Great fright sharks: Orcas kill Jaws sharks

As far as apex predators go, great white sharks have it made. As Matt Hooper from Jaws explains, they are a miracle of evolution, a perfect engine, an eating machine, but it turns out they are also falling victim to another eating machine, a pair of killer whales.

Research has discovered that these Orcas are certainly living up to their killer name as it is estimated a pair of killer whales have killed at least eight great white sharks in the last five years. The hunter becoming the hunted, sought for its liver (hold the fava beans).

It’s more Feed Willy than Free Willy as the dead great whites have been washing up on beaches Chrissie Watkins style, with the Carcharodon carnage, even making other great whites stay well away from the area in South Africa.

Orcas are the only natural predator of the great white, so it is a fantastic touch that in Jaws Quint’s boat used for sharking is named after the very same creature.

That killer whale and great white rivalry would spill over into the Orca (1977) where the titular killer whale takes out a great white in the opening scene, with the battle of the apex predators escalating in Jaws 2 where a dead killer whale washes up on the beach.

And – so we are told – the fight between fish and mammal is set to continue in Alphas, with Sam Worthington.

Back to real life, it is thought that the pair of killer whales – known as port and starboard - have been acting like Jack the Ripper (rather than a propellor or coral reef) due to running low of their natural food, instead resorting to ripping out their hearts or lungs with deadly precision.

Speaking in The Telegraph Alison Towner, study author and a senior white shark biologist at the Dyer Island Conservation Trust, said: “The orcas are targeting subadult great white sharks, which can further impact an already vulnerable shark population owing to their slow growth and late-maturing life-history strategy.”

The research is published in the African Journal of Marine Science. And although it sounds like a great story about a sea battle by the two heavyweights of the ocean, the research also points at us and over-fishing also having an impact.

It is still difficult to comprehend that these sharks are being attacked and killed in such manner by killer whales and it is certainly an astonishing sight to see these great fish contorted in death on beaches, their mouths open wide making them look less like the powerful shark from Jaws, but more like death screams of terror.