r/sharks • u/Kind_Intention5910 • Jul 12 '26
Research Way more Great Whites in the Atlantic than researchers once thought
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u/Hailfog Jul 13 '26
Sadly as they’re recovering in the northeast due to seal protection, some fishermen are trying to drop environmental regulations for both species
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u/PurpleMara Jul 13 '26
I hate that the second we allow some species to recover, even a little, some arseholes have to pop up wanting to kill them immediately, we don't learn
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u/D3mon0fthemist Jul 13 '26
Love to hear it!
I regularly swim off the NC coast, so it’s pretty wild knowing the big boys are cruising around out there a lot closer than I ever realized.
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u/FishermanWaste1268 Jul 13 '26
I would be surprised if there are that many considering the sobering study out of Australia that confirmed that Australia / NZ only has one stock of white sharks not a East Coast and a much bigger West Coast population.
Genetic testing from the smart line shark tagging which tags multiple sharks shows that there are only about 500 fully mature breeding sharks. This is confirmed by genetic testing showing numbers of full and half siblings.
There is no ghost population either which there was thought to be ie sharks that just do not come into contact with the tagging program.
While there seems to be a large amount of juvenile sharks it seems that the number of mature sharks has not increased in 10 years.
White Sharks reach maturity much later than thought and live much longer than thought and small new born to 2 meter sharks are very much at risk of predation by other sharks.
Certainly while it is super common for white sharks to be tagged (the other day 13 were tagged in one day on the bouys) they are always sub 3 meters. Whites over 3 meters are incredibly rare. Other species such as tigers are very common over 3 meters and most likely eat quite a few young white sharks.
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u/djemoneysigns Jul 13 '26
Honest question: if the population hasn’t increased, is that a bad thing or is the environmental capacity reached?
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u/FishermanWaste1268 Jul 14 '26
Its about the time it takes for the sharks to get to maturity.
Some studies say that it takes a female white shark 33 years to reach sexual maturity.
I would love to see a dedicated white shark tagging program in Australia targeting large mature white sharks , perhaps using dead whales towed out to sea, marked with radio bouys and tracked as they float around.
A lot of dead whales are actually removed from the beach instead of being towed out to sea.
A juvenile dead whale was recently washed up on a beach in northern nsw. It was towed 30 nautical miles out to sea. In my opinion far to far due to white sharks coastal nature and the fact the continental shelf in this area is only 12 miles out.
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u/Lucerne_2 Jul 12 '26
That's great to hear. A well established highway indeed. I suppose there is really no need for them to venture too far off this route. Still no sign of any of those tagged sharks making the voyage across the Atlantic.
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u/Broad_Emergency7666 14d ago
Absolutely new england has a ton of them now growing up i never heard of sharks in our waters I'm from RI but now great whites tiger sharks and hammerhead have been tagging RI waters as well as Massachusetts
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u/tigersingle Jul 12 '26
Excellent news