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🦈Range & people

Great white shark · Apex lamnid whose warm muscle, broad diet and 1975 cinema still outrun the tagging papers.

At a glance
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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

Money around the great white shark is regional even when the brand is global.

Figures are dated educational bands -- not live quotes and not a buying guide.

Encounter bands

Viewing / tourism (2010s band)

Ticketed

Safari, hide, cage-dive or parade tickets in the 2010s often sat in the tens to hundreds of USD per person -- a dated band, not a live quote.

Conflict / livestock loss

Local & episodic

Predation and crop-raid compensation schemes (US, Kenya, India) published per-head bands that changed with election cycles.

Fishery / take value

Commodity

Where the type is a catch (tuna, salmon, fugu), 2000s-2020s ex-vessel or auction bands were the political number -- not a supermarket tag.

Captive / zoo husbandry

Institutional

Annual keep for a large mammal or a specialist bird in AZA/EAZA reports ran to five or six figures USD in the 2010s.

Enforcement / reserve ops

Public

Ranger, observer and census costs are socialised; they do not appear on a viewing ticket.

Regions

North America

ESA listings, Parks Canada, Alaska runs and Churchill buggies are the English-language field the localLens keeps returning to.

United Kingdom and Ireland

RSPB, NatureScot, reintroductions and a dense NGO press shape how this atlas type is taught in British English.

European Union / wider Europe

Habitats Directive, IWC delegations and returning wolves sit beside UK practice without being identical.

Range-state core

The biological centre of the great white shark -- often not English-speaking -- still writes the Red List.

Australia and New Zealand

DOC, Phillip Island, Taiaroa Head and kakapo-style ICU projects are the southern English conservation dialect.

Global trade desks

CITES, ICCAT, IWC and auction houses price the animal whether or not a local language has a word for it.

Key range numbers

79Atlas speed
33Atlas resilience
73Atlas cultural impact
85Atlas ecological role

Field programmes

OCEARCH

Public satellite tags and named tracks.

Monterey Bay Aquarium / Hopkins

Cafe and California tagging science.

South African DFFE

1991 protection and later tourism rules.

CITES parties

2004 Appendix II permits.

WHOI / state DMF

Cape Cod response science after seal recovery.

IUCN SSG

Vulnerable assessments.

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