Largest great white sharks
Great white sharks are huge and powerful warm-blooded fish, but what is the biggest one ever found?
Carcharodon carcharias, as is their scientific name, can grow to 20 feet in length and weigh a massive 5000lbs, but every now and then we hear reports of great whites, or white pointer sharks as they also known, reaching even greater lengths.
The females are always bigger than the males. Adult female white sharks reach an average length of 16′, while the smaller adult males reach 12′.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the two largest great white sharks ever found were 36′ and 37′ respectively, in length.
Experts have cast doubt on the reliability of those measurements, or even if, in fact, they were great white sharks at all. (Hope they weren’t the supposedly extinct megalodon sharks!)
The 36′ foot shark was apparently captured off Port Fairy in South Australia in the 1870s, while the 37′ shark was caught in New Brunswick, Canada, in the 1930s.
Most sharks are actually caught by fishermen, and we all know how truthful they can be at times – (arms outstretched – it was this big!) – when all they caught was a tiddler.
The shark in the movie ‘Jaws’ was 25 foot, and even it seems to be uncharacteristically long.
Edit International carry a very interesting article on their website by Ron Laytner, dated 2011, in which he discusses a man called Vic Hislop.
Australian Vic Hislop was 60 years old at that time, and had over 40 years of experience of hunting down and killing great white sharks.
He believes that many more people are eaten by the great white shark than is being recorded.
He accuses the Australian government of masking many shark attacks by recording their deaths as drowning, in order to protect tourism.
To back up his argument that swimmers end up being eaten by sharks and not drowning, Hislop is quoted as saying:
“At least a hundred swimmers disappear every year here and their bodies are never found. Many have been eaten. I ’ve often caught sharks and removed human hands and feet from their stomachs. I even found a human foot still in its sandal.”
You can see photographic evidence of this on the Edit International site.
In the photograph above, we see a 21′ 8″ great white shark caught by Vic Hislop in 1985. This would be the biggest ever white shark ever caught.
Mr Hislop also believes there are many even bigger sharks out there in our oceans, as he has witnessed many great whites of the length of 20′ or more with bite marks on their bodies, suggestive of even bigger sharks. He also claims to have a caught a bigger one than the one pictured, but couldn’t land it.
He also believes great white sharks can develop a taste for humans, and that once one does, it will travel from beach to beach devouring humans whenever it feels hungry, and that current shark protection measures are denying closure to the families who have lost loved ones.
Sharks swallow their prey whole and so slaying the shark will recover the remains.
Great white sharks survive on instinct alone, yet they show traits of learned behaviour.
Shark chumming teaches sharks to associate humans with food.
Chumming waters to bring sharks and then cage diving to watch them, is the height of stupidity. Once a shark learns to eat a human, no cage will keep it out.
Shark nets, put in place to protect beaches, become fast-food snack bars for great whites, eating the dolphins and sting-rays trapped by the nets. Great whites tear great holes in the nets while eating their prey, and can then simply swim through to reach the shore.
Shark nets actually attract great whites, bringing them closer to the people the nets were put there to protect.
Punching a great white to try and deter an attack is a waste of time. With skin like rough sandpaper, all you will do is injure your knuckles.
Australian film-makers are exacerbating the problem by filling wetsuits with fish, to try and get the best great white shark attack shot, thus teaching the great white to associate divers with food.
Over-fishing by commercial fisheries is wiping out the shark’s natural food, fish, and bringing them inshore to find a new diet.
Malta female great white shark reported to be 7.13 meters in length
Accurate shark measurements are difficult to take, because fish out of water shrink.
They not only live in water, their bodies are comprised of mostly water too, so when they are landed the water dries up, and they become smaller.
It is entirely possible therefore that the 23′ great white shark caught in Malta in 1987 was indeed 23′ 4″ when freshly landed, but later shrank to something like 17′.
Photographs were taken of this fish, and the experts have been arguing over it for years.
According to an unnamed BBC photo expert, the shark was only 18′ 3″ but this is hotly disputed by those on the port-side who witnessed this shark being landed and taken away on a flat-bed truck.
Academic shark experts Richard Ellis and John E McCosker are the recognised experts in this field, having written a book called The Great White Shark in 1991.
They have also largely discounted the claim of the Maltese fishermen of having caught the biggest white shark ever.
Dimensions of a 20′ great white shark
An interesting thing to note about huge great whites is that length is relative to the fish itself.
If you try to imagine the size of a 20 foot great white shark, and you are 5′ tall (like me), then you can envisage the length being 4 times the length of yourself – which is big of course.
Then you have to imagine its width and height.
A 20ft shark will be 6′ tall, so if you were swimming upright beside it, it would tower over you.
Even more frighteningly, its jaws if you met it face on would be 8 feet wide. Eeek!
At that size it could easily swallow you whole!
Biggest great white sharks ever recorded
There are many tales through the years of huge great white sharks being found, and where photographic evidence is presented, it has been possible for experts to prove or disprove the claims made of length.
In 2009, a massive male great white shark was caught off Guadalupe Island, Mexico, measuring 17.9 feet (5.5m).
He was then tagged and released, allowing scientists to track his future movements.
In 1945, a 21.3ft (6.49m) shark was caught in Cuban waters and this shark length has been ratified by Ellis and McCosker.
In 1983, Canadian David McKendrick caught a 20.3ft (6.1m) great white shark at Prince Edward Island and this length has been ratified by the Canadian Shark research Centre.
On May 14, 1997, a great white shark was caught in a set-net in Seven Star Lake, Hualien County, Taiwan.
Its length was estimated at 6.7 to 7.0 metres, which is between 22 and 23 feet.
This would make the biggest great white shark ever recorded, but it remains unratified.
How great white sharks are measured
The trouble with measuring great white sharks is:
No-one wants to be close-up to them in water.
They have never been bred in captivity (for some reason they do not thrive away from the ocean).
They are very difficult to catch and land.
Great white sharks are protected in many oceans of the world, and so are not taken out of the water.
Dead great white sharks are eaten at sea by other sharks, and so seldom do their carcases wash up on a beach.
That said, programs are now underway to tag certain smaller specimens, and as they grow scientists will be able to take readings from those tags (they are linked up to satellites). It is hoped in future that man may learn much more about this amazing beast, as relatively little is known now.
Great white sharks, as we know them today, have been around for at least 11 million years, and their ancestors existed on Earth 400 million years ago, which is 200 million years before the dinosaur appeared.
Dark, fearsome predators and widely believed to be top of the oceanic food chain, man has long held a deep fascination and an even deeper respect for the great white shark.
Made from cartilage instead of bone, accurately measuring great white sharks is difficult, especially when they are alive.
Dead great white shark found in Mexico April 2012
Two Mexican fishermen caught more than they bargained for in their nets – a 2000lb great white shark measuring almost 20ft in length.
The shark was already dead, but they towed it the one and a half miles to shore where others helped drag the giant great shark up the beach onto dry land.
It took more than 50 men to drag the shark from the shore to the docks, where it was later cut up and served to the townsfolk to eat.
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