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In 2015 a pair of orcas - Port & Starboard - arrived in Cape Town and began hunting local sharks, surgically targeting the liver. The great whites fled, causing a collapse in marine tourism, but it gets stranger.
False Bay used to have hundreds of sharks, but by 2020 not a single one was spotted. The orcas dispatched dozens of great whites, broadnose sevengills and copper sharks, each time a precision removal of the liver.
In May 2022 the orcas seemed to be teaching other orcas how to hunt in this way. A group were caught on drone footage dispatching a great white in Mossel Bay. The unprecedented incident was written up in a journal.
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The pair's skill and taste for shark liver seems insatiable. On one day alone, the duo killed 17 broadnose sevengill sharks, chowing down only on their livers. Exactly what the long-term consequences of their predation will be is unclear.
The orcas are taking advantage of the shark's vulnerability to being rammed from underneath, which induces 'tonic immobility'. They then rip off the pectoral fin and aim for the liver.
In this house we enjoy orcas and can't wait to see what the two of them do next.
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