![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Matt-Waller.jpg\")
Matt Waller said he witnessed the killer whale attack in 2015. Photo: Cuttys Boat Tours Facebook.<\/p>\nMore than a decade after a pod of killer whales were witnessed attacking and killing a great white shark near Port Lincoln, Flinders University has released its research into the event.<\/p>\n
Back in February 2015, about six killer whales were seen by staff and customers across two cage-diving boats at the Neptune Islands Group Marine Park in South Australia \u201chunting\u201d the shark.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack when it happened, we were seeing sharks every day,\u201d Matt Waller, one of the operators on the day, told InDaily<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the day this happened was the best day of the week. It was mental. Glassy, clear. We were having sharks all morning. And then the whales showed up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waller said the whales moved quickly, \u201chunting\u201d the five-metre-long male shark.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe killers herded it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were three females, an alpha female and two pups in the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the three big females disappeared. The two pups then circled the shark up to the surface and then the alpha body slammed the top of the shark and it was all done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waller said the effect was instant.<\/p>\n
Matt Waller said he witnessed the killer whale attack in 2015. Photo: Cuttys Boat Tours Facebook.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moment that happened, the sharks disappeared. It was a shark drought.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said operators in the area went from seeing \u201cfive sharks a day\u201d to none at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew the killers would impact sharks \u2013 but no one saw a shark at Neptune for three and a half months after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Flinders University released a study based on 12 years of acoustic telemetry and wildlife tourism sighting data to test whether the 2015 absence was exceptional \u2013 or simply part of natural white shark behaviour at the Neptune Islands.<\/p>\n
Led by Dr Isabella Reeves it found it was unlikely the attack was the only reason for the prolonged disappearance of sharks.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur results show that killer whales can absolutely trigger an immediate response from white sharks, but they are not always the whole story when it comes to long-term shark disappearances,\u201d Reeves said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAcross the 12-year study, we recorded six prolonged absences of more than 42 days, and only one of them coincided with the presence of killer whales.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe longest absence we recorded was even longer than the 2015 event and occurred when no killer whales were detected at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis shows that while killer whales can trigger immediate short-term departures, they are not always the sole driver of extended disappearances of sharks from their local sites.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than a decade after a pod of killer whales were witnessed attacking and killing a great white…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-490495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}