Drone Footage Exhibits Killer Whales Looking and Consuming Nice White Sharks

Frequent readers of CNET Science will keep in mind Port and Starboard, the duo of killer whales from a narrative we revealed in June, which detailed analysis displaying nice white sharks have been being hunted by the whales off the coast of South Africa. New aerial footage, launched on Monday, exhibits one member of the murderous pair — Starboard — really making a kill. 

The footage was launched on YouTube as a part of a brand new research, led by Alison Towner, revealed on Oct. 3 within the journal Ecology. Towner additionally led the sooner research which used monitoring and sensor information to indicate the good white sightings had plummeted because the killer whales moved in. The researchers hypothesized, from proof discovered on shark carcasses, that killer whales have been looking the good whites and any surviving sharks had fairly actually been scared away from the world.

The brand new aerial footage, captured by a non-public drone operator and a helicopter pilot’s Samsung S21, appears to verify this and is the primary direct proof of orcas killing and consuming nice white sharks. It was captured in Could at Mossel Bay, South Africa, and a few footage had beforehand been launched by way of the Discovery Channel. 

“This conduct has by no means been witnessed intimately earlier than, and definitely by no means from the air,” mentioned Towner, who works as a senior shark scientist at Marine Dynamics Academy in Gansbaai, South Africa.  

The pictures and video present some fascinating maneuvers — the researchers imagine the whales are doubtlessly homing in on the good white shark’s livers, which give all of the sustenance an grownup, male killer whale might ask for. The footage exhibits a few of the assaults are directed simply behind the pectoral fins, doubtlessly to extract the liver. The workforce additionally studied pictures displaying Starboard (a whale simply recognized by its floppy dorsal fin) chowing down on one.

Intriguingly, Towner’s earlier analysis additionally confirmed that bronze whaler sharks, one other massive shark that frequents the South African coast, began shifting in as the good whites fled. Nice whites typically feed on the bronze whalers, however the bronze whalers aren’t fairly as fearful of orcas… so that they felt protected sufficient to journey into Gansbaai and feed on the seal inhabitants. Nonetheless, a tour operator from the area has seen killer whales assault bronze whalers, too. Really, no shark is protected. 

Whereas Port and Starboard have been recognized to be looking nice whites, the brand new analysis exhibits a number of different killer whales have additionally joined the hunts. 

It is too early to inform whether or not these killer whales are studying the shark-hunting approach from their forebears, however the research states if that is occurring, “it’s going to have wider reaching impacts on shark populations and can must be thought-about in future research.”