According to the researchers, two male killer whales, Port and Starbort, are behind this attack, and they attack great white sharks and deftly gut them.
Killer whales killed 17 sharks off the coast of South Africa and surgically “removed” their livers. Researchers have called it the largest killer whale attack to date. This was reported on the Marine Dynamics Academy Facebook page.
Oceanologists said they knew of two adult male killer whales. One is called Port and the other is called Sanjak (“starboard”), these people often hunt sharks off the coast of South Africa.
According to scientists’ observations, they noticed killer whales diving for about two hours in the “Pearl Beach” area of the fishing town of Gansabay in South Africa’s Western Cape. And only then did they enter deeper waters.
Two days later, 11 flat-seven-gill sharks were washed ashore by the tides, and 7 more bodies were later found.
In killer whale and shark encounters, the first one usually wins, and the presence of these killer whales is easy to spot by their distinctive fins. Published photographs show marine mammals diving in the area where the massacre took place.
Alison Towner of Rhodes University in South Africa’s Eastern Cape conducts research on killer whales preying on sharks in local waters.
According to him, each of the bodies discovered had a torn abdomen and had no liver. All sharks were females 1.5 – 2 meters long. Such damage has also been reported in sharks in the False Bay area, a remote area in southwestern South Africa where killer whales frequently attack sharks.
Killer whales have never before been reported to swallow 17 sharks at once. Maybe there were even more dead animals and not all of them landed.
A pair of killer whales – Port and Starboard – caught the attention of oceanographers in 2015. It is believed that it was these killer whales that killed the sharks, which were later discovered by divers. They began hunting great white sharks between 2017 and 2019.
A 2017 report from the African Journal of Marine Research states that eight disembodied great white sharks have been found off the coast of Gansbai. Six of them did not have a liver, and some did not have a heart.
Scientists have no doubt that killer whales are behind these attacks.
“The sharks’ pectoral fins were marked with killer whale teeth and their livers were carefully removed – only large and highly dexterous animals could do with great white sharks,” Towner explained.
Recall that off the coast of Iceland, a killer whale stole the calf of a round-headed whale. Scientists agree that the female killer whale adopted it.
Previously Focus reported that a diver kicked a hungry shark and saved his life. The freediving instructor caught a few lobsters and swam towards shore, but the shark suddenly pulled the prey out of the spear.
Source: Focus
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