01 Sense a silhouette
Upward attack geometry on a surface pinniped.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed79
Intelligence42
Range82
Resilience33
Cultural impact73
Ecological role85
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Quick answers
Did Jaws change great-white numbers or only stories?
The 1975 film increased trophy interest and beach fear. Later decline drivers are fins, bycatch and slow life history. Benchley later argued the fiction had been taken as a brief.
What is the White Shark Cafe?
A mid-Pacific patch where California-tagged whites linger. Foraging on midwater squid and fish is the working hypothesis, not a seal colony.
Are great whites warm-blooded?
They are regional endotherms. Countercurrent heat exchangers keep muscle and stomach above ambient -- not mammalian homeothermy.
Why Gansbaai and the Farallones?
Cape fur seals and elephant seals create predictable prey. Cage tourism and research boats stacked on those same reefs.
Who is Deep Blue?
A very large female photographed at Guadalupe and later Hawaii -- a media name, not a stock assessment.
When did CITES list the species?
Appendix II in 2004. Papers still move; the listing forces permits and data, not a zero quota.
IUCN: Vulnerable
Operating a great white shark life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
Ontogenetic shift from fish to pinnipeds where seals are dense. A single seal can fund days; scavenging whales is documented opportunistic income.
Information before motion
Ampullae of Lorenzini, a keen nose and rod-rich vision for a silhouette against the surface -- the classic seal-shaped cue.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A great white shark without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. Late maturity and few pups. Hooks, nets and a 1975 story are ceilings teeth cannot cut.
Diagrams
Great white shark forage / hunt loop
Sensesense
Orientmove
Strikeact
Handlehandle
Spawninvest
Recruitleave
Great white shark life-cycle loop
Hatchstart
Reargrow
Movemove
Feedlearn
Spawnbreed
Die or repeatend
Life-cycle steps
02 Bite and withdraw
A first grip, then a wait as blood loss does work.
03 Consume
Head shakes saw flesh; little is wasted on a large carcass.
04 Leave the colony
Seasonal departure toward offshore cafes or other coasts.
05 Gestate long
Viviparous oophagy -- a small litter after a long pregnancy.
06 Pup in warmer shallows
Nurseries are poorly mapped and easy to miss in beach policy.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
Late maturity and few pups. Hooks, nets and a 1975 story are ceilings teeth cannot cut.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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