Great white sharks. Lots of people are afraid of this ocean predator. Look at it, huge, ugly, hungry. If you were in your boat and saw this, wouldn't you be afraid?
The great white shark, also known as great white, white pointer, or white death, is an large lamniform shark found in coastal surface waters in all major oceans. Reaching lengths of more than 6 metres (20 ft) and weighing up to 2,240 kilograms (4,938 pounds), the great white shark is the world's largest known predatory fish.
No one has seen great white sharks mating, but scientists have seen the birth of great white shark babies. Mother sharks can have from 6-60 babies at one time. That's a lot of kids!
Baby great white sharks, called pups, are born alive and are 18 inches to four feet long. They hatch from eggs inside their mother's body and remain inside until they are big enough to fend for themselves. Then the mother has them. Mother sharks give birth in the same place most every year. They don't eat while they are delivering their babies. The newborn pup looks almost exactly like their parents. They can take care of themselves right after being born. Imagine that!
|Their diet includes other sharks and marine mammals, including dolphins and Cape Fur Seals. (Yummy!!) At Shark Alley, the seals are in a constant state of fear for their lives. Normally, the Great White is a migratory predator, (meaning that they move around a lot) but with so many tasty seals hanging around.....why leave??? On occasion, natural predation (a shark eating in it's natrual habitat it's natrual food) can be seen from a boat when an unfortunate seal is eaten.|
When hunting Northern Elephant Seals off California, the shark stops the prey from moving with a large bite to the hindquarters (which is the main source of the seal's movment) and waits for the seal to bleed to death. This technique is especially used on adult male elephant seals which can be as large or larger than a great white and are dangerous prey. Prey is normally attacked sub-surface, meaning above or at the surface of the water. Harbour Seals are simply grabbed from the surface and pulled down until they stop struggling. They are then eaten near the bottom. California Sea Lions are ambushed from below and struck in mid-body before being dragged and eaten.
A shark's main way to get food is by using it's teeth. As I said in the FOOD section, a shark will use it's teeth to open up the skin of its prey and make it bleed to death. They also use their teeth to drag down prey.
As you can see in the picture below, shark's have rows upons rows of teeth. If a tooth falls out, the other simply moves forward and takes its place. Sometimes, humans will have a grown-up tooth growing behind a baby one. Dentists call this "Shark Tooth". Now you know why!