Orcas vs. Whale Sharks: A New Apex Predator Dynamic

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Orcas are the apex predators. They've been known to take down

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great white sharks. They've been known to take down blue whales.

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They've been known to take down seals and it's pretty

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interesting to watch as they work together as a

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pod to ensure that everybody gets a good meal.

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It's really interesting to follow orcas and to learn more

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and more about orcas. And there's new news about this apex predator

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that really brings an interesting light to them in that

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they have now started to hunt or maybe have been hunting

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them for a while. We just finally caught it on video hunting

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the largest fish in the ocean, the whale

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shark. We're gonna find out how this is happening. We're

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gonna find out maybe why this is happening and where

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it's happening on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's

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start the show. Hey,

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm

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your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how

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you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by

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taking action. This is the resource for

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out speak up for blue.com forward slash newsletter. Let's

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start the show today. We're going to be talking about orcas

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and you know, it's always good to hear about orcas. We have seen orcas

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in a lot of different lights, you know, we've seen them vulnerable. to elements

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where it's like not enough food in the Southern Resident Orca population, dams

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preventing that food, the salmon, from rebuilding its

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populations. We've seen lower pH that affects

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the salmon from coming back. So we've seen that. We've seen the fact that the same

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population, the Southern Resident Orca population, has been taken,

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in the 1970s, were taken from their parents, from

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their mothers, and ripped out of the ocean and brought into tanks, and

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still some of those are in tanks. So we've seen a

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decrease in that population. We've also seen orcas thrive

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on attacking boats. and playing around with boats and trying to

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figure out how to hunt better by hunting sailboats in the Strait

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of Gibraltar. And we've seen orcas hunt seals,

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we've seen orcas hunt in South Africa, hunt

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great white sharks, port and starboard orcas that are

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sort of stirring up a controversy of why great white sharks aren't

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found in South Africa anymore. It's always interesting that I'll link

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to that episode on your YouTube channel

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so you can check that out. But they've been a lot of things about

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orcas and they've been... pretty much hunting everything. The

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way they hunt is really interesting. They use everybody in their pod. It's a matriarchal pod,

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meaning the females are in charge. The females stay inside the

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pod, the males stay on the outside of the pod, but they work together to

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feed. And you've seen videos and clips of orcas

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hunting sea lions and seals, where they're hunting seals,

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and they make a tidal wave so that the seals are hit off

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the piece of floating ice, and it goes into the mouth of another orca.

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So it's like it's showing how unselfish they are. They want to make sure that everybody in

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the pod gets their share and they switch it up after that. We've also

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heard of and seen images of blue

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whales being hunted by orcas and the coordinated attacks on

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these blue whales, the largest mammal on the planet. And

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now we have footage and pictures of

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orcas hunting the largest fish on the planet, whale

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sharks. And this is a really interesting thing because there's a new article,

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a journal article, published in Frontiers of Marine Science. They

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have video and pictures, and they have witnessed attacks

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from orcas, a pod of orcas in the Gulf of California, where

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they are attacking whale sharks. And the way they're

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attacking whale sharks is that they're hitting them in

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their pelvis area, like on their underbelly. And they're hitting

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them and grabbing them from their pectoral fins. And

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they're grabbing them from their claspers. And why are they going there? For

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the same reason they go after great white sharks, is for

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that nutrient-rich liver. And just think about, a

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great white shark that's about 20 feet long, you're looking at

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a pretty big liver. A whale shark, the largest fish on the planet, has

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an even bigger liver, which allows for them to have more

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nutrients, be able to better feed probably for

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a number of orcas. and it just ends up being a better meal

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overall. Knowing that this is happening, this may not be something

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that's new. The study looked at the predation events. There's four predation events

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over a period of about six years, from 2018 to

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2024. They noticed that one of the males, I think they named

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him Moctezuma. Moctezuma engaged

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in three out of the four events and the females involved in

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the event had previously been sighted with him. It's the same pod

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attacking these whale sharks in the Gulf of California and

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being quite successful at it. So we don't know if this is the only time

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or this is the beginning of this. Chances are with the way that they're attacking,

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they're learning every single time. Like we've seen port and starboard. We've

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heard of them, how they're getting more and more efficient. It used to be two

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orcas, like both of them attacking the same great white. Now it

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seems to be one at a time and being able to attack multiple

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great whites in a very short span of time. this is

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seems to be it's like two maybe three orcas attacking at the same time

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hitting their underbelly trying to get their pectoral fins and

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then ripping out their liver and being able to eat their liver there's

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still a lot that needs to be shown with this but it's something that

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is incredible to be able to know that hey you know what we've discovered another

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thing that this like this predator, this

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apex predator, has been able to accomplish. And

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maybe it's probably been done before, and it'll probably be done in the future, but

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it's now we know that it actually happens. It tells a lot

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for a number of reasons. So the first reason is it kind of gives another

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little aspect to the orcas and their predation. We know orcas can

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predate great whites. We know they can other sharks and fish, mola molas, salmon,

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so forth. And they have very interesting ways of displaying

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their kill sometimes like for instance there's an article came out describing an

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orca having a dead salmon on

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top of the head on top of their head like they were just wearing it like a

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hat we've known that it's also happened with mola molas that's

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happened in the past and so they have a very interesting way

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of eating And they're very interesting in displaying what they eat. I

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don't know if it's because they're having fun. They're kind of

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showing that they can have this predation. We don't know exactly what's happening, but

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their intelligence, the way they behave socially, sometimes

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it's still a mystery. And it's always interesting to find out a little bit

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more. And this is what we're finding out a little bit more and more. They're finding out that, look, we

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know livers are very nutrient rich. We know that they go for it for great white sharks

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and other sharks. Largest shark in the world, hey, largest

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fish in the world, now we know that we can you know they

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they go after these livers because they're nutrient and they're huge and so that

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is something to tell the other thing that we have to look at as well is

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that whale sharks have a predator and a very good predator at

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that they need to be protected it's there's no change

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from that they need to be protected just from a basis of we don't know a

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lot about whale sharks we're just discovering that you know with through tagging

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that we look at their global distribution and

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that we're seeing a lot of connections across the world in

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terms of populations. But we're just really scratching the surface

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with this fish, right? We're just

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scratching the surface. We're being able to identify them through like

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their patterns on their backs, like the spots on their backs. But

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also we now know that they have a predator that's really good at hunting.

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and they are obviously getting better and better at hunting whale sharks and

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that's not going to stop. So protecting this species is

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really important. We have climate change, we have water quality problems, we

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have just like poaching events and fishing in general. There's

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plastic debris and plastic pollution and marine debris that we have to worry about.

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There's a lot of things that we have to worry about and now there's natural predation. And

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a predation from a species that is really good at hunting, like I mean

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really good at hunting. It's going to be interesting to see where this research

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develops later on and how we find out more

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and more about this pod and more and more about their hunting strategy. Obviously

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now with the ability to be able to film at a higher pace, to

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be able to film in places further around and film from like a drone footage, we

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are being able to discover a lot of things. Technology is really helping

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in that. we're gonna be able to understand animals a lot better, and

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we're gonna be able to understand orcas, as well as whale sharks, a lot better,

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and what's affecting this prey and predator situation. That's it for today's

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episode. I just wanted to bring you that. I thought we would start it off with a fun

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time this week, and being able to say, hey, you know what? Orcas

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are cool, and whale sharks... Maybe they're a little worried about

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what's happening, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think

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it's a cool thing for orcas? Do you think whale sharks, we have to be worried about

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whale sharks and their population in the Gulf of California? I'd

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love to hear your thoughts. If you have more information on this, if you're working on this

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and you're listening to this and be like, oh man, we need to tell, we need to talk Andrew. Hit

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me up. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to get you on an episode to be

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able to talk more, maybe do an interview on this, because I would like

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to know more about these orcas. That's it for today's episode.

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Don't forget, if you want to subscribe to our newsletter, go to speakupforblue.com forward

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and that's it for today's episode i am your host angelou and until next