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Track deep blue shark5/21/2023 ![]() ![]() Massive great whites like the star of the upcoming Discovery Channel documentary typically weigh about 5,000 pounds. Great white sharks routinely grow to about 15-feet-long and are largest predatory fish on the planet. Fall is reportedly the best time to shark watch on the island.Ī video of Deep Blue has gone viral and attacked more than 3 million views to date. The seals are a common entrée for the gigantic sharks.Įach year, “shark enthusiasts” and divers travel to Guadalupe Island to catch a glimpse of the great whites that inhabit the area. The massive great white shark also reportedly has a “large, gaping hole” on her right trunk, and both her tail and dorsal fin appear to be damaged and scraped.Īfter Deep Blue was tagged by the divers, she led them to a colony of elephant seals. It is explained during the Discovery Channel documentary that the vertical slashes on Deep Blue’s left flank could be the result of mating or from wounds sustained during fights with sharks. She also had significant scarring on her body, making her highly recognizable for tracking purposes. ![]() The female shark was reportedly pregnant during the rare sighting. One of the divers reportedly eased outside of the protective cage and became “dangerously close” to the great white shark and touched one of her fins. The diving researchers tagged the massive sea creature during the encounter. ![]() The great white shark now known as Deep Blue will be featured in a Discovery Channel documentary in August. The underwater video footage taken by divers is thought to have captured one of the largest great whites ever caught on film. The great white shark known as 'Deep Blue,' believed to be the biggest great white on record, has reportedly been spotted swimming in Hawaiian waters. The great white shark is more than 20-feet-long and is believed to be at least 50-years-old. “We could apply it to studying hermit crabs as much as to great white sharks.Deep Blue is a massive great white shark that was found off Guadalupe Island. He added that the undersea drone technology could help broader studies of marine ecology, sustainable fishing and ocean conservation. “They’re arguably the most charismatic, if not the most well-known species on the planet,” Skomal said, “and it’s still one we know remarkably little about some of its most basic natural history.” Decades of research, tagging and diving have done little to answer basic questions about the fish, including what social lives they might have and where they might reproduce.Īround Guadalupe, presumed to be a white shark haven because of the large number of seals that gather there, the drone did not observe any interaction between the sharks. “Not only do we get to see what they are doing, but we also know exactly where they are and collect data about the physical environmental in which they live.”Īlthough the drone has opened a window into daily life under the sea, white sharks remain mysterious. The AUV also captured sharks swimming close to the bottom when they were in shallower waters, which Skomal said may be “an effort to snatch prey or spook it up from below, or associated with navigation”.Īmy Kukulya, one of the researchers and an engineer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the “groundbreaking” AUV is so far the first way scientists will be able to study white sharks and other animals in the open ocean. At other times the sharks simply approached the drone to look at it, before moving on along their way. Some sharks did not bite but rather bumped the drone, nudging the vehicle with their snout in what the researchers call an “agonistic” behavior – an aggressive or even defensive thump, but not anything like a committed attack. exclusive tracking map In partnership with Saving The Blue A portion of all proceeds are donated to Saving the Blue, who aims to recover and restore a variety of threatened marine species, including sharks, while connecting people to ocean wildlife One small bracelet. Most surprising to the researchers, Skomal said, was that “the hunter would become the hunted – the AUV was viewed by the shark as potential prey and aggressively attacked”. “The remarkable new observations indicate that hypothesis is correct, and the sharks ambush from the darkness.” “If the shark hangs down at a great depth, in the darkness, then its prey swims above it silhouetted and the shark reduces its own likelihood of detection,” Skomal said. Skomal said that the behavior captured by the drone cameras supports the idea that white sharks dive down as far as 200 meters in order to use light to their advantage. ![]() He said automated unmanned vehicles (AUVs) like his team’s let humans observe marine life in comprehensive detail, rather than what scientists can see in the fleeting shark breaches, or their encounters at the surface or through electronic tracking.įrom the waters off Guadalupe, an island off Mexico where Pacific white sharks congregate, the scientists observed 10 different individuals, including the 20-foot female named Deep Blue and a local shark nicknamed Bubba. ![]()
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