Drone footage shared during the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week shows the moment three killer whales in South Africa’s Mossel Bay hunt and kill a 9-foot-long great white shark.
The gory video, which was reportedly taken during “Shark Week” filming earlier this year, aired on Thursday in the special “Shark House. The orca bites the shark around its liver, with a cloud of blood pooling out into the green-tinted water.
“It’s the first time in South Africa it’s ever been documented as direct evidence,” she said. Researchers, she told the outlet, had evidence of killer whale attacks on white sharks before and data had revealed a change in the orcas’ cycling habits.
Part of South Africa-based marine biologist Alison Towner’s long-term work with great whites, the clip shares that what she wrote on her Instagram is “one of the most incredible pieces of natural history ever captured on film.
The reality is, that their movement has been very much messed up by the increased risk of killer whale predation, and now the total of dead white sharks has climbed to eight and one more bronze whaler shark since this paper was submitted.
