‘Stop the Boats’ – An Innovative Solution ?
As a postscript to this rather 'off the wall' suggestion, it's obvious that this government is no further forward than the last at solving the small-boats problem, having ditched their Rwanda plan immediately on assuming office and not really putting anything more effective in its place.
The belated returns agreement with the French, trumpeted so enthusiastically earlier this year, has so far only managed to deport a handful of illegals, at least two of which have already tried their luck again via the same route (and those are just the ones Border Force have actually detected). The cost of each removal is estimated at £56k.
All the more reason to let the 'marine experts' have a go - I'm sure they'd find a way to disable an outboard motor just as easily as a fishing boat's rudder ! I doubt whether many others would risk the trip in a dinghy after that....
AI seems to have let us down in finding a lasting solution to this perennial problem so far, so why not try Orca Intelligence (OI) instead ?
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I last published in 2025 on the whys and wherefores of our ‘broken’ immigration system.
By that stage the government had realised that 'Stopping the Boats' was a make or break problem for them, and was just starting to get focused on more active deterrence measures. The current PM is now sporting it as one of his 5 principal objectives.
However, since then their increasingly fraught campaign has, perhaps predictably, come up against many obstacles and delays, mainly due to unwelcome human intervention. As the Bard might have put it, “..One barge-load does not a solution bring….”, particularly if the new 'clients' are disembarked within a week of taking up residence in 'Weymouth's only floating hotel' because of 'health concerns'.
In the absence of either of our major political parties coming up with
any really effective solution, and to avoid becoming even more of a laughing stock for the people smugglers, we should perhaps consider some more off the
wall suggestions....
One of the more inventive ones I’ve come across recently
involves enlisting the help of another species - read on to discover how this could be achieved…..
It may not have escaped the notice of regular news followers
that one particular marine mammal has been in the news in recent years, and at one point did cause quite a ‘stir’ (please excuse the unintended pun) in the waters off
Gibraltar….Orcas.
This highly intelligent member of the dolphin family is
renowned for its inventiveness, and has for some reason taken to attacking small boats off the Spanish coast.
The technique they use is quite specific – they attack the boats' rudders.
These particular orcas appear to have figured
out that a boat’s rudder is essential for its ability to get anywhere, and have
perfected a technique of breaking or at least damaging the rudder of small
offshore fishing vessels sufficiently to make the boat un-steerable without
actually sinking the vessel. Disabling their boats in this way has wrought havoc amongst the fishing community,
and is also attracting quite a bit of tourist interest.
The reason for this somewhat novel behaviour isn’t yet clear; some say it’s just a game they’ve invented to entertain themselves. Others think it may be they're sick of the underwater racket the boats engines make. My view is that they have a more specific motive and have recognised that the fishermens' boats are competing for their fish stocks – notably their principal prey species – tuna. To combat the threat to their livelihoods, they are simply, and hitherto quite successfully, trying to eliminate the competition. (Interestingly, this 'boat knobbling' phenomenon also seems to have spread to the North Sea recently, making one wonder whether there really is a marine 'bush telegraph'.)
Whatever the reason for their behaviour, the point is that we
now have a population of Orcas which has trained itself to incapacitate small
boats without causing loss of life....and appears to be doing very well at it.
These ‘killer whales’ as they are otherwise known are,
however, at significant risk themselves.
As a protected species, in theory they can’t be harmed or otherwise interfered with.
However, the local Spanish fishing industry is already incensed at the cost of
repairing their broken rudders, and the consequent loss of their fishing quota and income,
and it is only a matter of time before they take the law into their own hands
and start using harpoons, heat-seeking torpedoes and even mini-depth charges to
remove the threat to their
livelihoods, however illegal such actions might be.
Could we not help to defuse this unfortunate situation by putting
the skills cleverly developed by these talented animals to good use a little further
north, and thus remove the very real threat to their existence at the hands of
incensed Spanish fishermen ?
If we could persuade these particular orcas to join their more northerly cousins and spend the next couple of summers
patrolling the French coast for us in the area adjacent to the immigrant beaches, they
could easily achieve more in a few weeks than the French gendarmerie have done
in the past 5 years, and probably seriously disrupt the people-smuggler’s business model in
the process….they'd also take the pressure off our RNLI and HM Coastguard taxi services into the bargain, and also relieve some of the adverse comment they currently received from the anti-immigration lobby.
Why might we expect this solution to be effective ?
Killer whales
are large animals and can be up to 8m long and can
weigh up to 6 tonnes. As such, they are viewed by most of us with a degree
of respect; they are certainly not to be trifled with, particularly if you enter their watery environment - and happen to resemble a medium-sized seal....
As soon as it became widely known that killer whales with a
demonstrated capability and inclination to damage, and potentially sink, small
boats were patrolling the people-smuggling embarkation beaches,
I suspect there would be a marked decline in small boat launches. Even the people-smugglers' current trick of simultaneous multiple launches, aimed at frustrating the efforts any patrolling gendarmes, would fail - the orcas are highly maneuverable and would respond to the challenge by sinking the lot....using their characteristic seal-harvesting methods.
The principal problem we have with stopping the boats 'at source' is that once a boat is launched from the beach, the French authorities will not intervene unless the crew specifically request help. It is obviously in their interests not to do so, given the investment they have already made to get a place on their boat, and this forms a key part of the smugglers business model. Crews will therefore go all out to reach far enough off shore to be within the range of our 'rescue' boats. If the orcas were strategically placed to patrol the vital zone just offshore, this would provide a major deterrent.
Instead of the quick ride currently available on one of our comfortable and well-equipped marine UK Border Force / RNLI ‘rescue taxis’ across to Folkestone or Dover, there would be an immediate threat of a watery end to their trip before they had even left French inshore waters, with little possibility of rescue from a disabled and possibly overturned boat.
Neither would using much larger and more expensive boats (presumably with unbreakable rudders!) in the channel as an alternative be a viable model for the people-smugglers, given the crowded nature of the shipping lanes, the ease of detection and confiscation - and the need to make a healthy profit.
The real beauty of this scheme is that, as a protected species, counter measures by the crews of the boats would be prohibited by both international and national laws, since Orcas are an endangered species. Thus anyone caught piloting or even launching a boat with armaments on board i.e. obviously ‘going equipped’ to kill or maim whales, would face immediate arrest on such charges, even if they were lucky enough to escape the attention of the Orcas and actually complete the journey. All others on board would also be liable to prosecution as accomplices.
In practice, the sophistication and weight of the ordnance required to deter the whales effectively would be impossible for a small boat already overloaded to the gunwales to carry, and still remain afloat. Using explosives anywhere in close proximity to a small boat would probably not be a particularly good idea either....
I would predict that few would risk embarking while the Orcas were
about, and the focus would quickly move back to stowing away on lorries, which
is much more easily controllable by the authorities.
If the project were a success, the Greek and Italian border patrol authorities might well be interested in acquiring their own pods of trained
Orcas, for deployment on the Aegean and North African migration routes. Although the embarkation areas are more geographically spread out, they do tend to focus on specific routes and departure points. Orcas are also expert direction finders, and would have no need for sophisticated GPS systems to find their way to their targets.
A key problem woth implementation would be how we might persuade these talented beasts to ‘up
sticks’ from their Mediterranean feeding grounds and move across Biscay to the
Channel, given that there isn’t exactly an abundance of tuna to be had off
Calais' beaches ? Trying to herd Orcas across large sea distances would be only slightly
less problematical than herding domestic cats, so a strong incentive for them to make
the journey of their own accord would be required.
As David Attenborough demonstrated convincingly in one of
his many excellent series recently, Orcas are especially partial to seals, (particularly
if they come across them asleep on ice floes!) and take great delight in working in teams to
unseat, and then devour, these unfortunate creatures.
Although there aren't many ice-floes in the English Channel (yet!), seal populations appear to be doing well generally such that there is currently an excess of them in some parts of the world. Fisherman often regard them as the 'vermin of the seas' due to their prodigious ability to consume large quantities of fish. Because of this, culls are necessary periodically to keep their population within sustainable limits and prevent serious depletion of fish stocks.
The Namibian
Fisheries Ministry in particular regularly carry out seal culls in order
to protect their fish stocks - they would, I’m sure, be happy to provide plenty
of material to start a new colony here, and might even assist in transporting them to
their next 'summer holiday' off the French coast. Far less chance of any legal interference here also - it should prove much easier to transport seals from Africa to Europe than to move humans back in the other direction...
Once the seals had arrived, the Mediterranean Orcas would soon hear about a new supply
of their favourite food on the 'marine grapevine' and make the trip themselves
to investigate. A good seal hunt on a regular basis would be more enjoyable for them than the boredom of just 'hoovering up' tuna
every day, with the extra attraction of some 'sport' with any small boats
daft enough to try running the gauntlet on the cross-channel route. Water temperature shouldn't be a problem, either - global warming seems to be making an impression on our lower sea temperatures already.
The seals would be better off too, since having avoided an immediate cull at home, the wilier ones would at least have some chance to escape to ‘pastures new’ - albeit in the less hospitable waters of the North Sea.
Last, but not least, neither seals nor orcas are subject to
the restrictions of the ECHR – some ‘food’ for thought for the lawyers in their quest for new clients,
perhaps….
We regularly see just how dangerous the channel crossing can be in a small, probably defective and grossly overloaded boat, with yet more trafficked lives needlessly lost within a short distance of the French coast. Even more risk is attached to the longer routes now being attempted from Normandy.
If reason prevails and government see the light, I can confidently predict the first seals will be shipped to their new feeding grounds off Dunquerque this autumn and will establish themselves over the winter in time for the summer boat season. The Orcas from Gibraltar will then surely follow, along with their colleagues currently based in Orkney and Norway.
To paraphrase that classic track from the 1984 film:
"...Who're ya gonna call ?....GhostBoatBusters..."
Joking apart, although the numbers are down on the last 2 years, the 2026 numbers have already passed the 40,000 milestone, with a record 740 in one day last week, and more calm weather to come before the autumn sets in in earnest.
There are predictions of even more small boats attempting the dangerous crossing for the remainder of this government's term before a more stringent regime sets in after 2029. Do we not owe it to these unfortunate and desperate people to break the people smugglers' business model once and for all - and save lives?
Update 12.11.23: The Gibraltar Orca 'Clan' are obviously limbering up for next summer's excursion to the Channel. Their latest exploit actually resulted in another - this time of a Polish yacht in the Gibraltar Strait off Tangier, using their usual trick of destroying the rudder...and then some. Would be illegals beware - this could be your 'fate worse than Rwanda' if you try to cross next summer in an inflatable. The Orcas are coming....
First published 7/8/23; Revised 29.9.26
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