First sighting of a live newborn great white shark

2024-01-29 14:05:55
The great white shark carries a terrible black legend for which Steven Spielberg’s horror classic is partly responsible. But you don’t need movies to fear it: it is the largest shark that sails the oceans – the largest specimen observed is a female more than six meters long – and the one that has claimed the most fatalities among bathers and surfers. For all that, it’s hard to imagine him as a sweet newborn baby. For that reason and because, as far as was known, no one had seen one in the wild. Until now. On July 9, wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and Phillip Sternes, a biologist at the University of California Riverside, were searching the waters for sharks near Santa Barbara, on California’s central coast, with a drone when something exciting appeared in the camera viewfinder: a baby white shark. White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are gray on top and white on the bottom. But this approximately five-foot-long shark was pure white. Related News standard No Is the bad reputation of the great white shark justified? A. Victoria de Andrés Fernández Carcharodon carcharias is a quaternary consumer or superpredator. This implies that it is located at the highest level of the food chain. But he is not alone: ​​killer whales and eagles also share this group and do not have such bad press. “We enlarged the images, put them in slow motion and realized that the white layer was detaching from the body while it was swimming,” said Sternes. “I think it was a newborn white shark shedding its embryonic layer.” These observations have been collected in a new article in the journal ‘Environmental Biology of Fishes’. Gauna has spent thousands of hours filming sharks around the world and his videos of them swimming near beachgoers have millions of views. What he and Sternes observed could help solve the long-standing mystery of great whites’ calving habits. “The birthplace of great white sharks is one of the holy grails of shark science. No one has ever been able to determine where they are born nor has anyone seen a newborn shark alive,” says Gauna. «Dead white sharks have been found inside deceased pregnant mothers. But nothing like this. Although the authors of the article acknowledge that the white film thrown up by the shark may have been a skin condition, they do not believe that is the case. “If that is what we saw, then it is also monumental because such a condition has never been reported in these sharks,” notes the filmmaker. Where the baby came from For many reasons, researchers believe that what they saw was actually a newborn great white shark. First, female white sharks give birth to live young. While in the womb, embryonic sharks could feed on unfertilized eggs for protein. Mothers provide additional food to growing shark pups with a ‘milk’ secreted in the uterus. “I think what we saw was the baby leaking intrauterine milk,” Sternes said. A second reason is the presence of probably pregnant females at this location. Gauna had observed them here in previous years and in the weeks prior to the observation. “I filmed three very large sharks that looked like they were pregnant in this specific location in the days before. That day one of them dove in and shortly after this completely white shark appears,” recalls Gauna. “It’s not difficult to figure out where the baby came from.” Third, the size and shape of the shark are also indicative of a newborn. What the two observed was thin, short and rounded. “In my opinion, this one was probably a few hours old, maybe a day at most,” Sternes said. Finally, this location off the central coast of California has long been proposed as a birthplace of great white sharks. “This could well be the first evidence we have of a calf in the wild, making it a definitive location for calving,” he adds. In shallow waters Many scholars believe that white sharks are born in areas further away from the sea. That this calf was filmed so close to shore (approximately 300 meters from the beach) is significant because it means it was probably born in shallow water. MORE INFORMATION news No Going sleepless from having unbridled sex and then dying: the frenetic life of the antechinus news Yes The ants win: this is how they forced African lions to hunt fewer zebras These superpredators are classified as an internationally endangered species . “More research is needed to confirm that these waters are indeed a great breeding ground for whitefish. But if so, we would want lawmakers to step in and protect these waters to help white sharks continue to thrive,” Sternes says.
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