The Great White Shark: Ruthless Predator of The Ocean

“There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear.”

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― Peter Benchley, Jaws

Introduction

The Great White Shark is one of the most ruthless ocean predatory fish species for nearly 20 million years. The legendary Great White shark is far more fearsome in our imaginations compared to reality. It is widely agreed within the scientific community that the Great White shark population numbers are decreasing worldwide as they are threatened by both hunting and habitat loss throughout much of their natural range. To discuss the subject of the Great White shark, this essay analyzes its characteristics, hunting adaptations, population, and shark attacks.

The average life span of a Great White shark is 25 years. Female Great White sharks are larger than males. They average 14 to 15 feet in length and weigh between 1,150 and 1,700 pounds. Great White sharks are not all white, they are grey and blue with a white stomach. Great White sharks have about 240 teeth in up to five rows, their bite is extremely powerful. It can exert pressure of 2,000 pounds per square inch. Great White sharks have huge livers that can weigh up to 500 pounds. They use their livers to store energy and can go months without eating. Great White sharks are warm-blooded, this gives them the ability to maintain body heat in a wide range of temperatures but requires a lot of energy and food to maintain. Great White sharks maintain it muscles at very high temperatures and recycles heat from its warming muscles to the rest of its body, helping it swim more efficiently.

The Great White is primarily an inhabitant of cool temperate waters over continental and insular shelves. It seems to prefer areas with rocky bottoms, but it has been recorded over sandy bottoms and on coral reefs as well as in the deep sea. It was formerly thought that Great White sharks do not enter kelp forests, but this has been shown to be false: not only do they enter kelp forests, they apparently also feed there. Great White sharks use their speed and coloring to help them hunt. They search for prey at the surface of the ocean while swimming below. Once they spot a target, they use a burst of speed to bump their prey while simultaneously biting it. As teeth fall out, they are rapidly replaced by those in the row behind them. These sharp, serrated teeth can be devastating. A single, large bite can be fatal. When Great White sharks are young, they feed on smaller prey, like fish and rays. As they grow larger, they feed more exclusively on marine mammals, such as sea lions, seals, and small whales. They even have organs that can sense the tiny electromagnetic fields generated by animals. The Great White shark is at the top of the food chain and has few threats in the ocean. Only Orcas and larger sharks can pose risk. The only other risk to the Great White shark is human interaction. They are sometimes caught by accident in fishing nets or intentionally sought out by a sports fisherman. Their jaws and fins are sold for considerable amounts of money.

Good news for sharks and maybe not-so-good news for seals. In a recent report, the Great White shark population is on the rise in the ocean off the Eastern U.S. and Canada. Scientists believe that the abundance of prey and conservation efforts that prevent the hunting of Great White sharks has helped play a role in the increase of population. The species is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“Tobey Curtis, one of the government scientists who worked on the study, said in an interview his team could only capture trends in shark abundance and the study could not be used to estimate the total number of sharks in the Atlantic's northwest region, which extends from the U.S. East Coast. 'We don't know what portion of the total population we're documenting,' he said. But Curtis said the findings suggested an 'optimistic outlook' for the recovery of the species, which is an apex predator and one of the largest fish in the oceans. The authors described their study as based on the largest Great White shark dataset yet compiled from the region. The findings were based on data stretching back about 200 years, including population surveys, fishermen's logs, and newspaper clippings recording sightings of the elusive creatures. Extrapolating from the varied data, the scientists said that for much of the 1970s and 1980s the abundance of sharks in the northwest Atlantic was on average about 70 percent lower than in 1961, the year they chose to use as a benchmark. They speculated the decline was caused by a growing commercial shark fishing industry, which harvested their fins and jaws for use in food and folk medicine. The decline was reversed in the 1990s after conservation measures were introduced, including a 1997 Federal law banning the hunting of Great White sharks. 'Since protections were put in place, the population appears to have started recovering,' Curtis said. In 2009, the most recent year they studied, the abundance of sharks was 31 percent lower than it was in 1961, Curtis said. In a separate paper also published in PLOS ONE, researchers found the Great White shark population is likely growing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. The group, led by George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, pegged the entire population of Great White sharks along the California coast at more than 2,000 and likely rising.”

“Three species are responsible for most human attacks: Great White (Carcharodon carcharias), Tiger (Galeocerdo cuvier), and Bull (Carcharhinus leucas) sharks. While sharks kill fewer than 20 people a year, their own numbers suffer greatly at human hands.”

“The Great White shark has been involved in some of the most chilling attacks on humans. In 1985, Australian Shirley Ann Durdin was torn in two and then devoured by a Great White shark. Rodney Fox had his lungs and stomach ripped open and required more than 360 stitches in a 1963 attack. In 2008, Dave Martin was killed in California when a Great White bit off his legs. The Great White shark does outrank all other sharks in the number of shark attacks. As of May 2008, the Great White had racked up 238 unprovoked attacks and 95 boat attacks, resulting in 65 fatalities; this far outpaces the runner-up Tiger shark (88 attacks and 28 deaths) and the third-place Bull shark (77 attacks and 23 deaths.)” Are humans especially delicious to Great White sharks? According, to scientists who've studied the stomach contents of these sharks. Humans, because of their muscle content, humans are not a good meal for Great White shark, because they crave fatty blubber.

Conclusion

As seen from the essay, Great White sharks’ characteristics make them one the meanest and most predatorial creatures to swim in the ocean. The habitat of the Great White shark explains why they have been sighted and tagged in Canadian waters, in many articles people believe Great White sharks have been here all along. There are many new federal laws and conservations for the Great White sharks helping the existence of these historical creatures. Great White sharks are at the top of the list for the most dangerous shark out of all the species. It led with the most human attack but, only 5 people die from shark attacks yearly, while millions of people die from starvation.

Resources

1. Allen, J. (n.d.). Great White Sharks Off Atlantic Coast Are Recovering. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/great-white-sharks-off-atlantic-coast-are-recovering/.
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