Petition: She Is One of Fewer Than 40 Left. Someone Shot Her Ten Times.

Fewer than 40 Iberian orcas are left. Toñi is the oldest of them, roughly 60 years old, known to the researchers who have photographed her for more than two decades as La Abuela, the grandmother. On 11 August 2026 the Conservation group WeWhale found her in the Strait of Gibraltar with around ten fresh impact marks across her dorsal fin and back. Two or three appear to have passed straight through the fin. Weeks-old photographs of the same animal show nothing there. Spain’s environment ministry opened an investigation the following day. Please sign the petition demanding a full investigation and prosecution.

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The Atlantic Orca Working Group assessed the wounds as consistent with lead pellets of around nine millimetres, the sort loaded into buckshot cartridges for wild boar. Nobody has officially confirmed a shotgun yet, and CIRCE, which has monitored this population scientifically since 1999 and holds a photographic archive of Toñi going back twenty years, has said the images need detailed comparison against that historical series before anyone declares a cause. That caution is worth respecting. It is also worth saying that Spain’s deputy prime minister, Sara Aagesen, described the marks as compatible with pellets and called any harm to the species a serious crime, and the ministry did not wait to open proceedings.

What sits behind this is a conflict nobody has resolved. Since 2020 Iberian orcas have repeatedly made contact with boats off Spain and Portugal, sometimes damaging rudders, and the encounters have generated a great deal of anger among sailors. Spanish authorities have issued guidance that explicitly warns against responses that could injure the animals. Janek Andre of WeWhale put the point directly: whatever anyone thinks of those interactions, shooting at these animals can never be an acceptable response. The legal exposure is substantial, with penalties reaching two million euros alongside possible criminal liability, and the population is classified as vulnerable under Spain’s Catalog of Endangered Species. Losing one animal from a group of under 40, and a reproductively significant older female at that, is a different order of loss from harming one whale. One Green Planet has covered the campaign to end orca captivity in the United States, and the investigation is reported by Euronews. WeWhale and the Iberian Orca Guardians are preserving their photographic records and continuing to monitor her.

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