Newborn great white shark filmed for first time in the wild
Technology
The great white pup was spotted just 1,000 feet from a beach
(Web Desk) - Great white sharks are perhaps the world's most feared predator, but despite their infamy, no one has managed to capture their newborns on camera in the wild. Until now.
On Monday, wildlife cameraman Carlos Guana and UC Riverside student Phillip Sternes released what they believe are the first confirmed images of an infant great white pup.
The pair spotted the shark in the water near Santa Barbara, California on July 9, 2023. At first, they were confused. At five feet long and a ghostly white, the shark didn't seem to match any that they knew of.
"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 in a statement. "I believe it was a newborn white shark shedding its embryonic layer."
Their findings are also detailed in a research paper in the Environmental Biology of Fishes journal.
Great whites are among the sharks that give birth to live pups, but the process is little understood and it has never been filmed.
It's thought that while in the uterus, the great white mother feeds her pup with a form of "milk." This pup, and its seemingly shedding skin, could be the closest that researchers have ever come to solving the mystery of how great whites are born.
"I believe what we saw was the baby shedding the intrauterine milk," Sternes said.
"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 in a statement.
"There have been dead white sharks found inside deceased pregnant mothers. But nothing like this."
The pair believe the shark was perhaps just hours old. In the past, Gauna has filmed pregnant great whites in the area, and had just seen a few he suspects were carrying pups.
Previously, shark scientists thought great whites must give birth far out at sea — but this pup was filmed just 1,000 feet from the beach at Santa Barbara, suggesting they might actually give birth far closer to shore.
"I filmed three very large sharks that appeared pregnant at this specific location in the days prior. On this day, one of them dove down, and not long afterwards, this fully white shark appears," Gauna said.
"It’s not a stretch to deduce where the baby came from."
