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Sailors crossing through the Strait of Gibraltar are once again encountering wildlife-related hazards. Two people were rescued by an oil tanker on Sunday after a pod of orcas went after their 50-foot sailing yacht off the coast of Morocco. Their boat was left adrift and eventually sank, according to The New York Times. This is the first orca-related sinking this year, an increasingly common occurrence since 2020, when a small group of about 15 orcas first started slamming themselves into smaller vessels off the coast of Spain. On Tuesday, the Spanish government released a warning for sailors passing through the Gulf of Cadiz and Strait of Gibraltar, two areas with a “high probability of the presence of orcas” from April to August. According to the new guidance, experts have determined that the behavior of the apex-predators was not aggressive, but may have been playful.
