From Yanbu to Sohar: Tracking Saudi Arabia’s alternative oil routes

 

(Al Jazeera)

From AlJazeera by Hanna Duggal

The world’s second-largest crude exporter is rerouting crude via dark shipments and ship-to-ship transfers off Oman.

Saudi Arabia’s oil exports took another blow last week when drone attacks knocked out part of the country’s East-West pipeline, halting oil flow and removing 4-5 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from global supply.

It is unclear how long repairs will take, although The Associated Press estimates three to five weeks, citing two regional officials.

The 1,200km (746-mile) pipeline connects the kingdom’s main oil-producing fields in the east of the country with Yanbu port on the Red Sea coast in the west, allowing Saudi crude to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely remained closed since the United States-Israel war on Iran began on February 28.

As the world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia’s ability to keep crude flowing has significant consequences for global energy markets. Al Jazeera asked experts what alternatives remain, how the disruption could affect buyers worldwide, and what it means for the kingdom’s revenues.

 

 

(Al Jazeera)

Exports down more than 70 percent

Total Saudi crude loadings, which topped 7.5 million bpd in January and February, had fallen to about 2.3 million bpd in August and roughly 2.1 million bpd in the first half of September – a drop of more than 70 percent.

Analysts caution the real loadings figure may run somewhat higher, since shuttle tankers crossing Hormuz with tracking switched off aren’t always captured in vessel data.

How can Saudi Arabia export its oil?

Saudi exports are built around two coastal passages – the Gulf in the east, where crude moves out through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Red Sea in the west, where it can travel either north through the Suez Canal and Sumed Pipeline, or south through the Bab al-Mandeb strait.
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Route one: The Strait of Hormuz

Before the crisis, most Saudi crude left on ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the 39km (24-mile) shipping choke point connecting the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, and the open sea beyond.

Saudi Arabia was exporting about 7-8 million bpd of oil, with most seaborne volumes loading at the terminals of Ras Tanura and Ras al-Ju’aymah, and the former averaging about 5.4 million bpd in 2025.

The route is the most direct and economical way to reach Asia, which buys the bulk of Saudi crude exports.

 

Dark ships and ship-to-ship transfers

With the western pipeline route closed and the Red Sea’s southern route hostile, Saudi Arabia has little choice but to push exports back through the Gulf – despite the restrictions, higher costs, and physical risk of attack that come with transiting Hormuz, experts say.
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“With the East-West pipeline offline, Saudi’s options are limited. The first is shipping more crude from its Gulf terminals through the Strait of Hormuz, including ship-to-ship transfers outside the strait, such as off Sohar in Oman,” according to Rishi Rajanala, research specialist in Oil Americas at LSEG Data & Analytics.

 

 

A satellite image of side-by-side ships at sea, off the coast of Sohar, Oman, on June 9, 2026

[Airbus DS/Handout via Reuters]

“Gulf producers have already been moving part of their exports this way, but volumes depend on tanker availability, insurance and freight costs, and remain well below pre-war levels.

“The second is drawing on crude already stored on the west coast and at Egypt’s Ain Sukhna and Sidi Kerir terminals, which can continue to supply Europe through the Sumed Pipeline, but only for as long as stored volumes last. The third is a phased restart of the pipeline itself, depending on the extent of the damage.”

Richard Matthews, director of consultancy and research at Gibson Shipbrokers, a London-based shipping services company, said transiting back through Hormuz will “further fuel higher freight costs for Middle East exports and create additional inefficiencies”, adding, “we do not know how long Yanbu loadings will be suspended for, but it doesn’t look to be a quick fix.”

One way to reduce that risk is for tankers to go “dark” by switching off their AIS transponders – used in maritime navigation to identify and track vessels – as they transit Omani coastal waters. 

“They will transit with transponders off and likely coordinate with the US Navy but still face the risk of attack as everyone else does,” Matthews said.

If the outage extends beyond a few weeks, the balance shifts further: Stored volumes would run down, and any crude that cannot move through the Gulf would have to be stored or left unproduced, adding pressure to production levels already well below pre-war volumes in August.

Rahul Choudhary, vice president of Upstream Research at Rystad Energy, an independent energy research company, said Hormuz-route exports increased in September to more than two million bpd in the first two weeks, roughly one million bpd above August.

“We expect Strait of Hormuz exports to rise further in the second half of the month, already evident in Aramco offering additional loadings to Asian refiners out of Sohar. Saudi Arabia can lean further on dark tanker activity in the coming days to offset Yanbu losses,” he added.

Route two: The East-West pipeline to Yanbu

Most of Saudi Arabia’s crude is produced in the east, and Aramco’s East-West pipeline links the Ghawar and Abqaiq processing facilities there to Yanbu port on the opposite side of the country.

It was built in 1981, during the Iran-Iraq war, precisely to reduce reliance on the Strait of Hormuz in a crisis of the kind Saudi Arabia and other Gulf exporters are now facing.

It runs at a maximum capacity of about 7 million bpd.

Crude shipped from Yanbu has two ways to travel onward through the Red Sea – south via Bab al-Mandeb or north via Suez.

South, via Bab al-Mandeb

Shipments heading south to Asia must pass through the Bab al-Mandeb strait – the second-best route after Hormuz.

But Iran-backed Houthi forces launched a rapid military offensive in September, seizing the Yemeni port of Mocha, the coastal town of Dhubab, and Mayyun Island, and now control the strait.

They have also declared a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia, prohibiting vessels from loading or discharging cargo at Saudi ports.

 

(Al Jazeera)

North, via the Suez Canal

With the southern exit blocked, tankers wishing to reach Asia must instead travel north.

Oil tankers can pass through the Suez Canal directly, or discharge their cargo at Egypt’s Ain Sokhna terminal on the Red Sea into the Sumed pipeline, which carries it overland across Egypt to a Mediterranean port near Alexandria, where it is reloaded onto tankers bound for Europe.

Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) are too large to transit the canal at full draft – the maximum safe depth when fully loaded – so they instead partially discharge at Ain Sokhna and reload the remaining volume at the Mediterranean terminal before continuing.

According to HSBC Global Investment Research, Aramco had planned a similar “shuttling” operation before Yanbu was suspended, using smaller Suezmax tankers to move crude between Yanbu and Ain Sokhna.

 

 

A composite satellite image shows a trail of smoke rising, as Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on July 25, 2026 that they carried out operations against Saudi Aramco facilities in Jizan and Yanbu [European Union/Copernicus Sentinel-2/Handout via Reuters]

From there, reaching Asian buyers means sailing west through the Strait of Gibraltar and around the Cape of Good Hope – a journey of about 13,140 nautical miles (equivalent to about 24,335km) that dwarfs the roughly 3,370 nautical miles (6,241km), 10-day journey via Hormuz, adding almost a month to the voyage and making shipping far more expensive while tying up tankers for longer.

But some experts expect the East-West pipeline to resume operations sooner, offering hope that Saudi oil exports could return to more sustainable levels.

Choudhary said: “We expect the pipeline to restart within a couple of weeks at a reduced 40-60 percent capacity, flowing around 2.5-3 million bpd. With Saudi likely to prioritise refinery runs, only about 0.5-1 million bpd would be left for export, meaning Yanbu crude exports fall by 2.5-3 million bpd even after a partial restart.

“Part of that gap can be covered by higher Hormuz liftings and increased dark-fleet activity, bringing the net impact on Saudi crude exports down to roughly 1.5-2 million bpd.”

Why trucking is not a viable option

One option conspicuously absent from Saudi planning is trucking – and the maths explains why. The kingdom typically exports 5-7 million bpd.

Replacing even a single day’s volume by road would require roughly 25,000 to 35,000 fully loaded tanker trucks, each carrying about 200 barrels.

Lined up bumper-to-bumper, that convoy would stretch nearly 500km (310 miles) – roughly the distance from Riyadh to the nearest coast.

A single VLCC, by comparison, carries about 2 million barrels in one voyage, and the pipeline itself moves millions of barrels daily with minimal manpower – which is why, even with its main export arteries compromised, Saudi Arabia’s fallback plan runs through ships, not roads.

The impact on global markets

Oil prices have so far been cushioned by stockpiles and releases from strategic reserves, with Brent crude trading at about $70-$90 a barrel in recent months.

But the longer regional disruptions continue, the more we may see prices rise, with Brent crude currently trading above $105 a barrel.

“The market is pricing a significant loss of supply, with the length of the outage as the main uncertainty. Saudi authorities have not given a timeline for the repair, and estimates reported so far range from a few days to eight weeks for a full recovery,” Rajanala, the research specialist at LSEG, said.

What does this mean for buyers of Saudi oil?

Saudi Arabia was, until recently, the world’s largest oil exporter.

Its main buyers are Asian and European refiners, including China, which bought 22 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil, followed by South Korea (14 percent), Japan (13 percent), India (10 percent) and the US (5 percent).

Those buyers are already feeling the shutdown.

Cargoes scheduled for European refiners are being cancelled, forcing many companies to look elsewhere for their oil, including turning to the US, North Sea and West Africa.

“Some European refiners with cancelled Saudi cargoes are already sourcing crude from the North Sea and seeking cargoes from the Americas and Central Asia, while Asian buyers are being offered alternative loadings from the Gulf,” Rajanala said.

“The missing barrels are also higher sulphur crude. Saudi grades such as Arab Light and Arab Medium are difficult to replace, like-for-like, because the alternatives available from the US, Kazakhstan and much of the North Sea are generally lower in sulphur content. That puts particular pressure on refiners configured for Middle East crude, many of them in Asia, which takes the largest share of Saudi exports.”

What does this mean for Saudi Arabia’s revenues?

Despite higher oil prices benefitting Saudi Arabia, they are being offset by an inability to physically export at normal volumes.

The government depends heavily on dividends, royalties and taxes from Aramco, with its crude and petroleum products sales accounting for more than half of government revenues, generating 606.5 billion riyals ($162bn) for state coffers in 2025.

Sustained disruption would cut deep into public finances.

UBS Research now forecasts the 2026 budget deficit reaching 5 percent of gross domestic product against an original target of 3.3 percent.

Louis Vincent-Gave, from Gavekal Research, an independent research firm, noted that “the bombing of Yanbu, combined with the bombing of the East-West pipeline, and the Houthi takeover of the Bab el-Mandab sea passage, suddenly places large question marks on the ability of Saudi oil to keep flowing through the Red Sea to the rest of the world. And if Saudi Arabia cannot keep pumping oil to the rest of the world, the Saudi government could end up selling assets – US treasuries? Stakes in private equity funds? Artificial intelligence investments? – to pay its immediate bills.”

Is traffic through Hormuz really back to normal?

photograph: getty images

From The Economist

America would like the world to think so as oil prices top $100 again

Listen to donald trump and normality reigns in the world’s most contested waterway.
America and Iran may be firing again, but “Hormuz Oil Volumes are back,” declared the president on September 3rd.
He claims that 18m barrels a day (b/d) now pass through the strait—just shy of the pre-war average of 20m.
J.D. Vance, his vice-president, says Iran’s control of Hormuz is “effectively gone”.
“A big lie,” counters Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s top security official.
He puts daily crossings at seven or eight ships, far below the 30-40 that Mr Trump’s camp claims.
Ship-trackers are sceptical, too: Kpler, a data firm, has traffic below 5m b/d in the week to August 30th.
Even the Joint Maritime Information Centre, linked to America’s navy, cannot square its count of nearly 30 daily passages with the single digits independent trackers typically report.

Neither side has much incentive to show its workings, points out Shahin Iraninejad of gssi, a sovereign-risk advisory firm.
America wants voters to believe the millions of dollars it splashes daily on escorting tankers in the Gulf are paying off; Iran wants to look in control of the strait, even as more oil slips through.
But reality matters.
The more Gulf exports are throttled, the deeper importers must dip into stocks or bid up oil elsewhere; Brent crude is back above $100 a barrel for the first time since July.
So who is closer to the truth?

 

chart: the economist

The truth is murky because most tankers now cross with transponders off, to avoid becoming targets.
Some broadcast signals, but pervasive radio jamming blurs the picture.
Others tamper with their own radios to fake their location.
Most transits also happen at night, out of satellites’ view.
Complicating matters, Gulf barrels often change hands before reaching the high seas: a handful of firms—Gulf state-owned shipowners, Sinokor of South Korea and Greek owners such as Dynacom—carry most of the traffic, shuttling oil through the strait before clandestinely transferring cargo outside it.

So tanker-counters infer transits retroactively, tracking loadings and discharges and watching for vessels that vanish from the Gulf only to resurface outside it, explains Pamela Munger of Vortexa, another ship-tracker.
Passages are often confirmed with a lag, so initial numbers are best read as a floor, revised up as more transits surface.
Kpler recently raised its estimate for the week to August 10th to 7.2m b/d, up from an initial calculation of 4.7m.

 

 

Assuming similar undercounting throughout August, Kpler’s eventual reading at the turn of the month may near the 9m b/d seven-day average that Chris Wright, America’s energy secretary, cited on September 6th.
Part of the gap lies in definitions: what counts as oil (crude only or products too); where the counting line sits (the strait or the Gulf of Oman); and when a barrel is dated (at loading, at crossing or on reappearance).
Commercial trackers like Kpler and Vortexa are clear about their methodology; officials are not, and probably favour generous definitions.

That still doesn’t explain Mr Trump’s 18m b/d.
Perhaps he cherry-picked an exceptional day: since March, counting every possible oil product, Vortexa has recorded only two days above 16m.
Or maybe he mixed in exports that now bypass the strait entirely.
Since February Saudi Arabia has pushed more crude through its East-West pipeline, lifting exports from its Red Sea ports by 1m-3m b/d; the United Arab Emirates has rerouted around 1m b/d through a pipeline to Fujairah.
Add a little more from Oman, over a favourable window, and bypass routes may amount to 5m b/d.

Either way, the figure is not helpful.
Shipping flows are bumpy, so weekly averages say more than daily tallies.
The latest tit-for-tat, plus Iranian threats against tankers shuttling crude through the strait, has curbed transits drastically in recent days, notes John Ollett of Argus Media, a price-reporting agency.
On September 8th Kpler counted just eight transits, down from 23 a week before.
Attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on ships and Saudi targets have also slowed Red Sea shipments.

That points to a sober reality for Mr Trump: past Hormuz traffic does not predict future performance because progress can reverse quickly.
No amount of American spin has brought insurance rates for crossing Hormuz below 10%of a ship’s value (they averaged 0.25% before the war).
Even if mines have been cleared from parts of the strait, as Mr Trump claims, they can drift in from elsewhere, and Iran can lay new ones.
Its forces also retain ample capacity to strike tankers.

Oil markets are already showing signs of stress.
North Sea Dated, a near-term crude benchmark, is approaching $110 a barrel, up from $70 in June.
Diesel has burst through $190 a barrel in America and Europe, nearly double its price in February.
Mr Trump can fight a data war all he likes.
What matters is how many importers receive the barrels they ordered. 

CENTCOM forces destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers, Sept.
8, after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted a U.S.
Navy warship with ballistic missiles twice over the past two days.
The U.S.
warship successfully evaded the attempted Iranian attacks and… pic.twitter.com/Gi8a2tloN1

— U.S.
Central Command (@CENTCOM) September 8, 2026

 Links :

• Euro-Times : Container traffic through Hormuz collapses 94% as oil tankers return
• Reuters : Hormuz traffic below 10-day average, LNG vessels reappear outside strait 

Conor Maguire rides 60-foot monster wave at Mullaghmore Head

 Watch Conor Maguire surfing a 60-foot monster wave at Mullaghmore Head in County Sligo, Ireland. It is probably the biggest wave ever surfed in Irish waters.

Conor Maguire rehearsed this monster 1,000 times in his head
Conor Maguire released Barry Mottershead’s tow rope above what he later described as a 40-foot drop. One wrong line at Mullaghmore, he said, could have dragged him underwater towards the cliff.
The calm was trained.

 

For days, Conor pictured every step.
As the horizon turned black, Barry looked back and saw him with his eyes closed, breathing.
I’m amazed by how little Conor does once his line is set.
He stays low and avoids any needless movement that might waste speed or unsettle the board.
(That quiet is the loudest part of this ride.)
Mullaghmore is a reef slab.
Deep water meets shallow rock, the face rises sharply and a thick lip throws forward.
Nazaré’s canyon can build even taller peaks over shifting sand, but often with a broader face.
Here, the prize is a tight barrel with almost no room to adjust.
Huge respect for that whole team.
Serious big-wave surfing is never a solo stunt.
Could you stay that still beneath this much water?

Regent Viceroy Seaglider first flight

The Seaglider era has begun! This morning in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, the Viceroy Seaglider prototype, crewed by two captains, flew a distance of 1,956 ft (596 m) at a height of 33 ft (10m) above the water for 30 seconds.

‘World’s first’ crewed flying boat completes maiden flight: Regent Craft's Seaglider, a 12-passenger electric vessel that floats, hydrofoils, then flies just above the water using ground effect, carried two people for a 30-second test flight over Narragansett Bay.

Regent is pitching it as a new mode of coastal transport, with proposed routes already planned between cities like New York, Boston, Miami, and nearby destinations.

Keeping an eye on orcas : Portuguese Navy launches official warning map

Photo: gettyimages

From Yacht by Ursula Meer

 

An orca and a boat: once an awe-inspiring sight, now a frightening one.

To help sailors on the Iberian Peninsula plan their routes, the Portuguese Navy has therefore now published a map showing sightings and attacks. 

A new official Orca map produced by the Portuguese Navy is designed to help sailors plan their routes. It brings together sightings and attacks along the Portuguese coast.

However, when looking at the figures in particular, it remains true that the maps provide a valuable overview of the situation, not a comprehensive set of statistics

On 8 September 2026, the Instituto Hidrográfico, the Portuguese Navy’s Hydrographic Institute, launched an online platform for orca sightings.

The Official Orca Portal displays reported sightings and interactions on maps, highlights nautical warnings and accepts new sighting or attack reports via an online form.

Anyone who registers can also receive notifications by email.

 

 

For sailors, this is more than just another map.

For the first time, a Portuguese authority is bringing all this information together in an official service. However, it does not replace your own route planning, nor does it replace ongoing warnings or radio contact whilst at sea. 

What the new chart offers, where its limitations lie and how it fits into the existing information landscape.

The eighth sunken boat

​On 23 July 2026, the sailing yacht "Idem" sank off Estaca de Bares.

The orcas had damaged the rudder so badly that water poured in and the boat was beyond saving.

The two sailors on board were rescued by a nearby motorboat – unharmed, but without their boat.

It is the latest in a series of eight documented total losses since 2022.

Incidents such as this one demonstrate why reliable real-time information is no mere academic exercise for sailors in Orca Alley.

This makes it all the more significant that the Instituto Hidrográfico, the Portuguese Navy’s Hydrographic Institute, launched a platform for orca incidents on 8 September 2026.

The official Orca portal displays reported sightings and interactions on maps, provides links to nautical warnings and accepts new reports of sightings or attacks via an online form.

Anyone who registers can also receive email notifications.

For sailors, this is more than just another chart.

For the first time, a Portuguese authority has brought all this information together in an official publication.

However, it does not replace your own route planning, nor does it replace ongoing warnings or radio contact whilst at sea.

What's happening right now

​Anyone scrolling through the Facebook pages of the relevant orca groups these days will quickly get a sense of the scale of the problem.

Between 1 August and 7 September alone, attacks were reported: twice off Huelva, once off Tarifa, near Setúbal, off Laxe, Vigo, Cabo de São Vicente and Penedo da Saudade.

In between, there have been repeated sightings – and reports of crews who escaped unharmed.

One of these reports comes from sailor Elin Power.

In the ‘Orca Attack Reports’ group, she wrote about an attack that lasted around 10 to 20 minutes and involved more than ten strikes against the boat.

She said she had followed the standard procedures: engine off, steering released, pots banged against steel parts.

Then the orcas abruptly swam off.

Her conclusion: “I think we had a lucky day.”

The rudder was intact, and no water had got in.

A nearby motorboat skipper had stayed close by – that gesture alone had given her a sense of security.

At the same time, sailors repeatedly report harmless or even no sightings of orcas at all.

This shows that an encounter is possible, but not inevitable.

Official map and private initiative

​Anyone wishing to sail safely through this dangerous area should avoid any encounter in the first place. That is why various organisations have been collecting data for years on the orcas and their routes along the Iberian Peninsula – some for scientific purposes, others to protect sailors.

One of the most important private providers in this regard in recent years has been Rui Alves with his website orcas.pt.

His website collects reports from a large network of sailors, observation boats and other contacts, and publishes the latest events, including the location, time and classification as a sighting or incident.

In response to a query from YACHT, Alves explains how he goes about his work: every report is checked individually.

He interviews skippers in person, compares reports from crews who were in the area on the same day, and requests photographs. 

Identifiable orcas are matched to individual animals using photographs in order to understand their movement patterns. 

“This allows me to verify 80 to 90 per cent of cases,” he says.

But Alves takes it a step further: every day, he posts movement forecasts for well-known orca pods on Facebook.

These are based on the last reported position, combined with an assumed average speed of two to three knots.

This makes it possible to estimate when a group might pass a particular stretch of coastline – not real-time tracking, but a concrete planning guide.

These alerts are also sent to his Telegram community, which now comprises more than 3,000 sailors.

The Instituto Hidrográfico explains that its mapping module also displays events that extend beyond orcaiberica.org and reported to orcas.pt. 

Orcaiberica.org is run by the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica (GTOA), a Spanish network of scientists which has been collecting data since the incidents began and publishes monthly interaction maps.

Rui Alves describes the collaboration in more detail in response to a query from YACHT: According to him, he regularly sends the Instituto Hidrográfico – albeit with a slight delay – all sightings and interactions collected on orcas.pt. 

The institute presents this data and supplements it with its own reports. 

“The Institute uses my data as a basis and also supplements it with its own reports,” writes Alves.

This means that the official map is not a completely separate second data source.

It is a consolidated representation of official warnings, reports from orcas.pt, information from orcaiberica.org and other data.

The Instituto Hidrográfico expressly points out that an event may appear multiple times due to the consolidation of external sources.

Time discrepancies are also possible, as Alves, according to his own statement, does not transmit his data without delay.

In terms of interpretation, this means that the map provides a broad, useful overview for route planning, but is not a finalised set of overall statistics covering all incidents.

​Not a real-time image in the strict sense

The Navy refers to updated, georeferenced information.

This is useful for route planning – but it is not a real-time picture in the technical sense.

Time can elapse between observation, reporting, plausibility checks and publication.

Furthermore, not all encounters are reported.

Then there is the question of terminology.

A sighting initially only indicates that orcas have been observed.

An interaction or attack describes contact with a boat.

Damage to the rudder, loss of manoeuvrability and a distress situation are yet further categories. Anyone looking at a map must therefore always check what the respective point actually documents.

This distinction is also important because the causes of the behaviour have not yet been conclusively established. Experts debate whether it is play, exploration, learnt behaviour or other explanations

A recently published scientific review also emphasises, that the well-known approaches explain various aspects of the phenomenon, but do not provide a definitive answer.

​In recent years, several organisations have established themselves around Orca Alley off the Iberian coast, collecting, analysing and disseminating sightings and incidents.

They adopt different approaches, collect different data – and do not always cooperate with one another.

An overview:

• ​orcas.pt (Rui Alves, Portugal) The most comprehensive private platform featuring a real-time map, daily movement forecasts and a Telegram community of over 3,000 sailors.

Every report is checked individually: Alves interviews skippers in person, compares reports from the same area and requests photos.

The data is regularly passed on to the Instituto Hidrográfico.

Reports can be submitted via orcas.pt/orcasreport or directly via Telegram.

• Hydrographic Institute (Portuguese Navy, since 8 September 2026) The new official portal brings together data from three sources: reports from the national maritime warning system ANAV, entries from orcaiberica.org and data from orcas.pt. It is therefore not an independent data collection effort, but rather a consolidated presentation – with the explicit note that duplicates may occur. Useful as an official overview of the Portuguese coastline, supplemented by an email alert service and a dedicated reporting form.

• Cruising Association (CA, United Kingdom) The CA operates its own Orca information and reporting portal at theca.org.uk/orcas in four languages – English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

The Orca project group is led by Paul Lingard.

The CA collects not only reports of attacks but also of uneventful encounters – a methodologically important distinction that makes comparisons possible in the first place. The data collected is shared with marine biologists and behavioural researchers.

The reports form the basis of an ‘Interaction Comments Library’, which categorises and evaluates various defence strategies.

In addition, the CA publishes historical comparative statistics by year, month and coastal section.

• Atlantic Orca Working Group / GTOA (Spain)

The GTOA publishes monthly interaction charts providing a geographical overview of Orca activities – including a traffic-light system for the individual sea areas.

The charts are an important basis for route planning, but are not considered to be complete, according to the organisation’s own assessment.

The GT Orca AIS app, which provides real-time data, is available as a supplementary resource.

Has 2026 been a particularly strong year so far?

The recent spate of reports suggests as much, but there is no definitive answer.

The most comprehensive publicly available comparison table of all orca incidents is provided by another organisation: the British Cruising Association.

It analyses the monthly reports from the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica.

These record a total of 54 interactions for the period from 1 January to 13 July 2026.

During the same period, there were 58 in 2025 and 83 in 2024.

On this basis, therefore, there is no question of this being an exceptionally high year.

However, this limitation is already stated in the source itself.

According to its own explanation, the historical CA analysis is the most comprehensive overview available; however, the underlying GTOA maps are not considered to be 100 per cent complete.

The figure 54 is therefore not an exact total of all encounters.

It is a comparative figure derived from a specific reporting chain.

At the same time, the latest reports suggest that it is too early to give the all-clear.

The map and chart now published by the Navy show August 2026 to be particularly dangerous.

With ten attacks and nine sightings, it is one of the busiest months recorded on the map since the earliest period shown, from July 2022.

It is thought that three different orca groups may currently be active at the same time.

This indicates a lively late-summer period, but does not allow for a reliable extrapolation to the whole season.

Links :

• Book recommendation : Yacht accidents Jan-Erik Kruse categorises typical risks on sailing yachts based on analysed accident reports. When sailing through an orca-inhabited area, it is particularly helpful to consider preparation and the ability to take appropriate action: the book covers distress signals, AIS and radar, as well as risk management and the loss of the rudder and keel. It is no substitute for up-to-date local sailing information, but it does sharpen the focus on what the crew and skipper should clarify before a serious incident occurs.