Great White Shark
Carcharodon carcharias
The ocean's most famous hunter is warm-bodied, long-lived and slow to grow up — and far more at risk from us than we are from it.
A great white is a fish: it breathes through gills, its skeleton is cartilage instead of bone, and its tail stands on its edge. But it's an unusual one. It keeps parts of its body warmer than the sea around it, it can live for 70 years or more, and it replaces its teeth for its whole life. Mostly, it hunts seals.
On the conservation status
Vulnerable worldwide on the IUCN Red List, and Critically Endangered in the Mediterranean. Great whites grow slowly and have few young, so every one that's caught takes a long time to replace.
- Length
- Up to about 6 m (20 ft)
- Weight
- Over 2,000 kg (4,400 lb)
- Lifespan
- 70 years or more
- Diet
- Seals, sea lions, dolphins, fish, other sharks
- Body heat
- Warmer than the water around it
- Class
- Fish — not a mammal
The good stuff.
A warm-bodied fish
Most fish are the same temperature as the water they swim in. A great white has a web of blood vessels that traps heat, keeping its muscles, eyes and brain warmer than the sea — so it can hunt in cold water.
Teeth on a conveyor belt
A great white has around 300 jagged, triangular teeth in rows. When one breaks or falls out, the tooth behind it moves forward to take its place, for its entire life.
It can fly, briefly
Off South Africa, great whites ambush seals from below so fast that they burst right out of the water. It's called breaching, and it's one of the most astonishing things any fish can do.
Dark on top, white underneath
From above, its grey back blends into the dark water below. From below, its white belly blends into the bright surface. It's called countershading, and orcas and penguins use the same trick.
A very long life
Scientists dated great white backbones using carbon left in the ocean by bomb tests in the 1950s and 60s, and found they can live 70 years or more — far longer than anyone had thought.
Few babies, slowly
Females give birth to live pups every two or three years, after a pregnancy thought to last a year or more. Before they're born, the pups grow by eating unfertilised eggs inside their mother. That slow pace is why fishing hits them so hard.
Wait, really?
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Pups are born 1.1–1.6 metres long — already bigger than some kinds of adult shark.
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Researchers tell great whites apart by the jagged back edge of the dorsal fin, which is as individual as a fingerprint.
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Isla Guadalupe, off Mexico's Pacific coast, is one of the best places in the world to study great whites.
What it sounds like
Silent. Like the whale shark, great whites make no calls at all — though they're very good at hearing low sounds, like a struggling fish, from far away.
Where you might see one
Isla Guadalupe off Mexico, South Africa's Western Cape, South Australia's Neptune Islands, and California's Farallon Islands.
The trouble
- Fishing for their fins, jaws and teeth
- Getting caught by accident in fishing gear
- Shark nets at some beaches
- Slow growth and few young, so losses add up
One real thing
Every year people kill tens of millions of sharks; sharks kill fewer than ten people. Never buy shark-fin soup or shark-tooth souvenirs, and if you learn one fact about sharks, share that one.
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