Known to be smart and ruthless hunters, orcas have been observed hunting a variety of prey – some of which have been whales larger than themselves – using a wide range of strategies. Now however, researchers in the Gulf of California have now recorded one that hasn’t been described before.

And it’s quite staggering.

“We document how one orca holds the sunfish and lets go just before another orca hits it at high speed, causing the tissue to break apart into thousands of pieces,” said Dr Kathryn Ayres, a scientist at Beneath The Waves and lead author of the study, published in Frontiers in Ethology. 

“We think this may help younger orcas feed more easily or it could also just be for fun. Orcas are known for playing with their food.”

In any case, it involved ramming a sunfish with such force, it was blown to bits.

Sunfish can grow over three metres long and weigh up to 2,000kg. They move through various depth layers but come to the surface to rest, thermoregulate, or seek parasite removal. It’s while they are at the surface, they are at their most vulnerable to predation. 

And in the Gulf of California, they are one of the species most commonly hunted and eaten by orcas. The current observations are based on two independent hunting events that occurred a little more than one year apart.

The first – which took place on 29 July 2024 – unfolded at an offshore seamount near San José del Cabo, Baja California Sur. It was here that a group of three adult female orcas, a male, and a juvenile was sighted by a tourism operator. Notably, the pod had already been recorded that day making a separate kill: a drone captured the same orcas successfully catching and consuming a spine-tail devil ray shortly before the sunfish encounter. 

They observed a female orca holding the sunfish by its large tail fin while a male orca accelerated and swam toward both. Shortly before impact, the female released the sunfish. The ramming caused the sunfish’s tissue to fragment and float in the water. The juvenile of the group then began consuming smaller bits of sunfish while the adults fed on what remained of the body, but didn’t consume the smaller fragments.

The second event, filmed by Héctor Franz on 7 September 2025, took place in the channel off Isla Cerralvo and followed the same feeding behaviour. 

Three adult female orcas and a calf were involved, with one orca stabilising the sunfish while a second executed the ramming manoeuvre; a third adult then joined to feed on the remains, and the calf was seen extracting tissue from the carcass. As with the first event, the pod’s appetite that day wasn’t limited to sunfish: the same orcas had been observed preying on a shortfin mako shark earlier in the day.

Ramming has not been previously described as a predation strategy by orcas. Both events suggest that the orcas followed a coordinated and cooperative strategy, with one orca stabilising the carcass so the other could hit it more precisely. 

In both events, the sunfish, so the ramming is thought to be a technique for consuming the prey rather than a means to deliver a killing blow. It marks a departure from the hunting sequence previously documented in orca-sunfish interactions. 

The researchers suggest the sharp-tail sunfish’s especially pronounced clavus – the stub-like structure at its rear – may offer orcas a uniquely effective grip point for this newly observed ramming technique.

A Frontier paper documenting the encounters suggests that the gelatinous layer that covers sunfish, known as capsule, and their skin host a distinct microbiome. If this tissue is shattered, the microbial taxa inhabiting it are dispersed into the water where they alter the nutrient composition. Tissue fragmentation could therefore facilitate contact between sunfish and orca microbiomes, which could provide nutritional or other benefits, such as immune regulation.

At the same time, researchers admit that these encounters could simply have been ‘a game’ for the killer whales.

So far, it is unclear if the same orcas were involved in both events, highlighting the need for more high-quality footage – especially of orca’s dorsal fins and eye patches – to be able to identify individuals. The authors note that a separate recent study documented 21 orca-molid predation events involving 17 photo-identified orcas in the Gulf of California, suggesting that at least four distinct orca groups include sunfish in their diet.

“Collecting good identification photographs whenever possible is key: we are still seeing new techniques of how orcas hunt and process their prey,” said Ayres. “They’re one of the most iconic marine predators in the world, yet they continue to surprise us.”

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