Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Orcas vs. Whale Sharks: A New Apex Predator Dynamic

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Orcas vs. Whale Sharks: A New Apex Predator Dynamic · How To Protect The Ocean

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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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  inbox Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. Eastern. So check that
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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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  and that's it for today's episode i am your host angelou and until next