Great White Sharks’ Mysterious Mass Disappearance in South Africa Due to Orcas Explained

Great white sharks were not observed in South Africa following a killing spree by two orcas. The great whites reportedly shifted into a new area to avoid the killer whales.

Great White Sharks Mysterious Disappear

Great white sharks have been showing up dead on the shores of Gansbaai and False Bay in South Africa for years, with missing livers. According to reports, orcas attacked the great whites and targeted their liver.

The sharks stopped coming ashore after that, and suddenly, they stopped swimming in the vicinity of those coasts, among their most well-known habitats in South Africa. The great whites have gone missing.

Michelle Jewell, an ecologist at the Michigan State University Museum, said the loss of white sharks was so extreme, so quick, and unheard of that several ideas started to be put out. People were concerned that substantial portions of the population may have been wiped off due to overfishing of both the food that sharks eat and the sharks themselves.

According to a new study, the sharks didn't disappear; instead, they hid in a new neighborhood to stay out of danger. The shark populations in South Africa had moved east to areas like Algoa Bay and the coast of KwaZulu-Natal.

This is not particularly surprising, Jewell continued. She added that they were aware of the significant impact that predators have on their prey's mobility and habitat utilization. The researchers in the study went through an elimination procedure to look at the top theories, which included declining prey in the area where the sharks vanished and high reproduction in regions where many fresh shark sightings were reported. Finally, they concluded that the great whites fled to avoid orca attacks.

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Why Orcas Target Great White Sharks' Liver?

Andrew Trites, a professor and director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Colombia, explained the killer whales' behavior. He says there's a reason why orcas are after great whites' liver.

The shark's livers are often full of oil, squalene, and calories. They are also rich in vitamins, making them a great source of food to sustain orcas' need for high-caloric food requirement to maintain their energetically expensive lifestyle.

The expert also added that because sharks don't have swim bladders like most fish do, their livers aid in maintaining buoyancy. Sharks' livers make up five to ten percent of their total weight, which is excessive compared to the importance of people and other animals.

A study published in 2022 revealed that eight great white sharks had washed up on a beach in the Western Cape near Gansbaai, and seven of them had their livers torn out. In February, a pair of orcas - Port and Starboard - massacred 17 sharks in 24 hours.

The pair extract livers with surgical precision. They reportedly work together by pushing the sharks toward the surface and flipping their belly before biting into their stomachs to extract the liver while leaving the other organs intact.