Sperm whale sinks 52-foot yacht in South Pacific; mysterious organ may explain how it can deliver such powerful blows

A sperm whale rammed a 52-foot yacht in the remote South Pacific, leaving four sailors fighting to keep their damaged vessel afloat for hours before they were forced to abandon it. The 16-metre (52-foot) Tai Tam was sailing about 250 nautical miles north of Norfolk Island when it encountered a pod of sperm whales over the weekend, according to AFP.

Australian sailor Jemma Cooper was at the steering wheel when she heard a loud thud and felt the entire boat being pushed sideways. “There was sort of a loud thud. The whole boat was pushed sideways,” Cooper told AFP.

At first, the crew did not know what had happened. But when Cooper looked over the port side, she saw brownish water and several sperm whales nearby. “We looked out to our port side, and there were six to eight, a pod, of whales there. So then it became clear that that's what it was,” she said.


Her husband, Jeremy Cooper, was below deck when the impact woke him. “It was pretty immediately evident it was very serious,” he said.


The collision had smashed the steering gear and damaged the hull, allowing a significant amount of water to enter the yacht. About 30 minutes after the collision, at 1 pm New Zealand time on Saturday, the crew activated an emergency beacon and issued a Mayday call. New Zealand sailor Terry Hetherington said the crew then spent hours trying to keep the yacht afloat while removing water by hand.

The yacht was badly damaged

French crew member Martin Jaffre, a joiner by profession, said the impact left several gashes in the hull and cracked parts of the fibreglass structure. The steering system was also broken. “We could no longer steer the boat, and a boat with no steering quickly becomes a problem,” Jaffre said.

The crew used whatever they could find to slow the flow of water, including expansion foam. Jaffre even went into the water to inspect the damage underneath the yacht. A Royal New Zealand Air Force P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft was sent to the area to establish communications and help coordinate the rescue.

The sailors managed to remain aboard for several hours, but as the situation deteriorated, they eventually moved into a life raft late at night. The sea was calm and the moon was full when they abandoned the yacht. In the early hours of Sunday, the crew cut the tether connecting the life raft to the Tai Tam, fearing that the sinking yacht could pull them down with it. The vessel soon disappeared beneath the waves.

About 18 hours after the whale encounter, a 143-metre (470-foot) container ship, the MV Sofrana Surville, reached the sailors and rescued them. Jeremy Cooper said the rescue itself was frightening as the huge container ship approached their small life raft. But within about half an hour, the sailors had climbed aboard.

They were given coffee and spoke with the ship's captain. “It was wonderful, wonderful, and just a terrible, terrible ending -- but luckily no loss of life,” Cooper said.

How can a sperm whale damage a boat?

The incident also highlights one of the strangest features of the sperm whale: its enormous head. Sperm whales have an unusually large forehead containing an organ called the spermaceti organ. It is filled with a waxy substance known as spermaceti and has long been a subject of scientific interest. The organ also played a major role in the history of whaling because spermaceti was once highly valued for products including candles, soaps and other commercial uses. But scientists have also investigated whether the whale's huge head could have another function: delivering powerful blows.

Retired evolutionary biologist Dave Carrier has studied the possibility that the sperm whale's head evolved, at least in part, as a weapon. “An 18th-Century whaler argued that the forehead was a weapon, and we set out to test that,” Carrier told BBC.

Ecophysiologist Alec Burslem estimated that a much larger adult sperm whale could potentially generate a force of around 1,200 kilonewtons. That is an enormous amount of force — comparable, in a simplified comparison, to being hit by a bus travelling at about 40 mph (65 km/h).

It could help explain why a sperm whale, despite being an animal rather than a ship, can cause serious structural damage with a direct strike.

However, scientists caution against assuming that sperm whales routinely attack boats deliberately. Historical records show that sperm whales have damaged or sunk vessels, but such incidents are extremely rare.

Michael Harrison, chief curator at the Historical Society in Nantucket, told BBC that only a small number of whaling ships are historically recorded as being attacked by sperm whales. The Ann Alexander was badly damaged by a sperm whale in 1851, while the Kathleen suffered a similar encounter in 1902, and the latest being the South Pacific incident.