A huge Great White shark has been caught on video by a team
of researchers in Mexican Pacific waters .
According to Mauricio Hoyos Padilla , marine biologist and
shark specialist , this is the largest White shark seen from the cages in
Guadalupe Island.
The shark is a female measuring over 6 meters long and is
known to researchers as “Deep Blue”.
Guadalupe Island is located
241 kilometers off the coast of Baja California and is to the north of Los
Cabos.
In the recording, "Deep Blue" passes a diver in a shark
cage allowing the size and scale of the fish to be appreciated.
Great Whites feed on fish, dolphins and most famously sea
lions so it should come as no surprise that they are found in the prolific
waters of the Eastern Pacific.
The capture a few years back of a gigantic Great White shark
in Mexico's Sea of Cortez was major news because of the size of the predator --nearly
20 feet long and weighing at least 2,000 pounds -- but also because catches of
adult White sharks in the gulf are considered rare.
Pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) have been used to
study the migration patterns and habitat preference of 56 White sharks tagged
off Guadalupe Island, Mexico, between 2000 and 2008.
Nine tags were recovered and two individual sharks were
tagged in consecutive years, providing 2 yr of tracking data for each
individual. The sharks were found to make long-range, seasonal migrations from
Guadalupe Island to an offshore pelagic habitat, sometimes traveling as far
west as the Hawaiian Islands. The pelagic region inhabited by Guadalupe Island Great
White sharks corresponds with that reported for sharks tagged off central
California.
All sharks are under extreme threat from the shark fin
industry – a particularly cruel and wasteful fishery where the fins are cut
from the still living animals which are then thrown back into the sea, all to
serve the Far East’s love of shark fin soup. If you’ve ever eaten it, you will
wonder why we are wiping out a species for something with the consistency and flavor
of wallpaper paste.