A still from footage of an orca smacking headlong into a giant sunfish, which was smashed up on impact. (creaturesofbaja/Instagram)
Well, sea shenanigans are once again afoot – and the culprit is very much the usual suspect.Orcas (Orcinus orca) are already renowned for their elaborate and effective hunting techniques, from generating waves to wash seals off ice floes to surgically divesting fearsome white sharks of their juicy livers.Now, in the Gulf of California, orcas are turning their powerful strength and cunning to a strange new pursuit: smacking headlong into giant sunfish to shatter their bodies into smithereens."The first time I witnessed this behavior was in December 2021, and in that moment, the sheer energy of the impact was stunning – seeing an apex predator hit a massive fish with that much velocity was breathtaking," marine biologist Erick Higuera Rivas of Conexiones Terramar in Mexico told ScienceAlert."We immediately knew we were witnessing something highly unusual because of the scale of the tissue explosion."
It wasn't an isolated incident, either.Since then, the behavior has been documented at least twice more, once in 2024 and again in 2025, allowing scientists to analyze it in detail.What they found is a highly coordinated routine that raises more questions than it answers – what, exactly, are these orcas trying to accomplish?The two later encounters played out in almost exactly the same way, as Higuera Rivas, marine scientist Kathryn Ayres of the non-profit Beneath The Waves, and colleagues described in a new Frontiers in Ethology paper.A pod of orcas approaches a sharptail mola (Masturus lanceolatus), or sunfish, apparently just hanging out, minding its own business.One of the orcas grabs hold of the mola to immobilize it; another swims a distance away to gain momentum, and slams into the mola at full speed – punching it into shreds.
