The awe-inspiring beast was first discovered in 2014, when she was documented by researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla off of Mexico’s Guadalupe Island for Shark Week. The 50-year-old female was heavily pregnant at the time and measured a whopping 20 feet in length. Later, she was spotted feeding on a sperm whale carcass by marine scientists who were studying tiger sharks in Hawaii. She quickly became an internet sensation after a video of her was shared by Padilla on Facebook, becoming so popular that she garnered her own Twitter account.
Despite her colossal size — and the fact that she’s an apex predator that could take down just about anything in the sea — every video and sighting of the giant shows her to be calm and non-aggressive with humans.
Still images of the shark show us just how massive she is in comparison to the divers. We can only imagine what he was thinking as the shark — nearly the size of a London bus — swam toward him. What a privilege!
Understandably, the enormous animal gave the divers a bit of a scare when she began to curiously inspect the exterior of their diving cage.
While sharks may be intimidating, they’re actually the ones we should be worrying about. Shark populations have declined by a shocking 71% since 1970. The sharks are captured and killed for their meat or for shark fin soup, and many are incidentally caught in nets set out for other species.
Check out another sighting of Deep Blue off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, in the video below:
