2024 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 02:07
Experts have found that since 2019, all white sharks have disappeared in the ocean in the Cape Town region (South Africa). According to their version, the sharks were destroyed by killer whales, they are also killer whales, because they really liked the shark liver
The fact that killer whales regularly attack white sharks, but do not touch their meat, and gnaw only the belly, where the liver is located, scientists have learned quite recently. Before that, they only noted that white sharks avoid killer whales and frankly afraid of them.
White sharks are often considered the most aggressive oceanic predators, but in reality they are far from the top of the food chain. However, no one could have thought that because of such a passion for "delicacy" killer whales are able to completely exterminate the population of white sharks in a certain place.
Until 2017, white sharks were habitual and permanent marine inhabitants off the coast of Cape Town (South Africa). Many divers deliberately dive in steel cages to observe great white sharks. But after 2017, the number of sightings of white sharks began to decline sharply.
White shark with a gnawed liver on the coast of South Africa
From 2010 to 2016, at least 200 white sharks were observed in Falls Bay Cape Town. In 2017-2018, there were only 50 of them, and in 2019 not a single white shark was seen here. In early 2020, a single white shark was seen in local waters, and then no one else met that.
Several versions of the disappearance of sharks were considered, including that they were exterminated by local fishermen. They also looked for the cause in water pollution and climate change. However, a group of local experts later said they found a clear link between killer whale activity in the Cape Town area and the disappearance of white sharks.
It turned out that from 2017 to 2019, at least seven corpses of large white sharks with a gnawed liver were thrown onto the coast of South Africa, and experts believe that, judging by the teeth marks, it was killer whales who did it.
Biologist examines the corpse of a white shark with a gnawed belly
Shark liver, especially in white sharks, is very large and fat, it contains many useful substances and for killer whales it is an extremely nutritious product.
According to the theory put forward, which would explain such an unusually large passion of local killer whales for shark liver, all due to a substance called squalene. It is an organic chemical found in abundance in the liver oil of great white sharks. Squalene is an intermediate in the biological synthesis of steroids, including cholesterol (via lanosterol), and is involved in metabolism.
Experts believe that local killer whales literally "got hooked" on squalene like drug addicts and they wanted to consume it more and more, more and more often.
As for which killer whales are responsible for the extermination of white sharks, the researchers have no doubts - they claim that only two local killer whales, named Port and Starboard, committed the "genocide" of white sharks. They first appeared off the coast of Cape Town in 2015 and since then this bay has become their home and hunting grounds.
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