![]() Killer whales are the wolves of the ocean and are now redistributing the great white shark population in South Africa. ‘I think it’s going to really blow the world’s mind. ‘It’s just such an incredible but very sinister and worrying set of events,’ says Alison, who works at the Dyer Island Conservation Trust. The footage confirms Alison’s theory that killer whales are terrorizing the great whites, ripping open their torsos for livers and driving them away. With blood spurting everywhere, the threat was palpable. It’s just raw power.’Īs well as watching their experimental seal decoys being devoured by great white sharks as they launch themselves out of the water – known as breaching – the all-female team also witnessed a natural predation of a great white on a seal pup just feet from their boat. ‘Around 90 per cent of the time the shark wins that battle and you’ve got to the careful holding onto the rope with a bit of tension as you can also get bad rope burn on your hand because the weight is like a lorry that’s driving full speed in the opposite direction. This time, as I pulled the bait, the shark grabbed it and we had a bit of a tug of war, with the shark right up against the boat. But they’re very clever and can also sneak up on you from below to grab the food. ‘Although we are not there to feed them, around 90 per cent of the time, the sharks don’t get the bait as the handler moves it, yet every now and then it happens. But the great thing about this documentary is that it shows that girls can do it just as well as men. I’m a 115lb girl so battling a great white single-handedly on a bait line is quite a story. Leigh agrees: ‘You’re looking at an animal which is at least one ton in size with a strength that a human can never comprehend. I kept falling over but I had one job – and that was to find my footing and keeping filming even though I was freaking out.’ ‘It was a moment like no other when the shark grabbed the bait and started smacking her tail against the cage – so much that I thought it would be snapped off the line and that I was going to fall to the bottom of the ocean. I don’t think we fully comprehend how big white sharks are until you see one so close and you realize that it really is just a bite and you’re dead. She faced me and she was so massive, her girth alone was the size of the cage. ![]() ‘It was terrifying to see a huge 16 foot shark’s jaws wide-open, snapping at the bait just at the side of the boat, just a few feet away. Leigh takes the responsibility for working the bait line and luring a great white to the boat, while Zandile is in the shark diving cage taking research photos while Alison uses all her strength to get the satellite tag into a female white shark. She has a particular connection with the observation of six of them but in 2017, the great whites began to mysteriously disappear from the Gansbaai coast, a world-renowned place for spotting this legendary shark.Īs such she is determined to track down her missing killer family so the team attempts to implant a satellite tag onto a passing large great white shark to provide invaluable information about her movements in real time which could potentially lead them to the others.Īfter some time, the female team hit gold and tag a massive female shark, weighing around two tons. Female great white sharks grow much larger than males like most shark species and have skin which is three times thicker than that of male sharks in order to protect them from the aggressive mating when the males latch on by biting themįor 15 years, her colleague Alison, who was born in Lancashire in the UK, has studied, tagged and written about hundreds of great white sharks. ![]() These sharks have a powerful sense of smell: they can detect the scent of blood in the water up to three miles away.They eat an average of 11 tons of food in a year.A great white’s powerful tail can propel it up to 60 kilometers-an-hour.The heaviest great white shark ever recorded was estimated to weigh in at 7,328 pounds.They communicate purely by body language, whether that’s tilting to the side or adjusting the angle of the fins.As such, people are rarely eaten by sharks so if they die from a bite, it’s often from blood loss. A shark will bite you – not to kill you, but as part of an exploration of the unfamiliar.Contrary to popular belief and the portrayal of the great white shark in the 1975 film Jaws, are incredibly intelligent, selective predators, not mindless monsters and humans do not form part of their diet.Although its eyes look a sinister black, a great white, in fact, has blue irises.A great white’s mouth contains over three hundred teeth arranged in seven rows.
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