For a couple of years now we have been telling you about the increasingly complicated relationship between orcas and white sharks – in the sense that the former have discovered that the latter’s liver is delicious, and have begun to hunt them. The center of this massacre is in South Africa, where Port and Starboard, two local orcas, are terrorizing sharks to the point of forcing them to “move home”.
But something similar is happening elsewhere too: a new study published in Frontiers in Marine Science tells how, in the Gulf of California, orcas have not only begun to hunt white sharks, but have also developed a very effective and very cruel technique to do so. The purpose? Getting to their very appetizing liver.
Hunting for young sharks. Let’s start by clarifying a detail: the orcas of the Gulf of California do not attack adult white sharks but young specimens, which are smaller and therefore easier to prey on. Even easier because the orcas’ hunting technique “deactivates” them: it consists of immobilizing the prey and turning it belly up. In this way the sharks enter a state of tonic immobility: as the name suggests, they remain paralyzed and defenseless, and the orcas can effortlessly extract the liver directly from their belly, and eat it in peace.
Shark-gang. The brutal hunting method has been documented several times in recent months, with photos and videos also demonstrating that it is a collective effort: once they reach the liver, the orcas divide it among the members of the pod. Pod which, moreover, is not new to news of this type: it is called Moctezuma (from the name of one of the males that compose it), and last year it made headlines when it attacked and killed a whale shark, also exploiting the same technique used against white sharks.
Attacks all over the world. As mentioned at the beginning, episodes of orca predation against white sharks are nothing new, but so far the most striking cases have all come from South Africa and partly from Australia. Attacks in the Gulf of California like those documented in the study have not been seen since 1997. Furthermore, South African killer whales are also famous because they attack adult specimens without problems; those in California, on the other hand, prefer to play it safe and focus on young people.
There’s our hand. However, one thing is certain: killer whale attacks on great white sharks are more widespread than we thought, both numerically and geographically.
However, there is a possible explanation for why this is the first time we have observed such events in the Gulf of California: the increase in ocean temperatures is forcing white sharks to move their nurseries, and this “move” has brought them into contact with killer whales – with all the consequences of the case.
