We’ve located the top 10 encounters with these awe-inspiring beasts from across the globe and put them all in one place!
We’ll start with the biggest great white ever recorded (start slideshow to watch!):
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Meet “Deep Blue,” estimated to be the biggest shark ever filmed. This 50-year-old very pregnant shark measured a whopping 20 feet in length. She was filmed in 2013 by Mauricio Hoyos Padilla off of Mexico’s Guadelupe Island.
Look how massive she looks compared to the divers!
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In one of the most famous great white encounters ever filmed, professional SCUBA instructor Ocean Ramsey hitched a ride on a great white to promote shark conservation.
Ocean writes on her website, “Many people fear sharks and have unfortunately only seen them portrayed on TV and in films as mindless man-eating machines. In truth, sharks are intelligent, calculated, and generally very cautious about approaching humans. More importantly, sharks play a vital role in maintaining a healthy ocean ecosystem and are being over-fished to the point of extinction.”
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For an unknown reason, this tiger shark thought he would borrow $20,000 worth of camera equipment from an unsuspecting diver.
The diver, Jim Abernethy, holds onto the camera as the shark swims away with it. Can’t say I blame him. Watch:
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This is certainly something that most people don’t see on their trips to the beach. This great white apparently beached itself while trying to catch sea gulls in Cape Cod.
Harbor patrol and beachgoers decided to help it back to the ocean by attaching it to a boat and guiding it out into deeper waters. We applaud these folks for their efforts!
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Prepare to hold your breath! This video shows the intense moment where a great white (accidently) breached the cage where a SCUBA diver was observing.
The owner of the video explained that this wasn’t an attack: “When a great white shark lunges and bites something, it is temporarily blinded. They also cannot swim backward. So this shark lunged at the bait, accidentally hit the side of the cage, was most likely confused and not able to swim backward, it thrust forward and broke the metal rail of the cage.”
Thankfully, both the human and the shark survived the incident.
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Ever reeled in a 2,000 pound fish? That’s exactly what these scientists at OCEARCH do to gather valuable data on great whites.
The organization states on their website that they are “a recognized world leader in generating critical scientific data related to tracking (telemetry) and biological studies of keystone marine species such as great white and tiger sharks.”
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Hawaiian canoe-racing champion Isaac Brumaghim was fishing from his kayak in Hawaii when his catch was unexpectedly stolen by a hungry shark.
Luckily, the event was caught on film so we can see the hilarious range of emotions he went through over a period of one minute.
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Diver Michael Dornellas was taking in the scenery when a bull shark decided to ram him in the head.
The bull shark’s hunting technique is termed “bump and bite,” meaning that this species generally bumps its prey before actually biting it. These sharks are nearly blind, so this bumping technique helps the animals determine if they indeed want to eat what they’re about to attack. Luckily in this case, the shark decided not to bother.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=segeAU4dlDg
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Ocean-goers rarely see this species alive. Known as the goblin shark, these animals are only sporadically observed when they’re killed accidently by fishing operations.
Goblin sharks are one of those most peculiar species known to man. This deep-sea animal has a gigantic snout with tiny electrical receptors capable of detecting currents in other species, which means their prey has no place to hide! Once their prey is identified, these relatively slow-moving sharks can catapult their jaws forward quickly enough to capture their agile prey. See their jaws in motion here:
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Divers in Indonesia’s Cendrawasih Bay noticed a group of four whale sharks trapped in a fishing net and decided to intervene. Apparently, sharks will sometimes attempt to eat the small baitfish that the fishermen target and become trapped within the nets.
Fishermen are considering modifications to their nets to prevent this from happening in the future. Watch:
