From tourist hotspot to marine mystery: where are the great white sharks?

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This is an updated mentation of a communicative archetypal published connected April 12, 2026. The archetypal video tin beryllium viewed here.

The coastal waters astir Cape Town, South Africa, person agelong teemed with large achromatic sharks. But astir 10 years agone carcasses of these feared predators began washing up connected beaches with their livers missing. Now it's hard to find immoderate large whites. Tonight, a communicative that has each the hallmarks of a whodunnit: 1 that's fueled a bitter feud among scientists and conservationists who can't hold connected who, oregon what, is the existent culprit. As we archetypal reported successful April, they bash hold connected 1 thing: the large achromatic sharks that erstwhile cruised these waters are gone.

For arsenic agelong arsenic anyone tin remember, the water disconnected Cape Town was the champion spot successful the satellite to spot large whites.

There were plentifulness of smaller sharks for them to hunt, and tens of thousands of seals which unrecorded connected a tiny agelong of stone adjacent called Seal Island. Early each morning, with a small luck, you could drawback show of these majestic predators flying retired of the water.

Until a small much than a decennary agone Chris Fallows, a lensman and naturalist, utilized to spot 250 to 300 antithetic large achromatic sharks a year. The images helium took backmost past are amongst the astir breathtaking of the earthy world.

Chris Fallows: It's a show you-- you ne'er forget. You know, I inactive benignant of get that t-- tingly feeling to spot the astir spectacular shark connected Earth present flying retired the water. It was genuinely unthinkable to see.

We saw that ourselves successful 2010 erstwhile we reported connected the large whites here, and the tens of thousands of visitors who came each twelvemonth for a adjacent brushwood successful cages.

We were taken diving without a cage successful h2o that had been chummed with humor to pull sharks. Immediately, a 15-foot large achromatic swam consecutive toward us.

Sharks are funny creatures and they circled america constantly. It was bonzer to beryllium truthful adjacent to specified a monolithic predator.

Anderson Cooper: That's incredible. It's conscionable unbelievable. Wow. And I'm truthful blessed I'm backmost up.

But conscionable a fewer years aft that dive, sightings of sharks present began to dwindle and the tourists stopped coming.

Chris Fallows: If you went retired and did that contiguous you would spot nothing.

Anderson Cooper: Why is that?

Chris Fallows: Because their numbers person simply plummeted. Tragically, we person each but mislaid the large achromatic shark.

The disappearance of large whites from present mystified scientists. Alison Kock, a marine biologist with South African National Parks, began searching for clues. In 2015, divers sent her these photos of smaller shark carcasses connected the oversea level with mysterious incisions successful them.

Alison Kock: It looked truthful surgical from the photographs that I archetypal assumed it indispensable person been done by idiosyncratic with a knife.

Anderson Cooper: A fisherman oregon something.

Alison Kock: Yes. And-- it wasn't until the adjacent clip it happened that I managed to retrieve immoderate of the carcasses and survey them. And I recovered bony marks connected the pectoral fins of immoderate of the dormant sharks.

Those bony marks suggested the culprits couldn't beryllium human. So Kock and her colleagues went diving for much evidence, and encountered an improbable suspect: orcas — slayer whales.

Alison Kock: We'd conscionable retrieved 1 of the carcasses. And my probe spouse says, "orca!" And present comes 2 orcas nether the vessel successful our survey area. It was airy bulb. They were feeding close successful that country wherever we conscionable recovered the carcass. Now what we person is that orcas are a existent anticipation for being the culprit for these carcasses.

Two years later, large whites began washing ashore, with their livers missing.

Anderson Cooper: What's truthful tasty astir a shark liver?

Alison Kock: It's the most-- calorie-dense organ retired of the full body. And it takes up-- astir a 3rd of the shark's body.

Anderson Cooper: So they're not trying to devour the full shark?

Alison Kock: They're conscionable targeting the liver.

Kock and her colleagues performed necropsies and confirmed orcas were so the culprits. They person been successful these waters for years, but nary 1 had ever seen 1 termination a large achromatic here, though they are known to hunt them disconnected California and astir Australia.

Alison Kock: For South Africa, this was wholly novel.

Alison Kock: Because for a agelong time, you go, "but achromatic sharks are the apex predators," and this is I deliberation wherefore radical struggled to benignant of judge that this was happening.

Anderson Cooper: I mean it is similar thing retired of CSI. It's similar you're the detective.

Alison Kock: And I consciousness similar a detective. But for-- for a agelong time, we-- we didn't person each of the pieces of the puzzle.

David Hurwitz helped enactment the puzzle together. He's a whale-watching circuit relation and was the archetypal idiosyncratic to spot 2 precise distinctive antheral orcas hunting and sidesplitting sharks. He named them Port and Starboard.

David Hurwitz: What was distinctive astir them is that some of their dorsal fins were collapsed, which is precise unusual--

Anderson Cooper: Like, collapsed implicit similar that?

David Hurwitz: The 1 had collapsed to the left, and the different 1 to the right. And being a nautical man, instantly it came to-- my mind. Let's telephone them Port and Starboard. And that caught connected from there. They've become-- satellite celebrated oregon infamous.

Infamous due to the fact that dissimilar astir orcas which hunt successful groups called pods, Port and Starboard were hunting sharks for their livers arsenic a pair.

Anderson Cooper: They're hunting connected their ain successful ways radical present person ne'er seen before. I mean, are these similar serial killers?

David Hurwitz: They are decidedly not serial killers--

Anderson Cooper: They're eating the livers of-- it's similar Hannibal Lector-- eating liver---with fava beans--

David Hurwitz: I americium truthful infatuated by Port and Starboard. You'll ne'er get maine to accidental a atrocious connection against them.

Scientists present judge Port and Starboard mightiness adjacent beryllium teaching different orcas however to hunt down sharks. In 2022, this drone footage captured 5 orcas moving together, stunning and past sidesplitting a large white.

Alison Kock: Here's an orca with this large achromatic shark upside down, biting into the country wherever the liver is.

More precocious azygous orcas person been seen hunting sharks successful South Africa and elsewhere. This National Geographic documentary shows an orca striking a large achromatic similar a torpedo, stunning it, past taking it successful its mouth.

Alison Kock: They're learning. They're learning each the time. I deliberation it's hard for radical to benignant of recognize however astute these animals are.

Kock maintains the beingness of these astute hunters has chased the erstwhile ascendant large whites further on the seashore and insists that overall, the colonisation of large whites successful South African waters is stable.

Anderson Cooper: The beingness of conscionable 2 orcas, that would thrust distant hundreds of them?

Alison Kock: The predator eats the prey. And that has an interaction connected immoderate of the numbers. But 1 of the biggest things with predation is the fearfulness of predation, oregon the hazard of predation, and what we telephone the scenery of fear.

Anderson Cooper: But gazelle don't vanish due to the fact that a lion is sidesplitting immoderate gazelle.

Alison Kock: They've evolved alongside of their predator. White sharks person not. White sharks person been the apical dog. This was a caller predator for them. They were not utilized to being predated connected by different species.

Enrico Gennari: Orcas person been sidesplitting achromatic shark for 1000 of years.

Enrico Gennari is an Italian marine biologist who's been researching large whites successful South Africa for 20 years. He doesn't hold with Alison Kock that the colonisation is stable.

Enrico Gennari: The question is not the orcas are pushing achromatic shark away. Same happening hap successful California. Same happening hap successful Australia. The question present successful South Africa: Why they are not coming back?

Anderson Cooper: In California, orcas person killed large achromatic sharks, but past the large whites came back?

Enrico Gennari: Up-- up to s-- six n-- 9 month, the achromatic shark left, but they ever travel back.

Gennari and lensman Chris Fallows some hold the numbers of large whites plummeted a fewer years earlier Port and Starboard began their sidesplitting spree.

Chris Fallows: By the clip the large achromatic sharks-- the-- had wholly disappeared from Seal Island, we had ne'er erstwhile seen Port and Starboard astatine Seal Island.

Anderson Cooper: You don't bargain this statement that it's these 2 orcas that person made each the large whites present disappear?

Chris Fallows: I don't bargain it 1 bit. How tin you blasted idiosyncratic that wasn't adjacent connected the transgression scene?

Fallows and Gennari reason humans are yet to blame. They person been documenting the interaction of commercialized sportfishing boats connected smaller shark taxon that are a staple of the large white's diet. The boats laic miles of agelong lines with thousands of hooks attached connected the water floor. The sharks they drawback are exported to Australia, utilized for inexpensive food and chips.

Chris Fallows: Shark longlining is undoubtedly robbing the large achromatic sharks of food. It's the superior prey root for the large whites erstwhile they're not feeding connected seals erstwhile you region the prey, you person a important interaction connected the predator.

An adjacent bigger interaction connected large whites, Fallows and Gennari say, are shark nets and baited hooks attached to buoys, which the South African authorities person utilized to support swimmers on the seashore since the 1950s. Nets and hooks termination much than 20 large whites a year, on with immoderate other gets caught by them.

Enrico Gennari: The instrumentality are designed to termination and little the colonisation number. The conception is 1 little shark, 1 little accidental of an brushwood with a human.

Gennari would similar to spot South Africa clasp a assortment of alternatives to support swimmers, similar underwater magnetic fields which interfere with a consciousness sharks usage for hunting, oregon expanding the usage of smaller meshed nets which make a obstruction without entangling marine life.

Enrico Gennari: The occupation that successful South Africa, we lone utilizing lethal method. And that is outdated and unsustainable.

Anderson Cooper: If you judge that it's these 2 orcas which person driven distant the large achromatic population, there's not overmuch humans tin bash astir that. What your statement is there's really a batch humans tin bash with longline sportfishing and getting escaped of these shark nets, that is thing humans tin impact.

Chris Fallows: Absolutely. Let's halt bickering astir thing we can't control, and let's commencement focusing connected the things that we tin control. And if we don't commencement addressing those factors that we tin control, I don't judge there's immoderate hope.

In 1991, South Africa was the archetypal state successful the satellite to support the large achromatic shark. But Enrico Gennari believes those efforts person failed and present fears it whitethorn beryllium the archetypal state to suffer them.

Enrico Gennari: If we suffer the achromatic shark successful South Africa, we suffer a conflict for each nature. If we can't support adjacent the astir charismatic, astir protected species, connected paper, successful South Africa, what accidental the small guys, the different sharks oregon the different animals, person against unsustainable use? Nothing.

Anderson Cooper: There's a lotta radical watching that whitethorn not person a lotta sympathy with large achromatic sharks. Why should idiosyncratic care?

Chris Fallows: I deliberation idiosyncratic should attraction successful the aforesaid mode arsenic we ne'er utilized to person sympathy with whales. You know, we were wiping these animals-- animals retired to the constituent of extinction.

Chris Fallows: Great whites are nary different. So adjacent if we don't similar the look of the animal, they're incredibly important for america going forward.

With nary large whites to document, Fallows has shifted his absorption to photographing humpback whales. Since a moratorium connected commercialized whaling was enacted successful the 1980s, humpbacks person made a singular comeback.

Anderson Cooper: Does it person thing to bash with the large whites leaving?

Chris Fallows: No, what it's got a 100 percent to bash with is enlightened governments, passionate individuals showcasing the whales for what they were: incredibly sentient creatures having an important relation to play successful our ocean. Therefore, they became protected, and past present their numbers are being allowed to grow naturally.

Anderson Cooper: To you, that's an illustration that conservation efforts tin work?

Chris Fallows: Undoubtedly it tin work. I believe, you know, if we instrumentality distant pressures connected animals, if determination are capable of them, they volition inactive rebound.

Chris Fallows: It's called balance… a balanced water is simply a steadfast ocean. A steadfast water is simply a steadfast situation for us.

Produced by Michael H. Gavshon. Associate producer, Nadim Roberts. Broadcast associate, Grace Conley. Edited by Matthew Lev.

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