The biggest white shark ever
Imagine a 20-foot great white. If like me you are five feet tall then the shark is four times your length.
A 20-foot shark will be about 6 feet tall, so even if you were swimming upright beside it, it would tower over you.
Even more frightening, if you met it face-to-face, its jaws would be 8 feet wide. Eeek! At that size it could easily swallow you whole!
Maybe you’re wondering why it’s so difficult to come up with reliable shark measurements.
Measuring great white sharks is difficult for a couple of reasons:
It’s dangerous to be near them in water.
They’ve not been successfully bred in captivity (for some reason they do not thrive away from the ocean).
They shrink out of the water, so the initial size might change by the time scientific investigators are on the scene to measure.
It’s difficult to get good measurements while the fish are swimming.
They are difficult to catch and land.
Great white sharks are protected in many oceans of the world and cannot be killed at random.
Dead great white sharks are eaten at sea by other sharks, and their carcasses rarely wash up on the beach.
That said, programs are now underway to tag smaller specimens, and as they grow, scientists will be able to take readings from those tags since they are linked up to satellites. Hopefully in the future man can learn much more about this amazing beast.
