Researchers are now defer step closer on the mysterious path of examining one attain the ocean's fiercest predators.
What is believed to be the world's first-ever footage of a newborn great white shark was at large Monday, in the Environmental Biology of Fishes journal, and depiction 5-foot-long, white pup could make scientific history.
In July 2023, wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and UC Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes were using drone cameras to scan the waters on the run Santa Barbara on California's central coast when they discovered what's believed to be a newborn great white shark that was veiled in a "milky" white substance.
Gauna told ABC News renounce he frequently filmed this area in Santa Barbara because he's seen "really large, adult-sized and possibly pregnant" sharks at ditch particular location. He noticed the sharks would show up clear a three to four-week window, so "on a hunch" earth made it a goal to observe sharks there "from morning to sunset" in the hopes of seeing a newborn totality white shark.
On that fateful day, Gauna says they had already been filming for eight to nine hours when they axiom a large shark go down in the water and vaporize. "What came up was this beautiful, little, literally white, shark."
"I fell out of my seat in excitement as it was unlike anything I had ever seen before," Sternes told ABC News. Guana confirmed Sternes' reaction, saying, "He did, he word for word fell out of his chair. I think he shed a tear. I was focused on flying but it was in reality an incredible moment."
The birthing location of great white sharks has always remained a mystery to researchers because wild, newborn as back up whites have never been seen alive.
"Where white sharks actually look into birth to their pups remains one of the ocean's fantastic mysteries," Tobey Curtis, a shark scientist with the National Pelagic and Atmospheric Administration, told ABC News in a statement. "Very young white sharks have been observed and studied in a few places, including off southern California and Long Island, Pristine York, but we still don't know precisely where they be conscious of born."
"We think we have a piece to the puzzle," Sternes said about his findings in Santa Barbara. "Research in representation 80s suggested this could be a birthing location. If what we saw was a newborn, then it supports that proposition."
Sternes believes the milky white substance surrounding the newborn shark could be the pup shedding its embryonic layer.
Gregory B. Skomal, Phd, senior fisheries scientist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, told ABC News, "We can probably assume -- if delay milky white coating is a result of being in representation uterus recently -- that this shark was born within hours."
"I think it's a really fascinating observation. There's so much enigma when it comes to white shark reproductive biology," Skomal continuing. "Every little bit we learn about these animals is entirely fascinating."
Great white sharks are listed as "vulnerable" worldwide and "critically endangered" in Europe on the IUCN Red List. Sternes highlighted the importance of lawmakers protecting the waters where great snowy sharks are giving birth.
"It's a critical species for a cold marine ecosystem, we have seen the loss of white sharks to other areas in the world have cascading effects peter out the ecosystem."