06/30/2026
Killer whales have learned to flip great white sharks upside down, paralyze them, tear open the chest cavity, and remove the liver with the precision of a surgeon. They leave the rest of the body behind.
The technique works because of a quirk in shark biology called tonic immobility. When a shark is turned belly-up, it enters a temporary state of paralysis that can last several minutes. The shark stops struggling. Its awareness shuts down. Orcas exploit this by ramming or maneuvering a shark to the surface, rolling it onto its back, and holding it there. Once the shark goes limp, the orca bites through the pectoral girdle, the area between the front fins, and extracts the liver. A great white shark's liver can weigh more than 1,300 pounds and make up roughly a quarter of its total body mass. It is the richest single organ in the ocean, dense with fats, oils, and nutrients. The orcas take it and discard the rest.
The most documented case involves two male orcas off the coast of South Africa known as Port and Starboard, named for their dorsal fins, which collapse left and right. They were first reported near Gansbaai in 2015. Since then they have killed at least nine great white sharks, at least 17 broadnose sevengill sharks in a single day, and an unknown number of copper sharks, all with the same method. Every carcass that washed ashore was found in the same condition: a clean tear in the chest, liver gone, everything else intact. Shark biologist Alison Towner, who has studied great whites in Gansbaai for years, described it as near-surgical precision.
In June 2023, drone footage captured Starboard hunting alone near Mossel Bay. He killed an eight-foot juvenile great white and removed its liver in under two minutes. Then he swam past the research boat with the bloody organ in his mouth. It was the first time a solo orca had been filmed killing a great white shark. Port was not present.
The consequences have restructured an entire coastline. Before Port and Starboard, Gansbaai was called the great white capital of the world and drew thousands of cage-diving tourists every year. After the orca pair arrived, great whites began fleeing the area. Towner's team tracked fourteen GPS-tagged sharks and documented them scattering every time orcas appeared. Absences that used to last a week stretched into months and then entire seasons. By 2020, great white sightings in False Bay had dropped to nearly zero.
In November 2025, a study published in Frontiers in Marine Science documented the same behavior on the other side of the world. In the Gulf of California, a pod known as Moctezuma's pod was filmed by drone attacking juvenile great white sharks in August 2020 and again in August 2022. Five orcas drove a juvenile shark to the surface, flipped it onto its back, and consumed its liver. They repeated the attack on a second shark minutes later. Lead author Erick Higuera said the lack of bite marks or injuries anywhere other than the pectoral fins showed a specialized technique of accessing the liver with minimal handling. Co-author Salvador Jorgensen of California State University Monterey Bay noted that juveniles, which gather in coastal nurseries during their first years, make easy repeatable targets because they have not yet learned to flee from orcas.
The behavior appears to be spreading. In South Africa, bronze whaler sharks moved into the gap left by fleeing great whites and are now being hunted by Port and Starboard too. Seal populations, no longer kept in check by great white predation, have exploded and begun raiding the nesting sites of endangered African penguins. When a top predator vanishes from a system, everything beneath it shifts.
Source: Higuera-Rivas et al. (2025), Frontiers in Marine Science / Towner et al. (2022), African Journal of Marine Science / National Geographic / ScienceDaily.
