Featured Image Credit: Scubadiverlife.com
By: Kira Krall
A man filming sharks in South Africa got the video of a lifetime when a shark locally known as Scarlet made an appearance. She lunged for the bait, then switched her curious eye to the camera instead. Click on this link to watch the encounter!
This video shows all kinds of amazing shark features. You can see Scarlet’s jaw protruding slightly as she lunges for the bait. As she faces the camera, look for large pores on her snout. Those are ampullae of Lorenzini, or jelly-filled pores that allow all cartilaginous fish to sense electrical impulses. And of course, who could forget those serrated knife-like teeth? As Scarlet goes by the camera, we get an unparalleled view of the great white shark’s hydrodynamic body. Her large gill slits allow her to take in as much oxygen as possible to power her strong muscles.
South African sharks are known around the world for their signature breaching move. In order to catch seals, great white sharks must lurk in the depths and attack from below. This study found out that most sharks can reach an average of 21 miles per hour in just two and a half second! Speed like that often sends at least part of the shark above the surface, with some executing a full-body breach.
This unique population met its match this past summer. South African beaches became great white graveyards as their corpses washed up without their livers. The culprit? Orca whales. They were after squalene oil, an “immunity-enhancing” oil found in abundance in shark livers.
Dead sharks are unfortunately nothing new in the modern human world. Sharks have historically been hunted for their beneficial liver oil, but are mostly killed for sport, on purpose in controversial shark culls, or for shark fin soup. An unintentional catch like a bycatch or habitat degradation also plays a large role in the population decline. Stellenbosch University’s six-year study of South Africa’s sharks revealed that only 353-522 of the resident sharks are left.