The waters around the Iberian Peninsula continue to be a danger zone where attacks by young orcas on yachts, primarily sailboats, continue. To date, the scientists and concerned groups in Portugal, Spain, Fance and England have relied on anecdotal data offered crews that have been attacked and by random orca sightings.
While the data is useful in tracking the orca pods; past behavior, there it no way for scientists to predict real danger zone in the present. A sonar expert at the University of Washington, Hans Scholl, has proposed in a scientific paper that an array of sonar buoys on the ocean floor, similar to those that track submarines, could be the answer.
The sonar buoys, using AI to filter ocean sounds to identify only orcas, could follow the pods in real time and post their positions and movements on a public website. Cruising boats sailing through the danger zone could then take avoidance measures in advance of a possible orca encounter.
