Great white sharks are NOT FLEE from killer whales

When faced with a killer whale, it seems as if it's going to take place.

What happens when top-level predators are known, but are known about similar interactions in our oceans.

To find out, a research team led by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is one of the most important of all sharks – and orcas (killer whales), in electronic tagging and observational data.

In every case where the two predators came into contact, the sharks actually turned into the killer whales, researchers found.

Sporadic reports of orcas attacking great whites have been recorded, but this is the first evidence of sharks actively avoiding the whales.

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Elephant seals may be the real winner of the fight against the predators.

Predator on predator encounters – dubbed 'lateral interactions' – is well known on land, but they are poorly understood.

To investigate, a research team led by Monterey Bay's Aquarium's Salvador Jorgensen, set about to see what happens in the rare cases when sharks and orcas end up occupying the same waters.

They focused their study on the Southeast Farallon Island, which is off the coast of San Francisco.

The team cross-referenced data from electronic tags with field observations of orca sightings.

The shark data included 165 of the predators that had been tagged between 2006 and 2013.

The monitoring data from the Farallon Islands went back further – spanning 27 years – and included surveys of local orca, seal and shark numbers.

'The research in this paper combines two really robust data sources,' commented paper co-author Jim Tietz, who is a biologist from Point Blue Conservation Science.

'By supplementing the Aquarium's new shark tagging data with Blue Point's long-term monitoring of wildlife at the Farallon Islands' National Wildlife Refuge, we were able to conclusively show how sharks clear the area when the orcas show up.'

In total, the researchers reported that they were most likely to report to the Southeast Farallon Island during the study period.

"When confronted by orcas," said Dr. Jorgensen, "these white sharks will be pleased to go ahead with their preferred hunting ground and will not return for a year," said Dr. Jorgensen.

This happens, he added, 'even though the orcas are only passing through,'

It is not necessarily clear that the killer whales are actively targeting white sharks, or if they simply present this unwanted competition for the calorie-rich elephant seals.

Data from the electronic tags revealed that the sharks fled the area within just minutes of the orcas turning up.

'These are huge white sharks. Some are over 18 feet long (5.5 meters), and they usually rule here, 'said Anderson.

'We've been observing some of these sharks for the past 15 to 20 years – and a few of them even longer than that.'

Having been displaced by the arrival of killer whales, the sharks could be found in the opposite direction of the coastline, targeting different elephant seal colonies, or headed offshore, the researchers said.

Although the sharks may be unexpectedly turning tail of the orcas, other animals are being scared off.

White sharks typically gather at the Farallon Islands between September and December each year.

The shark usually spend a month circling around the Southeast Farallon Island on the hunt for seals.

'We average around 40 elephant seal each season,' Anderson said.

However, after the orcas show up, he added, 'we do not see a single shark and there are no more kills.'

As a result, the data shows that there were 4-7 times less elephant seals murdered by sharks in the years than the orcas turned up.

Although transient orcas have been known to prey on elephant seals, they only show up on the island on rare occasions.

The results of the study highlight the importance of considering the interactions between these predators as sharks and orcas, say the researchers.

Even the orca-shark interactions in the new study happen relatively infrequently – so it can take a while for the dynamics to be fully understood, Dr. Jorgensen notes.

'I think this is not always linear,' he said.

'We do not typically think about how fear and risk aversion might play a role in shaping where large predators hunt and how that influences ocean ecosystems.'

'It turns out that they are more likely to be more likely to be safer areas,' he concluded.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports.