Featured Image Credit: Mauricio Hoyos Padilla/Facebook
Topics: Animals, World News, Science
Tom Wood
Footage of the largest great white shark ever captured on camera continues to leave viewers shocked and in awe, even years after it was first released.
Honestly, check out the size of this fish:
Great white sharks are one of the largest predators in the world's oceans, with only the orca and sperm whale clocking in larger, really.
They’re the largest predatory fish - for sure - given that the other two are whales.
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However, there’s just something about great white sharks that captures the imagination.
Perhaps it’s their dead-looking black eyes, or fearsome teeth, or the fact that there have been multiple films - most famously Jaws - made about them.
Whatever the case, we humans have a fascination with them that simply won’t go away.
So, when footage of one this large does the rounds, which it frequently does, it attracts quite a bit of attention.
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This footage was captured back in 2015 by shark expert and marine biologist Mauricio Hoyos Padilla and features a creature known as ‘Deep Blue’.
Spotted off the coast of Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, Deep Blue seems remarkably unbothered as she floats past some divers who, two of whom are inside a relatively flimsy looking cage, but one who seems altogether too exposed for many people’s liking.
As you can see, the huge female shark makes the divers look tiny, clocking in at an estimated 20 feet long.
The scientists have further guessed that the shark was around 50 years old at the time, and seemed to be pregnant.
That made her even bigger, with one report claiming that she had the ‘girth of a small elephant’.
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While sharks can be a bit scary to those who don’t understand them, most of the people who commented on the video seemed to be simply in awe of the creature, calling her ‘majestic’ and ‘beautiful’.
Unfortunately, we don’t know whether Deep Blue is still alive after the years that have passed, but there’s no reason why she wouldn’t be.
According to the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, great white sharks can live from anywhere between 30 to 70 years in the wild, so there’s every chance that Deep Blue is floating around somewhere still.
The clip recently resurfaced - see what we did there? - on Reddit, where hundreds of people commented on it once again.
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One said: “We’re going to need a bigger ocean.”
Another wrote: “Deep Blue. She’s such a beauty!”
A third commented: “Way too impressive, beautiful!”
That’s the sort of reaction we should have to these sharks, to be fair.
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They very rarely attack human beings, and even then it’s usually an accident.
Yet, they are threatened - currently listed as ‘vulnerable’ globally and ‘critically endangered’ in Europe.
As you can see, this huge shark has no interest in attacking the divers, and - believe you me - it looks like it could if it wanted to.