Watch orcas team up to hunt great white sharks in rare video
The killer whales ripped the liver out of a shark and passed it around—only the second time orcas have been seen engaging in this behavior.
A pod of killer whales chased a young great white shark, immobilized it and then bit its liver out of its body. Researchers documented this rare interaction in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, representing what they say is the first example of this behavior in the Gulf of California and the second worldwide.
The study adds to a growing body of research on killer whales, also called orcas, hunting great white sharks.
"The footage that they've gotten for this study is incredible,’’ says Isabella Reeves, a predator biologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who was not involved in the research. Especially is rare is the depiction of the whales sharing the prey with each other, she says: “There's very few high-quality instances where we actually see that occurring, especially documented to this extent.”
In the Gulf of California, the body of water that separates the Baja California peninsula from Mexico’s mainland, marine biologists Erick Higuera, Francesca Pancaldi, and their team have closely studied a group of killer whales since 2018. They call it “Moctezuma’s pod,” after one of the individual whales that was first spotted in 1992 and was nicknamed for the Aztec emperor.
Over the years, they observed these orcas using diverse strategies to hunt a vast array of prey: from rays to whale sharks, stingrays and bull sharks.
Documenting the hunt
In August 2020, while the team was out at sea following the pod to conduct their research, the killer whales started hunting. Higuera quickly flew his drone to record the action.
“I saw in the monitor of the drone that they were hunting a shark, but I couldn't tell what species of shark was,” he recalls. During the hunting session, which lasted about 30 minutes, the pod took down two sharks.
Just days later, after downloading the footage, Higuera realized that the pod he recorded was hunting something unexpected: young great white sharks.
To hunt a juvenile great white shark—which is usually around 6.5 feet long—the killer whales would run it down, bite it and try to flip it on its back. In this position, the shark would become paralyzed, making it easier for the whales to bite their prey without being bitten back.
The members of the pod would take turns keeping the shark belly up, and toward the end of the attack they would bring it underwater. After about two minutes they would reappear, and one of the killer whales would hold the shark’s fatty, calorie-rich liver in its mouth.
They would then pass the meal to each other, sharing the prize of their successful hunt.
The team recorded the Moctezuma’s pod again in August 2022, hunting one young great white shark in the same location where they spotted the first two predations. This time, the team didn’t see the orcas turning the shark upside down to kill it.
‘’The footage gives us a very clear look at how the interaction unfolds, which we’ve only been able to document directly in a few places globally,” says Alison Towner, a marine biologist at Rhodes University in South Africa who wasn’t involved in the new study.
(Why are these orcas killing sharks and removing their livers?)
Putting the behavior in context
Orcas have been documented hunting great white sharks in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, California and South Africa. They have mainly been seen hunting adults—which are 13 to 16 feet long—and studies in some areas showed that when one individual is hunted by killer whales, all the others move away from that area en masse to avoid the predators.
In this case, the Moctezuma’s pod seems to be targeting juveniles, say Higuera. ‘’They might be coming to this particular spot where we saw them just to hunt juvenile great whites,’’ which are probably easier to hunt, as “more naive than adult great whites,” he says, and might not know how to escape killer whales—which are their only predator. ‘’But I couldn't doubt that they also hunt semi adults and adult great whites in this area, it's just that we haven't seen it yet.’’
Climate change may also be playing its part in this rare interaction. Scientists say that due to warming waters and other factors, the nurseries of these sharks might be moving—with great whites increasing their presence in the Gulf of California, presenting the orcas living there with a juicy opportunity to hunt them.
But Reeves notes that it’s too soon to draw conclusions on the effects that killer whales might have on the great white sharks living in that area. “It's complex, and we can't risk oversimplifying these interactions,” she says.
On the other hand, Towner, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on orcas displacing white sharks in South Africa, says the behavior could become a problem for great white sharks populations, especially if it becomes frequent.
‘’White sharks are slow to mature, long-lived, and produce few offspring, so they’re vulnerable to added pressures,” she says. In South Africa, for example, white sharks have left sites where they congregate in large numbers because of attacks from killer whales. ‘’That displacement can move them into areas where the risks from fisheries or shark control gear are higher—so the indirect effects matter as much as the predation itself.’’
