What happens when two top ocean predators collide? This was a question that PhD candidate and white shark expert Alison Towner was faced with six years ago, when the subjects of her thesis started to wash up on shore with unusual, but fatal, injuries. Fast forward to 2022 and Alison has just led her second publication on the predation of white sharks by orca in South Africa, a behaviour that has never been documented until now. In this episode we chat to Alison about her findings, why we think orca are only now starting to show interest in white sharks, and the potential effects of predation by orca on not just white sharks as a species, but the entire ecosystem…
Follow Alisons work here: @alisontowner (instagram), @AlisonTowner1 (twitter)
You can find the shownotes for this episode here: www.saveourseas.com/worldofsharks/thewholetooth
Find out more about us by following @saveourseasfoundation on instagram, @SaveOurSeas on twitter, or by heading to www.saveourseas.com