With Porsches, Audis, and Lamborghinis On Board

The ship reportedly went down in about 10,000 feet of water, so good luck with your salvage car dreams.

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The Felicity Ace cargo ship that famously caught fire off the coast of Portugal on Feb. 16 has sunk. An update on the vessel's official information site confirmed the news Tuesday morning, explaining that it had "suffered a list to starboard." Salvage teams remain at the site as they continue to monitor the situation and look out for further incidents.

This statement, which was first reported on by Road & Track , comes roughly two weeks after the ship caught fire, torching nearly 4,000 cars inside. Most of those were built by Volkswagen Group brands like Audi, Bentley, Porsche, and Lamborghini. Salvage crews were finally able to board the Felicity Ace   on Friday, Feb. 25, and were towing the boat to safety.

According to Tuesday morning's official statement, the boat was 220 nautical miles off the Azores region of Portugal when it went down in over 10,000 feet of water. There aren't many more details about the ship's sinking as of right now, and MOL Ship Management explains more info will be released as it becomes available. The sinking was also confirmed by the Portuguese Navy.

Automakers have scrambled since the ship caught fire to learn what was salvageable and what would need to be done to replace the lost cars. It's been reported that Lamborghini could restart Aventador production as some of the final examples of the V12 supercar were on board for the incident. Likewise, would-be owners of other high-end Bentleys and Porsches had been waiting on their cars for months and even over a year in some cases as supply chain issues delayed production.

There's no precise breakdown available for each affected model, though we know that 189 Bentleys, roughly 1,110 Porsches, and "dozens" of Lamborghinis were caught up in the smoke.

It's believed that the lithium-ion batteries of electric vehicles on the ship may have prolonged the fire and made it more difficult to extinguish for recovery crews.

This is a developing story.

Burnt-out cargo ship with luxury cars sinks off Portugal's Azores

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Reporting by Catarina Demony, Additional reporting by Christoph Steitz, Editing by Andrei Khalip, Alexandra Hudson

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Bulgarian FM Gabriel says no agreement on new government

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Mariya Gabriel, of the centre-right GERB party, said on Sunday no agreement had been reached on forming a new government with the We Continue the Change (PP) party.

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Far Right’s Success Is a Measure of a Changing Portugal

Memories of dictatorship are fading. Dissatisfaction is mounting. It was a ripe moment for the Chega party to appeal to voter frustrations.

By Emma Bubola

Emma Bubola reported from Faro, Portugal, and several other towns across the Algarve, speaking to party officials, tourism workers, farmers and fishermen.

The sun-soaked Algarve region on Portugal’s Southern coast is a place where guitar-strumming backpackers gather by fragrant orange trees and digital nomads hunt for laid-back vibes. It is not exactly what comes to mind when one envisions a stronghold of far-right political sentiment.

But it is in the Algarve region where the anti-establishment Chega party finished first in national elections this month , both unsettling Portuguese politics and injecting new anxiety throughout the European establishment. Nationwide, Chega received 18 percent of the vote.

“It’s a strong signal for Europe and for the world,” said João Paulo da Silva Graça, a freshly elected Chega lawmaker, sitting at the party’s new Algarve headquarters as tourists asked for vegan custard tarts at a bakery downstairs. “Our values must prevail.”

Chega, which means “enough” in Portuguese, is the first hard-right party to gain ground in the political scene in Portugal since 1974 and the end of the nationalist dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar. Its formula for success mixed promises of greater law and order with tougher immigration measures and an appeal to economic resentments.

Chega’s breakthrough has presented Portugal as the latest version of a now familiar quandary for Europe , where the inroads of hard-right parties have made it increasingly difficult for mainstream competitors to avoid them .

The leader of Portugal’s center-right coalition, which won the election, has refused to ally with Chega, but experts say the result is likely to be an unstable minority government that may not last long.

Chega showed once again that taboos that had kept hard-right parties out of power, foremost the long shadow of a right-wing dictatorship from last century, were falling. Today the hard right has made gains in Italy, Spain and Germany, among other places.

Portugal had been considered the exception. It emerged from the Salazar dictatorship as a progressive society that supported liberal drug laws and showed little appetite for the far right. In recent years it became a booming tourist destination, flush with foreign investment , expatriates and a growing economy.

Even so, this month more than a million Portuguese cast what many saw as a protest vote for Chega.

The Socialist and the mainstream conservative Social Democratic party in recent decades have presided over a painful financial crisis and tough austerity period. But even in the country’s recent economic upturn , many have felt left out, anxious and forgotten.

Huge numbers of young Portuguese are leaving the country. Many of those who stay work for low salaries that have not kept up with inflation and left them priced out of an unaffordable housing market. Public services are under stress.

Chega campaigned promising higher salaries and better conditions for workers, who the party said had been impoverished by a greedy elite. It fought against mixed-gender bathrooms in schools and restitutions for former colonies.

A corruption investigation into the handling of clean energy projects, which brought down the Socialist government last year, handed Chega another talking point with which to attack the ruling class.

The party’s message struck a chord with many Portuguese who did not vote before and attracted young voters through powerful social media outreach. It also resonated with voters in Algarve who had voted reliably for the Socialist Party in the past.

“Here we have to work, work, work and we get nothing,” said Pedro Bonanca, a Chega voter who drives tourists on a boat to the fishing island of Culatra, off the Algarve coast.

“When I ask old people why they vote the Socialist Party, the only thing they can say is that they took us out of the dictatorship,” said Mr. Bonanca, 25. “But I don’t know about that. It was a long time ago.”

The top of his Instagram search bar featured André Ventura, the charismatic former soccer commentator who once trained as a priest before founding Chega in 2019.

In earlier campaigns, Chega used the slogan “God, Homeland, Family, Work,” similar to the Salazar dictatorship’s “God, Homeland, Family.” Before the recent election, Chega promised a mix of social policies that experts described as unrealistic, including plans to increase the minimum wage and pensions while also cutting taxes.

“Chega became a sort of catchall party of all anxieties,” said António Costa Pinto, a political scientist with the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon.

In the Algarve region, Chega appealed to underpaid waiters with unstable jobs, priced out of their hometowns or forced to emigrate. The party’s message resonated with aging fishermen who had to keep working to make a living. It spoke to farmers who said that they felt forsaken and that the government had prioritized watering golf courses despite looming drought.

“If we die, it’s because of them,” Pedro Cabrita, a farmer, said of the government. “My vote for Chega is a protest vote,” he said as he gazed anxiously at his orange grove, which he feared might dry out this summer.

In Olhão, an impoverished tourist town where Chega won nearly 30 percent of the vote, José Manuel Fernandes, a fishmonger, wondered why, despite the fact that Portugal is in the European Union, he could not aspire to the lifestyle of the German or French tourists around him.

“In the summer I see couples having a good time here, living in camper vans,” said Mr. Fernandes, who voted for Chega, as he cleaned a giant cuttlefish. “I have wanted to go on vacation abroad for 30 years,” he added, “but that moment never came.”

Economists say Portugal, which started from a lower economic point when it joined the European Union in 1986, has made progress but not the kind of productivity gains needed to catch up to its wealthier European partners. Instead it remains a relative bargain for European tourists and retirees, while many Portuguese feel increasingly plundered.

In the seaside town of Albufeira, as British bachelorette squads in blinking bunny ears cruised the streets, Tiago Capela Rito, a 30-year-old waiter, closed the cocktail bar where he worked. Despite working since he was 15, he still lives with his mother because he cannot afford his own apartment, he said.

He had never voted before, but he voted for Chega. “Ventura is telling us that we don’t have to leave the country to survive,” said Mr. Rito, who in the off season juggles construction and kitchen jobs, “that we can stay here and have a life.”

Down the road, Luís Araújo, 61, a waiter who also voted for Chega, said his son, 25, made more than triple his salary at a restaurant in Dublin.

“Our young people leave and these guys stay here,” he said of the influx of workers from Nepal and India who have arrived to fill low-paying jobs.

Though the numbers of immigrants arriving in Portugal has been smaller than in Italy or Spain, Mr. Ventura has cast a recent influx of South Asian immigrants as a threat.

“The European Union is being demographically replaced by the children of immigrants,” he said in Parliament in 2022, evoking the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. “Nobody wants that in 20 years Europe will be mostly made up by individuals from other continents.”

For some, Chega’s rise has brought back old fears, especially for members of the Roma community, one of Mr. Ventura’s early targets.

For some older Portuguese, too, the specter of the hard right’s revival has been unsettling.

As he cleaned his nets from small crabs and cuttlefish, Vitór Silvestre, 67, a fisherman on Culatra, said he still remembered being fearful to talk to the cobbler or even friends during the dictatorship years, never knowing who could be an informant.

“And now we are voting for the far right again?” he asked.

Tiago Carrasco contributed reporting from Faro, Portugal.

Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in London, covering news across Europe and around the world. More about Emma Bubola