Great White Shark odd sightings and mysterious questions
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In September 2004, the USA was captivated for approximately 2 weeks when a 15-foot great white shark swam into the shallow waters off of Cape Cod and into a narrow lagoon/inlet.
It routinely swam in circles and came within feet of the shore many times over the two week period.
The shark was seemingly disoriented and otherwise could not find its way out of the lagoon, so for weeks, as it weakened and as thousands of onlookers came to watch the sight, rescuers aided and helped move the shark off to sea.
A rare sighting of a Great White was reported in Hawaii in 2001. A free-diver off the Waianae Coast spotted a great white shark.
The shark swam within a few feet of the spear fisherman but did not attack. This sighting was a rarity. Only about 10 confirmed sightings of great white sharks have been recorded in Hawaii waters.
This doesn't mean only 10 great whites ever showed up here, because people don't always report sightings. It does mean, however, that visits from great whites are uncommon.
The man escaped without injury.
Are there any Great White Sharks in UK waters ? Your comments please ...
('Probably', is the most honest answer, but!!!)
The likelihood is that they are so few in number, and their visits rare, that with the lack of any physical or convincing photograph evidence; one could almost say that they are not present.
Having said that, there is no reason why they aren't in our waters!
Great White Sharks live in cool temperate water, on a diet of mainly larger
fish species and smaller sharks. We have all of these conditions present
around our coastline. They will prey on sea mammals, though only when they become large, but not to the exclusion of other prey species.
The most northerly confirmed and authenticated account, comes from La Rochelle, in Biscay.
While there are no fences or barriers in local waters to prevent their movement further north, they would probably only do so for an abundant food source.
This however, should not be read that they would migrate towards Scotland for the large colonies of seals or whales or dolphins, as this would perhaps be too far to travel without abundant food sources on the way.
In my view Great Whites do visit British shores - but very few in number. If there
were large numbers of Great Whites in UK waters and with the amount of
commercial fishing around the UK surely one or two would have been
positively spotted by now.
With the effect of global warming slowly taking effect this should
increase the amount of Great White food in our waters and therefore
increasing the numbers of Great Whites, maybe one day leading to a positive
sighting and photographic evidence.
An interesting article following what appeared to be a Great White feeding 20 metres off the Devon Coast :
National Geographic - "Great White" Sighting Puts U.K. on Shark Alert
Having had a good look through various articles about whether or not Great White sharks are patrolling British waters i will discuss this subject further.....
According to an article in the Sun newspaper in August 2003, great white sharks are now “patrolling Britain’s shores”! Indeed, in his latest revision of the Sharks of the World catalogue for the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Prof. Leonard Compagno has extended the range of the Great White (Carcharodon carcharias) to English Channel, North Sea and Irish Sea waters. Compagno notes in his text “possibly England” when listing known locations for White sharks.
This furore erupted nearly six years ago, when a group fishing aboard the Blue Fox off the coast from Cornwall were investigated by what they were absolutely convinced was a Great White. As expected, this found the headlines of the British press -- the incident occurred on the 24th August 1999 and the press got hold of it by the 26th -- with most tabloids displaying the infamous picture of a Great White leaping out of the water after bait, bearing its formidable array of teeth.
Allegedly, there were some photos taken of the Padstow incident, although they never materialized and the only photographic ‘evidence’ was a shaky home movie of a large shark swimming just offshore from Tintagel in Cornwall a few days later. The footage was undoubtedly a Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) and not the Great White contested by the media. However, the description that the crew of the Blue Fox gave of the 3 ½ to 4 ½ m (12 – 15ft) fish and its behaviour towards the boat during their encounter, about two miles (3km) offshore from Padstow,
was impressively accurate of a Great White. Nonetheless, without firm
photographic proof this sighting was filed under W for “well, maybe it was”.
Then, at the end of 2003, there word of another alleged encounter that a "seasoned fisherman" had with a Great White shark just off the Isle of Wight (English Channel) that Summer.
Apparently the incident was "kept quiet" so as not to damage the tourist
trade.
The debate was re-fired in early 2004 -- first in June and then again in August -- when more ostensible sightings of White Sharks made the press. The most recent of these was a report made by a 14 year old girl, who used binoculars to watch what she perceived to be a 3 ½ m (12ft) Great White feeding on a shoal of fish off Baggy Point in North Devon. The shark apparently exhibited the “indicative” bite-and-spit technique while feeding. The description given of the shark was extremely detailed, almost textbook, for the conditions. However, the nebulous evidence for the presence of Great Whites around the UK was sufficiently tantalizing to spur a privately funded expedition by several shark biologists and enthusiasts to take to the waters off Devon and Cornwall and chum for them. The expedition found no trace of White sharks in the Channel, but were able to talk to several of the fishermen who reported sightings or reported seals with injuries that “could only” have been inflicted by a Great White. More disturbing, was that the group found very little shark fauna – considering their use of chum, they had expected considerably more sharks to be about, suggesting a serious decline in shark numbers off our coasts.
Perhaps a better question than “why would there be White sharks off the UK?” is “why have we not come across Great Whites off the British coast before?” The water temperatures off the south coast of England (during the summer months, at least) are perfectly within the seven to 26oC (44.6 - 78.8oF) tolerance of the Great White (left) and we have a decent population of seals. Indeed, specifically why we don’t see Great Whites off the UK is something of an enigma. Really, encountering a White shark off the South Coast of Britain would be no biological surprise at all.
Some have suggested that, given the extent of Britain's fishing industry, if White sharks were around, we'd have caught one by now. I'm not convinced, although I'm more receptive to the suggestion that the depletion of our fish stocks -- and White sharks are primarily piscivorous at all life stages -- may have a role in the apparent absence of this macrocarnivore (i.e. lack of suitable food). However, I doubt this is the whole story.
The most northerly record for White sharks in the northeast Atlantic was from the mouth of the Loire in the Bay of Biscay off the French Coast. In addition, a 2.1m (7ft) juvenile Great White was caught slightly further south, off La Rochelle, France in 1977. Historically, Great White sharks were reasonably well known from the Mediterranean Sea, even to the extent that some authorities have suggested that certain parts of the Med may be a breeding ground for this fish, although they seem more sporadic nowadays. For the Atlantic as a whole, the most northerly records for White sharks come from the northern sections of the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Newfoundland in Canada (the same latitude as the English Channel). It also seems that Great Whites travel further north in the Pacific, with reports as far north as Siberia, although the most northerly confirmed record was from the south-eastern Gulf of Alaska. One specimen reported in the journal Copeia back in 1963, stranded at Craig in S.E. Alaska around October of 1961.
To sum up, there is currently no conclusive evidence that White sharks are to be found in British waters, although why this should be is rather baffling. Several anecdotal reports exist, some with very compelling accounts, but there is a sad lack of definite proof. Clearly, absence of evidence doesn't necessarily equal evidence of absence, but until we have conclusive verification, UK Great Whites are resigned to the selachian equivalent of the X-Files! Also in this group is the usually tropical Nurse Shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum - right), which was allegedly seen on the seafloor near Alderney (Channel Islands, UK) by two divers in July 2001. Excluding the aforementioned report, the most northerly East Atlantic records for the Nurse Shark, of which I'm aware, are sporadic catches from the Gulf of Gascony, France.
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