A
live newborn white shark
has been captured in images for the first time thanks to an underwater drone deployed off the coast of California.
White sharks, the world's largest predatory sharks and the deadliest attacks on humans, are hard to imagine as newborn babies.
This is partly because
no one has apparently seen one in the wild until now.
Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and UC Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes were scanning the waters for sharks on July 9, 2023, near Santa Barbara on California's central coast.
That day, something exciting appeared in the camera viewfinder of Gauna's drone.
It was a baby shark
like they had never seen before.
White sharks are gray on top and white on the bottom.
But this approximately 1.70 meter long shark
was pure white.
It was filmed with an underwater drone in the Pacific (Video Captures).
"We zoomed in on the footage, put it in slow motion, and realized that the white layer was coming off the body as it swam," Sternes said in a statement.
"I think it was a newborn white shark that shed its embryonic shell."
These observations are documented in a new paper in the journal
Environmental Biology of Fishes
.
The article also details the significance of having seen a live newborn great white shark.
Gauna is known on the Internet as The Malibu Artist.
He has spent thousands of hours filming sharks around the world and his videos of them swimming near beachgoers have millions of views.
What he and Sternes observed could help solve the long-standing
mystery of great whites' calving habits.
"The place where white sharks give birth is one of the holy grails of shark science. No one has ever been able to determine where they are born, nor has anyone seen a newborn baby shark alive," Gauna said.
"Dead white sharks have been found inside deceased pregnant mothers.
But nothing like this
."
Newborn
Although the authors of the article acknowledge that the white film exhibited by the shark may have been a skin condition, they do not believe that is the case.
"If that's what we saw, then it's also monumental because such a condition has never been reported in these sharks," Gauna said.
For many reasons, they believe that what they saw was actually a newborn white shark.
First, female white sharks give birth to live young.
While in the womb, embryonic sharks could feed on unfertilized eggs for protein.
Mothers provide additional food to growing baby sharks with
a "milk" secreted in the uterus.
"I think what we saw was the baby leaking intrauterine milk," Sternes said.
A second reason is the presence of large, probably pregnant, great white sharks at this location.
Gauna had observed them here in previous years and in the weeks leading up to the observation.
"I filmed
three very large sharks that looked pregnant
in this specific location in the previous days. That day one of them dove and shortly after this all-white shark appears," Gauna said.
"It's not difficult to figure out where the calf came from."
No one had seen a newborn in the wild until now (Carlos Gauna / The Malibu Artist).
Third, the size and shape of the shark are also indicative of a newborn.
What the two observed was thin, short and rounded.
"In my opinion, this one probably
took a few hours, maybe a day at most
," Sternes said.
Finally, this location off the central coast of California has long been proposed as a birthplace of great white sharks.
"There are many hypothetical areas, but despite the intense interest in these sharks, no one has seen a birth or newborn calf in the wild," Sternes said.
"This could well be the first evidence we have of a cub in the wild, making it
a definitive location for birth
."
Many scholars believe that white sharks are born in areas further away from the sea.
That this calf was filmed so close to shore (approximately
340 meters from the beach
) is significant because its age means it was probably born in shallow water.
Great white sharks are listed as an
internationally
endangered species .
"More research is needed to confirm that these waters are indeed a great breeding ground for white sharks. But if so, we would want lawmakers to step in and protect these waters to help white sharks continue to thrive," Sternes said.
Europe Press.
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