This was a great white shark hotspot. Then they mysteriously vanished | 60 Minutes
In a Nutshell
Great white sharks vanished from Cape Town's prime habitat around Seal Island after carcasses with surgically removed livers washed ashore, initially blamed on orcas like the infamous duo Port and Starboard, who learned to stun and target shark livers for their high-calorie content. Scientists debate the cause: some cite orca predation creating a "landscape of fear" that displaced sharks (though populations elsewhere recovered), while others like Chris Fallows and Enrico Gennari point to prior human impacts—depleted prey from commercial longline fishing and lethal shark nets killing dozens annually—as the real culprits preventing recovery. Conservationists urge ending these controllable threats, warning that failing to protect great whites signals doom for broader marine ecosystems, with hope drawn from humpback whales' rebound post-whaling bans.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Coastal waters around Cape Town, South Africa, have long teemed with great white sharks. About 10 years ago, carcasses of these predators began washing up on beaches with their livers missing. Now, it's hard to find any great whites. This story fuels a bitter feud among scientists and conservationists who disagree on the culprit. They agree the great white sharks that once cruised these waters are gone.
For as long as anyone can remember, the ocean off Cape Town was the best place in the world to see great whites. There were plenty of smaller sharks for them to hunt and tens of thousands of seals on nearby Seal Island.
Early each morning, with luck, you could see these majestic predators flying out of the water.
That was unbelievable.
Until a little more than a decade ago, photographer and naturalist Chris Fallows saw 250 to 300 different great white sharks a year. His images from then are among the most breathtaking of the natural world.
It's a sight you never forget. I still get that tingly feeling to see the most spectacular shark on Earth flying out of the water. It was truly incredible.
In 2010, reporters saw this themselves and noted tens of thousands of visitors came each year for close encounters in cages.
That was really something.
They dove without a cage in water chummed with blood. A 15 ft great white swam straight toward them.
That's a big one. This is amazing. It's coming right toward us.
Sharks are curious and circled constantly. It was extraordinary to be so close to such a massive predator.
That's just unbelievable. Wow. And I'm so happy I'm back up.
A few years after that dive, sightings dwindled and tourists stopped coming. Today, you would see nothing.
Why is that?
Because their numbers have simply plummeted. Tragically, we have all but lost the great white shark.
The disappearance mystified scientists. Alison Kock, marine biologist with South African National Parks, searched for clues. In 2015, divers sent photos of smaller shark carcasses on the sea floor with mysterious incisions.
It looked so surgical from the photographs that I first assumed it must have been done by somebody with a knife, a fisherman or something.
She retrieved carcasses and found tooth marks on the pectoral fins of some.
Those tooth marks suggested non-human culprits. Kock and colleagues dove for evidence and encountered orcas, killer whales.
We just retrieved one of the carcasses and my research partner says orca. And here comes two orcas under the boat in our study area. It was light bulb. They were feeding right in that area where we just found the carcass. Now what we have is that orcas are a real possibility for being the culprit for these carcasses.
Two years later, great whites began washing ashore with livers missing.
What's so tasty about a shark liver? It's the most calorie dense organ out of the whole body and it takes up almost a third of the shark's body.
So they're not trying to eat the entire shark.
They're just targeting the liver.
Kock and colleagues performed necropsies and confirmed orcas as culprits. Orcas have been in these waters for years, but no one had seen one kill a great white here, though they hunt them off California and around Australia. For South Africa, this was novel because great whites were considered apex predators.
I mean, it is like something out of CSI. It's like you're the detective.
And I feel like a detective, but for a long time, we didn't have all of the pieces of the puzzle.
David Hurwitz, whale watching tour operator, was first to see two distinctive male orcas hunting and killing sharks. He named them Port and Starboard.
What was distinctive about them is that both of their dorsal fins were collapsed, which is very unusual. Collapsed over like that. The one had collapsed to the left, the other to the right. And being a nautical man, immediately it came to my mind. Let's call them Port Starboard. And that caught on from there. They've become world famous or infamous.
Infamous because unlike most orcas that hunt in pods, Port and Starboard hunted sharks for livers as a pair, in ways unseen here.
Are these like serial killers?
They are definitely not serial. They're eating the livers. It's like Hannibal Lecter eating a liver with fava beans.
I am so infatuated by Port Starboard. You'll never get me to say a bad word against them.
Scientists believe Port and Starboard might teach other orcas. In 2022, drone footage captured five orcas working together, stunning and killing a great white.
Here's an orca with this big white shark upside down biting into the area where the liver is.
More recently, single orcas seen hunting sharks in South Africa and elsewhere. A National Geographic documentary shows an orca striking a great white like a torpedo, stunning it, then taking it in its mouth.
They're learning. They're learning all the time. I think it's hard for people to understand how smart these animals are.
Kock says these smart hunters chased great whites further along the coast, but insists overall great white population in South African waters is stable.
The presence of just two orcas that would drive away hundreds of them. The predator eats the prey and that has an impact on some of the numbers. But one of the biggest things with predation is the fear of predation or the risk of predation and what we call the landscape of fear.
But gazelle don't disappear because a lion is killing some gazelle.
They've evolved alongside their predator. White sharks have not. White sharks have been the top dog. This was a novel predator for them. They were not used to being predated on by another species.
Orcas have been killing white sharks for thousands of years.
Enrico Gennari, Italian marine biologist researching great whites in South Africa for 20 years, disagrees that population is stable.
The question is not the orcas are pushing white sharks away. Same thing happened in California. Same thing happened in Australia. The question here in South Africa, why are they not coming back? In California, orcas have killed great white sharks, but then the great whites came back. Up to six, nine months, the white sharks left, but they always came back.
Gennari and Chris Fallows agree great white numbers plummeted a few years before Port and Starboard began killing. By the time great whites disappeared from Seal Island, Port and Starboard had never been seen there.
You don't buy this argument that it's these two orcas that have made all the great whites here disappear.
I don't buy it one bit. How can you blame somebody that wasn't even on the crime scene?
Fallows and Gennari argue humans are ultimately to blame. They've documented impact of commercial fishing boats on smaller shark species, great whites' staple diet. Boats lay miles of long lines with thousands of hooks on ocean floor. Caught sharks exported to Australia for cheap fish and chips.
Shark long lining is undoubtedly robbing the great white sharks of food. It's the primary prey source for the great whites when they're not feeding on seals. When you remove the prey, you have a significant impact on the predator.
Even bigger impact: shark nets and baited hooks on buoys, used by South African authorities since the 1950s to protect swimmers. They kill more than 20 great whites a year along with other marine life.
The devices are designed to kill and lower the population number. The concept is one less shark, one less chance of an encounter with a human.
Gennari wants alternatives like underwater magnetic fields interfering with sharks' hunting sense, or smaller mesh nets creating barriers without entangling life.
The problem is in South Africa we only use little method and that is outdated and unsustainable.
If you believe that it's these two orcas which have driven away the great white population, there's not much humans can do about that. What your argument is there's actually a lot humans can do with long line fishing and getting rid of these shark nets. That is something humans can impact.
Absolutely. Let's stop bickering about something we can't control and let's start focusing on the things that we can control. And if we don't start addressing those factors that we can control, I don't believe there's any hope.
In 1991, South Africa was first country to protect great white sharks. Enrico Gennari believes efforts failed and fears it may be first to lose them.
If we lose the white shark in South Africa, we lose a battle for all nature. If we can't protect even the most charismatic, most protected species on paper in South Africa, what chance do the little guys, the other sharks or the other animals have against unsustainable use? Nothing.
There's a lot of people watching who may not have a lot of sympathy with great white sharks. Why should somebody care?
I think somebody should care in the same way as we never used to have sympathy with whales. We're wiping these animals out to the point of extinction. Great whites are no different. So even if we don't like the look of the animal, they're incredibly important for us going forward.
With no great whites, Fallows shifted to photographing humpback whales.
Unbelievable.
Since 1980s moratorium on commercial whaling, humpbacks made remarkable comeback.
Does it have anything to do with the great whites leaving?
No. What it's got 100% to do with is enlightened governments, passionate individuals showcasing the whales for what they were: incredibly sentient creatures having an important role to play in our ocean. Therefore, they became protected and now their numbers are being allowed to expand naturally.
To you, that's an example that conservation efforts can work.
Undoubtedly, it can work. I believe if we take away pressures on animals, if there are enough of them, they will still rebound. It's called balance. A balanced ocean is a healthy ocean. A healthy ocean is a healthy environment for us.
Explore wildlife photographer Chris Fallows' archive at 60 Minutes Overtime.com.
I was very lucky to be in the right position at the right time.
Keep 60 Minutes in your library
Save the videos and channels worth coming back to, and find them again in one place.
