After being viciously mauled by killer whales, a great white shark came up on a beach in South Africa with a hole in its underbelly and its liver ripped out.
Alison Towner, a renowned expert on orcas killing great whites off the coast of South Africa, posted photographs of the dead shark on Facebook and stated that it is the first of its kind to wash ashore in Hartenbos, Mossel Bay.
Towner writes, ‘It never becomes easier to see this’ This is an exceptionally young sub-adult female shark.
In a comment underneath the Facebook photo, she notes, “It’s a surprisingly clean tear that varies in size but often covers around the breadth between the pec fins.” ‘The heart is frequently absent as it is intimately associated with the liver. The last white shark we necropsied owing to Orca predation included a fresh seal.
Researchers who study great whites estimate that a single pair of killer whales had killed at least eight others off the coast of South Africa since 2017; however, these incidents occurred approximately 305 miles distant on the country’s southwestern coast.
“Therefore, the carcasses do not represent the true quantity.” While it is common for some offshore killer whales to hunt sharks, there have been more sightings of these whales in Mossel Bay this year, as well as an increase in the number of white sharks they have killed.
Towner stated that killer whales take the sharks’ fattier parts, such as the livers since they prefer to feast on the extremely nutritious, lipid-rich organ.
Towner told Newsweek that killer whale tooth impressions were found on the pectoral fins of the sharks, and their livers were taken so cleanly that it would require the coordination of enormous and intelligent animals to tear a white shark open and achieve this.
Experts believe the killer whales’ conduct could indicate a general expansion of the species in the area, or they could be members of a rare shark-eating morphotype known to target at least three shark species near South Africa.
‘Predator-prey interactions between white sharks, other coastal sharks, and killer whales are rising in South Africa and are anticipated to have significant effects on the environment,’ the researchers wrote in their Taylor & Francis online-published article.
The presence of killer whales may even suggest that a drop in prey populations, like fish and sharks, is influencing their movement patterns within some regions.
Other possibilities for the fall of Great Whites in the region include shark fishing, fishery-induced prey declines, and an increase in sea surface temperature.
“Southern African white sharks were officially protected in 1991, and while there are debates in the scientific literature about their population size, all researchers here agree that they are not recovering,” says Towner.
As a result of the absence of natural risk factors, Cape Fur Seals no longer behave in the same manner, which has larger ecological implications.
