Great White Shark
Carcharodon carcharias
The largest predatory fish in the sea — fifteen feet of muscle, gill slits, and a heat-exchange circulatory system that lets it hunt in cold water. Misunderstood, persecuted, and still very much in charge of its food web.
Browse the Woodcut Wild shop →Habitat
Great whites occupy temperate and subtropical coastal waters worldwide, with hotspots off South Africa, southern Australia, central California, and the northeast U.S. Adults migrate thousands of miles annually between feeding grounds and offshore nurseries. They favor water between 54 and 75°F.
Behavior
Hunting is mostly ambush — great whites attack from below at high speed, often breaching the surface with the prey. They prefer pinnipeds (seals and sea lions) as adults; juveniles eat fish. They are warm-bodied (mesothermic), maintaining a core temperature significantly above the surrounding water, which gives them sustained burst-speed advantages over their cold-blooded prey. They are not solitary in the way once assumed: tagged animals show clear social hierarchies and shared use of feeding grounds.
Marginalia
- Great whites have a sixth sense — ampullae of Lorenzini — that detects the electrical fields produced by every living thing in the water.
- Adults can go weeks between meals; a single seal can sustain a 4,000 lb shark for over a month.
- Despite their reputation, fatal attacks on humans are extraordinarily rare — fewer than 100 confirmed worldwide in recorded history.
- The species cannot survive in captivity for long. No public aquarium has kept one alive past six months.
Kin & neighbors
Common questions
Why do great white sharks attack humans?
Usually by mistake, not by menu. The leading explanation is mistaken identity — a surfer paddling on a board, seen from below against bright sky, throws a silhouette much like a seal. That fits the pattern of most bites: a single exploratory strike, then the shark leaves, because a bony, lean human is not the fatty meal it wanted. People are not prey; they are a misread.
Do great white sharks have any predators?
One, and it is decisive: the orca. Killer whales hunt great whites, flip them upside down to induce a paralyzed state called tonic immobility, and eat the energy-rich liver. After orca attacks off South Africa, great whites have abandoned entire stretches of coast for months — the apex predator has an apex of its own.
How do great white sharks reproduce?
Slowly, which is much of why they are vulnerable. They are ovoviviparous — eggs hatch inside the mother and the pups are born live, two to ten at a time after a gestation thought to run over a year. The developing young even eat unfertilized eggs in the womb. Females may not be ready to breed until their thirties, so populations recover at a crawl.
How many teeth does a great white shark have?
About 300 at any moment, arranged in several rows. The front teeth do the work; the rows behind are a conveyor belt of replacements that rotate forward as teeth break or wear out, so a great white can run through thousands of teeth over a lifetime. The teeth are serrated, built for sawing through blubber and bone.
How long do great white sharks live?
Far longer than once believed — radiocarbon dating of their vertebrae put some individuals past 70 years. That late-life, slow-growth biology is the catch: a fish that takes decades to mature and lives most of a human lifespan cannot replace itself quickly when fishing and bycatch thin its numbers.