Whale strikes were being wildly underreported

Other skippers – and whales – were not so lucky. During a 2016 New York to Les Sables d’Olonne Transat race, the fleet had to route around a Whale Exclusion Zone and TSS off Nantucket. Nevertheless solo skippers in the race reported over a dozen collisions in the first 24 hours between their IMOCAs and unidentified objects, now assumed to be marine mammals. In 2017 Vendée Globe skipper Kito de Pavant was racing in the Indian Ocean when he captured a violent collision with a sperm whale on video,...