THANKS to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller Jaws, everyone thinks the great white shark is the most fearsome predator in the animal kingdom.

While most people understand that they are not the man-hunting beasts portrayed in film, few realise that they too are preyed upon and make quite a meal for a hungry orca – aka the killer whale.

Nature Shock returns with the amazing story of tourists aboard a whale-watching boat near the Farallones Islands, 27 miles west off San Francisco,who witnessed a half-ton great white shark being attacked, killed and eaten by an orca.

Killer whales have a fearsome name for a reason – they are nature’s ultimate killing machine but, thanks to Free Willy, they’re often considered docile creatures who pose no threat to humans. In contrast, great whites are seen as killers that deliberately target humans who enter their territory.

That said, there have been documented instances where killer whales in captivity have attacked their trainers. While these have been few and far between, orcas prey on sharks more often than one might think.

Remarkably, this extraordinary event was captured on camera for the first time in 1997 and can now be seen in this intriguing documentary series.

Using footage shot by tourists, marine biologists surmised that the orca rammed the shark to stun it, before turning it upside down to immobilise it.

This method is commonly referred to as tonic immobility, a phrase coined by scientists in the Bahamas, who discovered that sharks can be induced into a trance-like state by turning them onto their backs.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, marine biologist Peter Pyle used a pole camera to film the orcas underwater.

“As we approached, you could see the killer whale with a shark in its mouth. It was a complete surprise for us, we had no idea that could happen,” he remarks.

After the kill, great whites in the area mysteriously disappeared, leading experts to conclude that the “smell of death” in the water caused them to flee.

While this might explain the initial dispersal, it does not explain why the great whites would stay away from the Farallones for the rest of the feeding season, especially as some of them travel 4,000km to the coast of San Francisco to feed every year.

The attack has shed light on the hierarchy among the ocean’s fearsome killers.

Marine biologist Alisa Schulman-Janiger says of the orca: “In my mind, it’s really clear – we have a top predator here.”

COMEDIANS Frank Skinner and Lee Mack meet at the Reform Club, in London, to kick off the first leg of the Around The World In 80 Days challenge.

The project has six pairs of celebrities race against the clock in an ambitious global relay, re-enacting the epic odysseys of Phileas Fogg and Michael Palin, and raising money for this year’s BBC Children In Need Appeal.

The first leg sees Frank and Lee travel across Europe. In only eight days, they need to be at the border between Turkey and Iraq to hand over the baton to Apprentice stars Nick Hewer and Saira Khan. In preparation for the challenge, Skinner wisely asks Michael Palin, the original voyager for the BBC, for advice.

THE three-part documentary series The Force offers an insight into the challenges faced by frontline officers of the Hampshire Police.

The first episode follows their investigation after the discovery of a woman’s body, burned beyond all recognition, lying in a cornfield. It appears she was strangled, carried in a suitcase to a field near a small village and then set on fire.

It’s a shocking and terrible crime, but police struggle to discover her identity or that of the person who killed her. However, house-to-house inquiries bring forth a witness who may have identified the car of the person responsible.