Never before seen footage shows what appears to be a newborn great white shark off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, that was spotted in July 2023.
Research from the University of California, Riverside, claimed the incident could help solve a mystery that has baffled scientists for many years, Fox Weather reported Monday.
When speaking of the sharks’ birthing locations, wildlife filmmaker Carlos Guana said, “No one has ever been able to pinpoint where they are born, nor has anyone seen a newborn baby shark alive.”
While filming at the site over the summer, he and a biology doctoral student saw a shark that they later identified as a great white pup.
An image shows the baby shark, whose skin appears to be white:
Great Whites are the largest predatory sharks in the world but little is known about their early years in life. But one Malibu filmmaker may have discovered a never-before-seen white shark baby. 🦈 https://t.co/Gk4Q0ivhD5
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) January 30, 2024
University of California Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes said as the shark swam around it was shedding a white film which led them to believe it was possibly the embryonic layer.
“When I first saw this small white shark, I honestly thought it was an albino white shark,” Guana told ABC 7. “We had been there eight hours and we filmed a very large, supposedly pregnant female. She goes down and within a five minute window this little baby shark comes up.”
“You put two and two together and it’s not hard to deduce where it came from,” he added.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) describes the great white shark as “world’s largest known predatory fish” that has 300 teeth:
Sharks rip their prey into mouth-sized pieces which are swallowed whole. The shark’s heavy, torpedo-shaped body allows it to cruise efficiently for long periods of time, and then suddenly switch to high speed bursts in pursuit of prey—sometimes leaping out of the water. It feeds on a broad spectrum of prey, from small fish, such as halibut, to large seals and dolphins.
According to prior research, adult female sharks may have given birth near Santa Barbara and Baja California, Mexico, the Fox article said.
“The paper called the area a ‘critical nursing habitat’ for white sharks. That area is also where the smallest known free-living white shark was caught in 2019. It was about 3.5 feet long with similar rounded fins,” the report noted.
Now, Sternes believes the location where he saw the baby shark could be a definitive birthing area.
