Monster Great White > SIGHTING!

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by quick decision

For this to be your second post I think you need to find some where else to spread your

Bingo.

[macojoe]

I did not see any video?? This is what I see:

Sizes

The average length of a full grown great white is 4 to 4.8 metres (13.3 to 15.8 ft), with a weight of 680 to 1,100 kilograms (1,500 to 2,450 lbs), females generally being larger than males. But the question of the maximum size of a great white shark has been subject to much debate, conjecture, and misinformation. Richard Ellis and John E. McCosker, both academic shark experts, devote a full chapter in their book The Great White Shark (1991) to analysis of various accounts of extreme size.

Today, most experts contend that the great white's "normal" maximum size is about 6 metres (20 ft), with a maximum weight of about 1,900 kilograms (4,200 lb). Any claims much beyond these limits are generally regarded as doubtful, and are closely scrutinized.

For some decades many ichthyological works, as well as the Guinness Book of World Records, listed three great whites as the largest individuals caught : an 11 metre (36 ft) great white captured in south Australian waters near Port Fairy in the 1870s, an 11.3 metre (37.6 ft) shark trapped in a herring wier in New Brunswick, Canada in the 1930s and the record holder a 41.2 ft monster caught west coast of the Azores Islands by a Portugese fishing trawler. While this was the commonly accepted maximum size, reports of 7.5 to 10 metre (25 to 33.3 ft) great whites were common and often deemed credible.

Some researchers questioned the reliability of those measurements in the Guiness Book, noting they were much larger than any other accurately-reported great white. The New Brunswick shark may have been a wrongly-identified basking shark, as both sharks have similar body shapes. The question of the Port Fairy shark was settled in the 1970s, when J.E. Reynolds examined the shark's jaws and "found that the Port Fairy shark was of the order of 5 m (17 feet) in length and suggested that a mistake had been made in the original record, in 1870, of the shark's length. As for the Azores record holder, that listing has quietly been removed from the book since it's appearance in Guiness volumes in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

Richard Ellis and John E. McCosker, both academic shark experts, write that "the largest White Sharks accurately measured range between 19 and 21 ft [about 5.8 to 6.4 m], and there are some questionable 23-footers [about 7 m] in the popular — but not the scientific — literature". Furthermore, they add that "these giants seem to disappear when a responsible observer approaches with a tape measure." (For more about legendary exaggerated shark measurements, see the submarine).

The largest specimen Ellis and McCosker endorse as reliably measured was 6.4 metres (21.3 ft) long, caught in Cuban waters in 1945 (though confident in their opinion, Ellis and McCosker note, however, that other experts have argued this individual might have been a few feet shorter). See the photo of this Cuban shark below.

There have since been claims of larger great whites, but, as Ellis and McCosker note, verification is often lacking and these extraordinarily large great whites have, upon examination, all proved of average size. For example, a female said to be 7.13 metres (over 23 ft) was fished in Malta in 1987 by Alfredo Cutajar. In their book, Ellis and McCosker agree this shark seemed to be larger than average, but they did not endorse the measurement. In the years since, experts eventually found reason to doubt the claim, due in no small part to conflicting accounts offered by Cutajar and others. A BBC photo analyst concluded that even "allowing for error ... the shark is concluded to be in the 18.3 ft [5.5 m] range and NO WAY approaches the 23 ft [7 m] reported by Abela." (as in original)

Editor's Note: I received this email Sun Dec. 21 2008 .....

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by quick decision

For this to be your second post I think you need to find some where else to spread your

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

Bingo.

You gents take the foot off the gas a little please. Not that we never had a case of mistaken identity ourselves, right?

TM28 - Need Pictures

[numbskull]

It might have been someone's ex-wife, too.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by JohnR

You gents take the foot off the gas a little please. Not that we never had a case of mistaken identity ourselves, right?

Even the most basic research tells you that Great Whites don't get that big, and just about never clear the water anywhere but off the S. African coast.

It is too easy to spread mis-information on the internet if people won't be critical of the source. I wasn't trying to be a prick, but his story was already debunked the first time he made that exact post. Then to start this one, which is a copy/paste of his other post, is just asking to be run through the wringers.