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Great white shark off the coast of California: newborn or shark with skin disease?
Photo: Carlos Gauna / The Malibu Artist
A great white shark swims in rich turquoise water: This is shown by a drone camera shot off the coast of California. A special specimen may be seen on it - the video is supposed to show a great white shark that has just been born.
The aerial photograph shows the animal stripping a white film from its body, report nature filmmaker Carlos Gauna and biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes from the University of California at Riverside in the journal “Environmental Biology of Fishes”. This film could indicate a newborn animal whose body still has substances from the embryonic stage stuck to it.
The shark was observed by a drone camera in July 2023 in the waters off Southern California, the authors write. "This may be the first evidence of a young animal in the wild." It was around 1.5 meters long and completely white. Adults, on the other hand, are gray above and white below.
However, it is also possible that the white layer comes from a skin disease, writes the team. However, the shark's size and appearance suggested it was a newborn. In addition, the recording comes from both an area and a time of year in which the birth of young sharks is assumed.
“The article is serious,” says Timo Moritz from the German Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund, assessing the scientific publication. "Regardless of this, you have to be careful with conclusions, because this is only an isolated observation." The team of authors tends to assume that it is a baby shark. However, the study does not address whether there is evidence of such layers in newborns in other shark species. "As far as I know, that's not the case and that of course weakens this hypothesis." He himself doesn't want to highlight any of the hypotheses as more likely.
The photographer Gauna reports that he probably spotted pregnant sharks at the location. »I had filmed three very large sharks at this particular location in the previous days that appeared to be pregnant. That day one of them dived, and not long after that this completely white shark appeared. The wildlife filmmaker has already spent several hours filming sharks all over the world.
According to the authors, skin diseases do occur in sharks, but only rarely. The fact that the skin beneath the detached layer was normally pigmented speaks against albinism. Diseases such as dermatitis have also been proven in sharks, but the conditions are not similar to what was observed. According to the duo, if the white layer is not embryonic substances, the only possibility would be a previously unknown skin disease.
Already in 2019, another team reported six newborn white sharks that were caught with nets off the Pacific coast of Mexico between 2015 and 2017. The animals, which were 1.1 to 1.5 meters long, were released again after data collection.
ani/dpa