Whales devour shark alive in drone footage

A photographer has captured breathtakingly beautiful and brutal aerial footage of a pod of killer whales eating a live shark.

The sevengill shark can be seen writhing in the mouth of one of the whales as it swims with a calf and two more orcas in Monterey Bay, California.

The trio are then joined by a group of 25 more whales who swarm on the carcass.

Wildlife photographer Slater Moore filmed the rare sighting with a drone and posted the footage to Facebook.

Marine expert Mary Jane Schramm told KTVU that the reason the shark is turned upside down in the orcas’s mouth was to render it helpless.

Once the sharks are flipped on their backs, “tonic immobility” kicks in and the whales then dive down deep into the ocean to dry to drown it.

“Some animals if they're attacked by a predator, instead of fleeing or fighting, they simply become still,” Ms Schramm said.

However, it was a sight rarely caught on camera, she said.

“It is very likely that some of these whales have only been sighted a few times or haven't been identified at all,” she said.