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https://phys.org/news/2024-01-sighting-newborn-great-white-longstanding.html
Great whites, the largest predatory sharks in the world with the most fatal attacks on humans, are tough to imagine as newborn babies. That is partially because no one has seen one in the wild, it seems, until now.
Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and UC Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes were scanning the waters for sharks on July 9, 2023, near Santa Barbara on California's central coast. That day, something exciting appeared on the viewfinder of Gauna's drone camera. It was a shark pup unlike any they'd ever seen.
Great whites, referred to only as white sharks by scientists, are gray on top and white on the bottom. But this roughly 5-foot-long shark was pure white.
"We enlarged the images, put them in slow motion, and realized the white layer was being shed from the body as it was swimming," Sternes said. "I believe it was a newborn white shark shedding its embryonic layer."
These observations are documented in a new paper in the Environmental Biology of Fishes journal. The paper also details the significance of having seen a live newborn white shark.
[...] "Where white sharks give birth is one of the holy grails of shark science. No one has ever been able to pinpoint where they are born, nor has anyone seen a newborn baby shark alive," Gauna said. "There have been dead white sharks found inside deceased pregnant mothers. But nothing like this."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 01 2024, @08:38PM (2 children)
Actually, there are few recorded instances of Great Whites diving to depths that are dangerous to our current underwater tech. They generally stay in warmer waters near the surface, making forays down to several hundred feet. There was this story - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8h5KztJMtg [youtube.com]
It is necessary to point out that almost every story about that shark insists that it was eaten whole by whatever killed it. That assumption is completely wrong - whatever killed it most assuredly ate the portion of meat to which the tracker was attached. There is no way that anyone can say that the 9 foot shark was swallowed whole, unless they were there to see it. Can't even ascertain that the killer consumed the entire shark in smaller bites, only that the killer consumed the bit with the tracker.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02 2024, @07:36AM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 02 2024, @02:23PM
Ahhh, the tracker was not destroyed. It floated to the surface, washed ashore, and was recovered, after being defecated by the "monster". The tracker supplied evidence that it had passed through the digestive system of something with it's temperature recordings. Immediately after the dive into ever colder waters, the tracker recorded a temperature consistent with the digestive tract of another great white shark. Other predators that might have killed and consumed the victim have different body temperatures. I'll note also that the most common predator of great whites are killer sharks, or orcas. Those bad boys are notorious for killing great whites, tearing the shark open, eating the liver, and leaving the rest for carrion. In addition, orcas are generally shallow water predators, only wandering down to 1000 ft depths on occasion. They don't dive to 1900 feet any more than the sharks do.
Oh - I missed the implication that the tracker fell to the bottom of the sea. Again, the tracker has positive bouyancy, so it would come to the surface. Any bits of meat that fell away from the victim would have near neutral bouyancy. Meaning, it might fall gradually, or it might rise gradually - it wouldn't fall straight to the bottom.
And, of course, the whole point is, great white sharks are generally averse to such deep dives.
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