The Largest Predatory Fish in the Ocean

     Great White Sharks are the largest predatory fish in the ocean! They are cold-blooded, so they tend to live around South Africa and Australia, but some may live near California, but this is very rare. Many of them travel between South Africa and Australia based on the food supply during a certain time. Only around 3500 are left. They like to live where there are large concentrations of food. There are also a few who are moving along the East Coast of the United States. In fact, the movie Jaws took place in Long Island, New York. This large fish can get up to 20 feet long and weight over 2 tons! Some have actually been measured to be longer than 20 feet, around 23-24 feet. The females are actually the larger species, where the males will be a couple feet smaller in length.

     Once they are around 13-14 feet long, they strictly eat marine mammals, such as dolphins, porpoises, and seals. Do not let this fool you though, because the Great White Shark will eat almost anything in its path. They typically prefer the marine mammals because the marine mammals have a very thick and fatty covering called blubber, which is an excellent food source. They prefer to hunt at dawn and at dusk. 20% of their brain power goes to smell just to hunt!

     Their triangular teeth are designed to cut.  Their hunting tactic is to take a huge bit near the section of their prey’s body they use to swim, and then release. Once they release their prey, the wait until the prey gets weaker before finishing it off. The megaladon was the largest shark in history, with very large teeth! They were a relative of the Great White Shark. They lived around 28 million years ago until about 1.5 million years ago. They were tropical sharks, unlike the Great White Shark, and ate whales to compensate for their 50-60 feet in length. However, around 3 million years ago, the Earth started to get colder, and the megaladon’s food source started to move towards the poles. Thus, scientists believe that they became extinct because they did not have enough food to fill their massive bodies. Orcas are believed to have replaced the megaladon because they came around the time the megaladon became extinct and they are the only top predator compared to the Great White Shark.

     As far as shark attacks go, there are around 100 a year, where most of them are tiny mistakes. If you are near a food source for them, they may mistake you as a seal. If this happens, you may get a little bite. However, there are a few fatalities a year from “shark attacks,” where a shark may have bitten a person so severely they couldn’t heal. This is the shark most attributed with attacks, though not the only one!