Carlos Gauna and Philip Stearns shot the video in Santa Barbara, California.
Researchers are now one step closer to the mysterious path of investigating one of the ocean’s most ferocious predators.
What is believed to be the world’s first footage of a newborn great white shark was released on Monday. Journal of Fish Environmental BiologyAnd the 5-foot-long white pup could make scientific history.
In July 2023, wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside biology doctoral student Philip Stearns were using a drone camera to scan the waters off Santa Barbara on California’s central coast. However, I discovered what appears to be the following. Newborn great white shark It was covered with a “milky” substance.
Gauna told ABC News that he frequently photographed sharks in this area of Santa Barbara because he had seen “very large, adult-sized, possibly pregnant” sharks there. He noticed that sharks appeared every three to four weeks and, on a “gut feeling,” he made it his goal to observe sharks “from sunrise to sunset” in hopes of meeting a newborn great white. .
On that fateful day, Gauna says he had already been filming for eight to nine hours when he saw a large shark sink into the water and disappear. “What came up was this beautiful, little, literally white shark.”
“I fell out of my seat with excitement because it was something I had never seen before,” Stearns told ABC News. Guana acknowledged Stearns’ reaction, saying: “He literally fell off his chair. I think he burst into tears. He was focused on flying, but it was just an incredible moment.”
The birthplace of great white sharks has always remained a mystery to researchers, as newborn great white sharks have never been seen alive in the wild.
“Where great white sharks actually give birth remains one of the ocean’s great mysteries,” Toby Curtis, a shark scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told ABC News in a statement. “Very young great white sharks have been observed and studied in several locations, including off the coast of Southern California and on Long Island, New York, but we still don’t know exactly where they are born.”
“I think we have a piece of the puzzle,” Stearns said of the Santa Barbara discovery. “Research in the 1980s suggested that this could be a birthing site. If what we saw was a newborn, that would support that proposition.”
Stearns believes the milky white material surrounding newborn sharks could be baby sharks that have shed their embryonic layers.
Dr. Gregory B. Skomal, chief fisheries scientist at the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries, told ABC News: “If that milky coating is due to recent presence in the womb, you can probably guess this. ” he said. The shark was born within hours. ”
“I think this is a really interesting observation. There are so many mysteries surrounding the reproductive biology of great white sharks,” Skomal continued. “Everything we learn about these animals is very interesting.”
Great white sharks are listed as “endangered” worldwide and “endangered” in Europe on the IUCN Red List. Stearns emphasized the importance for lawmakers to protect the waters where great white sharks give birth.
“Great white sharks are a vitally important species to healthy marine ecosystems, and we are seeing cascading impacts on ecosystems when they are lost to other parts of the world.”