The Great White shark unfortunately has a horrible reputation and therefore is considered to be vulnerable to extinction because of many factors including mostly human related factors like overfishing. Photo: Michelle Millard
Great White sharks are known for their pearly whites and their massive jaw, in their jaw they have five to seven rows of teeth with 300 hundred teeth over all the rows. Photo: Michelle Millard
Great White sharks can be as long as a small school bus able to grow up to five metres in length. Photo: Jules Casey, One Breath Diver.
Welcome to the Marine Mili series, a regular column about all things marine! During this series I aim to inspire people to want to protect our oceans and all the marine life that call our oceans home. Hopefully after reading each column, you would have learnt something new including what we can do to help protect and preserve our oceans. You can follow me and my journey on my Instagram page: _marine_mili.
Did you know that the Great White shark (also known as the White shark) can be as long as a small school bus, able to grow up to five metres in length. The females are usually slightly larger averaging 4.5-5 metres with the males only growing to about 3-3.5metres.
Great White sharks are known for their pearly whites and their massive jaw, however, did you know they have five to seven rows of teeth? Over the rows there are about 300 teeth in their mouths.
The reason they have so many rows of teeth is because this species has an incredibly strong jaw so their teeth are constantly getting damaged or worn down. They have a new row of teeth ready to go as having teeth is a vital survival tool for them. Some sharks are known to go through about 20,000 teeth over their life as they can constantly replace them.
Funnily enough, despite having so many teeth Great White sharks don’t chew their food, they swallow it whole. The teeth are used to bite into prey before it gets swallowed without any further chewing to break it up.
This beautiful species of shark unfortunately has a horrible reputation and therefore is considered to be vulnerable to extinction because of many factors including mostly human related factors like overfishing.
Great White sharks are at the top of the food chain. Without them many species including seals and sea lions would overpopulate which means the fish stock levels would rapidly decrease leaving hardly any fish for humans to catch. Fishing jobs would not only go out the window, but many businesses would suffer as well.
The diet of the Great White shark usually consists of marine mammals, other shark species and a large variety of fish. It is also not super fussy and will clean up the sea floor of any marine creatures that may have died from other causes.
