For the past few years, a small group of orcas near Spain and Portugal has been making headlines for damaging sailboats.
Scientists still do not know why. Maybe the orcas are playing. Maybe they are curious. Maybe one whale started doing it and the others copied. Orcas, like humans, learn from one another.
What we do know is that fewer than 40 Iberian orcas remain.
Recently, one of the oldest females, Toñi, also called “the grandmother,” was found with injuries that may have been caused by shotgun pellets.
The story made me think about how quickly we decide which animals are easy to care about.
It is easy to want to save a panda eating bamboo or a sea turtle swimming quietly through the ocean. It is harder when an endangered animal damages something that belongs to us.
But that may be when conservation matters most.
The orcas are not living in our ocean. We are sharing theirs. Their world is now crowded with ships, fishing lines, engines, and noise. We may never know exactly what they think when they approach a sailboat, but we know they are trying to survive in an environment humans have changed enormously.
People should be safe. Boats should not have to be sacrificed to protect wildlife. But neither should fear become an excuse for cruelty.
With fewer than 40 animals left, losing even one matters.
Maybe the real test of whether we care about nature is not how we treat animals when they are beautiful and easy to love.
It is how we treat them when they get in our way.
Daniel Kim, December 2024