In New Footage, Great Whites Are the Prey, Not the Predator

The great white shark is clearly not the apex predator of the ocean, according to new observations of orca hunting methods. For the first time in the Gulf of California, scientists have spotted orcas targeting juvenile great whites, flipping them upside down to induce a trance-like state before removing and eating their livers—a fatty organ that makes up a quarter of a shark's body, per NBC News. The behavior reveals a sophisticated hunting method in which the orcas use tonic immobility, a kind of temporary paralysis, to render the young sharks defenseless, per Live Science. This allows the whales to extract the nutrient-rich organ with minimal risk of injury to themselves, according to a study published Monday in Frontiers in Marine Science.

The attacks, carried out by a group known as Moctezuma's pod, involved five orcas working together to pursue, subdue, and disembowel the young sharks. In all three recorded cases—two in 2020 and one in 2022—the orcas shared the livers among the group. While orcas are known to hunt great whites in places like South Africa and Australia, such behavior is rarely documented in the Northeast Pacific, and almost never involving juveniles. "This is the first time we are seeing orcas repeatedly target juvenile white sharks," study co-author Salvador Jorgensen, a marine ecologist at California State University, Monterey Bay, said in a release.

The lead author, marine biologist Jesús Erick Higuera Rivas, described the attacks as evidence of the species' intelligence and ability to pass down complex hunting strategies within family groups. The researchers note that the presence of more juvenile great whites in the Gulf of California may be due to shifting ocean temperatures and changing shark nursery locations. It remains unclear whether the orcas regularly target adult great whites, but the researchers warn that other pods could adopt similar hunting strategies as the number of juvenile sharks—less experienced and possibly unaware of the threat posed by orcas—increases in the region.