On May 16, 2022, observers off the coast of Mossel Bay, South Africa, watched two killer whales flip a great white shark onto its back, hold it in a state of paralysis, and tear out its liver. Drone cameras, phone footage, and a helicopter all captured the attack, producing the first aerial documentation of this predatory technique in real time. The event added hard visual evidence to a pattern that marine biologists have tracked since at least 2015 along South Africa’s coastline, and it raises a pressing question: how far and how fast will this hunting behavior spread?
Orca liver extraction and the white shark flight response
The Mossel Bay footage matters because it confirmed, under peer review, two things that researchers had long suspected but rarely observed directly. First, killer whales deliberately roll great whites belly-up to trigger tonic immobility, a reflex that renders sharks unable to move. Second, the orcas target the liver with surgical precision. After the attack, free-floating liver tissue was visible in the water, consistent with selective organ removal rather than opportunistic scavenging.
The consequences extend well beyond a single dead shark. When killer whales appear at a white shark aggregation site, the sharks leave, sometimes for weeks or months. Research at the Southeast Farallon Islands off California showed that even brief killer whale visits displaced white sharks and reduced their predation pressure on pinnipeds. Seal colonies that had been heavily hunted suddenly experienced a reprieve, while the sharks relocated to less productive waters.
That displacement dynamic is now well established in two ocean basins. In South Africa, the timeline of orca–white shark interactions stretches back to roughly 2015, with carcasses washing ashore missing only their livers. At the Farallons, tagging data captured the same flight response independently. The pattern suggests that wherever killer whales learn this technique, local shark populations will thin out, and the prey species those sharks normally control will face different pressures.
A reasonable working hypothesis is that orca groups skilled in liver extraction will expand into additional white shark aggregation sites within the next several years, producing measurable drops in shark residency time at those locations. The logic is straightforward: killer whales are highly mobile, socially transmitted hunting strategies spread within and between pods, and the caloric reward of a shark liver, rich in energy-dense squalene, is enormous relative to the effort involved. If the behavior keeps spreading, researchers expect to see the same displacement cascade repeat at new sites.
Drone and tagging data behind the Mossel Bay attack
The peer-reviewed study published in Ecology, the journal of the Ecological Society of America, reconstructed the May 16, 2022 event using footage from three independent platforms: a drone, handheld phone cameras, and a helicopter. That multi-angle documentation allowed researchers to confirm the inversion attempt on the white shark and to identify the moment when the liver separated from the body. The study also placed the attack within a broader timeline of South African strandings, linking it to earlier cases where orcas were reported extracting livers from great whites along the same coastline.
Separate from the South African record, a 1999 study published in Marine Mammal Science documented a predation event on a white shark by a killer whale and noted that liver-targeting behavior had been reported in multiple contexts. That earlier paper, now widely cited, established the scientific baseline: orcas have been killing great whites and consuming their livers for at least two decades, and the behavior appears in geographically distinct populations.
The Farallon Islands dataset adds a different kind of evidence. Rather than documenting a single kill, that research used long-term tagging and observational records to show how killer whale presence altered an entire food web. White sharks abandoned the islands after orca encounters, and pinniped predation rates shifted accordingly. The study demonstrated that even infrequent orca visits produced outsized ecological effects, because sharks avoided the area for extended periods after a single encounter.
In Mossel Bay, the combination of drone footage and opportunistic surface observations provided an unusually detailed look at the mechanics of a kill. The orcas approached the shark from below and behind, maneuvered it into a vulnerable position, and then executed the roll that induced tonic immobility. Once the shark was incapacitated, the whales focused their bites on the ventral region near the liver, minimizing time spent wrestling with a still-dangerous predator. For researchers, those sequences offered a rare chance to connect behavior inferred from carcasses to behavior observed in the water.
Tagging data, where available, help fill in what happens before and after such attacks. At the Farallons, satellite and acoustic tags showed that white sharks left the area almost immediately after killer whales appeared and did not return for the rest of the season. Although comparable multi-year tag datasets are not yet available for South Africa, preliminary movement records suggest that great whites have altered their historical use of certain coastal hotspots in the years when liverless carcasses began to wash ashore.
Gaps in the record and what to watch next
Several critical questions remain open. No vessel-based or tagging data exist to confirm the individual identities of the two orcas involved in the Mossel Bay event or whether they had prior experience with liver extraction at other sites. Without individual identification, researchers cannot yet map how the behavior moves between pods or whether specific animals act as specialists.
The evidence for liver consumption itself, while visually compelling, has not been confirmed through biochemical analysis or stomach-content examination of either species. Researchers inferred organ removal from the free-floating liver imagery and from the condition of previously stranded shark carcasses, but direct physiological confirmation is absent. Future studies could use non-lethal sampling of killer whale feces or opportunistic necropsies of stranded orcas to test for shark-specific biomarkers, offering firmer proof of repeated liver feeding.
Population-level data connecting repeated orca attacks to long-term white shark displacement also remain thin. The Farallon Islands study demonstrated the mechanism at one site, and the South African strandings suggest a recurring pattern, but no multi-year movement dataset yet links specific predation events to sustained changes in shark residency across multiple locations. Institutional stranding records and fisheries logbooks along the South African coast have not been systematically cross-checked against the timeline of observed orca presence, leaving open the possibility that additional attacks have gone unrecognized.
Another gap involves the social transmission of the behavior. Killer whales are known for cultural traditions in hunting, but the pathways by which a new technique spreads are poorly understood. Researchers do not yet know whether liver extraction in South Africa is confined to a small number of individuals, has already diffused through a regional population, or is being copied by younger whales observing successful hunts. Long-term photo-identification and acoustic monitoring could help determine whether the same orcas appear repeatedly at shark hotspots and whether their vocalizations or group compositions change over time.
Climate and prey shifts add further uncertainty. If traditional killer whale prey such as certain fish or marine mammals decline in abundance, the incentive to target energy-rich shark livers may increase. Conversely, if white shark numbers drop too far, orcas may move on to alternative strategies, leaving behind altered ecosystems where shark populations are slow to recover. disentangling these drivers will require coordinated monitoring that integrates oceanographic data, prey surveys, and predator behavior.
For now, the Mossel Bay footage stands as a pivotal datapoint. It confirms that killer whales can and do use tonic immobility to subdue great whites, that they can remove livers with remarkable precision, and that their mere presence can reshape local food webs. The next phase of research will focus on scale: determining whether this is a localized phenomenon or the leading edge of a broader shift in apex predator dynamics across multiple oceans. As more drones, tags, and observational networks come online, scientists hope to move from dramatic single events to a clearer picture of how often, and where, killer whales are rewriting the rules of shark-dominated ecosystems.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
