The article discusses how orcas named Port and Starboard are hunting and killing great white sharks off the South African coast with astounding efficiency. Marine experts are baffled by the precision of their attacks, where they remove the sharks' livers with surgical precision, leaving the rest of the body behind. Esther Jacobs, a marine biologist, shares her shocking experience witnessing one of these hunts firsthand, highlighting the surreal nature of seeing an apex predator like the great white being effortlessly overpowered. This behavior raises questions about orca hunting techniques and their impact on the marine ecosystem.
On her June 2023 voyage into Mossel Bay, Jacobs didn't know that danger still lurked below. Then she spotted Port and Starboard - and watched the latter stalk a great white, disembowel its liver and then show off his gruesome trophy to a human audience on a nearby boat.
Marine biologists have been stunned by the killer whales creating near-surgical cuts in great whites' underbellies, removing their livers and leaving them to die, sometimes within minutes.
I've always seen [great white sharks] as this incredibly powerful apex predator. So to see one just get picked off so easily ... it's really mind blowing.
They can handle a white shark and just shuck it like a mussel almost - just tear it open and slide its liver out and consume it and discard the rest.
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