GREAT WHITE SHARK

The great white shark, within the monotypic genus Carcharodon, is related to four other 'Mackerel' sharks in the family Lamnidae (Makos, Porbeagles and Salmon sharks).

This species was originally described by Linnaeus (Systema Naturae, 1758) as Squalus carcharias, with a type locality given as 'European Seas', essentially the Mediterranean. Thereafter the species was afforded a variety of binomials, including Carcharias lamia, Carcharias verus, Carcharodon smithii and Carcharodon rondeletii.

This shark was known from the Mediterranean in ancient times, most probably being the fish referred to by Aristotle and other Greek writers as the fearsome Lamia monster - a common-name still used for this species both in Greece and in places along the coast of southern France (where it is called the 'Lamie'). They were not uncommonly caught between Sete and Nice in medieaval centuries, and specimens were of as much interest to the writers of the time as they are today. In 1566, the Montpellier-based naturalist Guillaume Rondelet noted the voracious appetite of the Lamia ; a diet which, he commented, included tuna and even the odd human - and suggested it was this animal, rather than a whale, that was responsible for swallowing the prophet Jonah in the famous biblical fable. It's not hard to see where Rondelet's reasoning originated. The white shark was then - as it is now - a little-known, rarely seen but greatly feared animal of mythical status, whose apparent penchant for consuming humans (in a mystical sense!) was well-known amongst the region's seafarers. It seems quite conceivable that, on some ancient shoreline and unrecorded date, a white shark was caught and eviscerated, leading to the rare discovery of human remains, perhaps largely intact and fresh, in its stomach (e.g., see Conorelli & Perrando, 1909, for a genuine example of this). Such an event would unquetionably spark considerable public interest and quickly evolve into local fable. Perhaps inserting the 'whale' element gave the story a more benign feel, as befitting the religious context into which it is now told.

Considerable confusion between Linnaeus' S. carcharias and various Mediterranean carcharhinids (requiem sharks), and especially the essentially inoffensive Sandbar shark Carcharhinus plumbeus, gave rise to some misrepresentative species accounts by European writers until the 1900's. Its triangular, serrated teeth proved a cornerstone in fuelling the nomenclaturial and descriptive mayhem that followed - not least as a much more common Mediterranean species, the sandbar shark Carcharhinus plumbeus, has teeth that may - at least when compared solely by cursory, written description - fit adequately into the white shark 'mould'. The white shark was often grouped collectively with carcharhinids on account of their rather similar dentition. Poor illustrations of the white shark also abounded, exasperating the problem. The simple fact was that very few scientists describing this animal had actually seen one, either dead or alive, and much of the topical knowledge explicating both its physical appearance and behaviour drew more upon hearsay and mariner's lore than biological fact.

Marcus Bloch's (1785-95) illustration of Squalus carcharias is a typical case-in-point. The excised jaws are depicted upside-down - a fundamental mistake later to be followed blindly by other authors - and the shark itself bears only a limited resemblance to the fish we call Carcharodon carcharias. With an asymmetrical tail, small gill-slits and sail-like first dorsal fin, it might come as no surprise that the drawing has more than a passing similarity to Carcharhinus plumbeus. Arguably, it is only the single tooth, illustrated alongside, that can be readily attributed to the white shark. Meanwhile, Bloch's white shark "mugshot" doubtlessly condemned yet more benign sandbars to the maneater's Hall of Fame. It is poignant to add that a much earlier depiction, prepared by Guillaume Rondelet in 1554, was far more accurate than many later images - correctly showing a crescentic caudal fin and caudal keels. Even the relative positions of second dorsal and anal fins are precise.

Similarly, C.L. Bonaparte (1832-1841) illustrated the white shark in his description of Italian vertebrate fauna. His rendition is essentially accurate and almost certainly based upon a freshly-caught specimen. Interestingly, the black axillar blotch so often found on these sharks is missing from the picture - and indeed is often absent on many Mediterranean examples.

Andrew Smith's nomination (in Müller & Henle, 1838) of Carcharodon for the white shark genus largely eradicated future confusion in nomenclature.

In 1838 L. Agassiz, a paleontologist, published a description of the genus now called Carcharodon with some precision in a catalogue of fossil fish, naming the living species as Carcharodon smithii. He had adopted the new generic name following the British naturalist and physician Dr. Andrew Smith who had, at some time whilst resident in South Africa between 1820 and 1836, procured a small white shark specimen from the Cape Province region. Smith was the first scientist to properly distinguish the genus and proposed the generic name Carcharodon in an 1838 work by the German anatomists, Johannes Müller and Fredrich Henle. In an 1839 discussion of white sharks, Müller and Henle again followed Smith's generic name and called the fish Carcharodon rondeleti. They suggested that the South African shark was somewhat different from other white sharks and might thus represent a second species.

As it happened, Andrew Smith was to personally describe his specimen in a later publication of 1849, naming it as Carcharodon capensis in reference to its capture-locality. He mentioned stomach-contents and noted aspects of white shark behaviour with an air of reality far divorced from the mediaeval-inspired writings and mythos that existed before. In 1851, J.E. Gray synonymised Smith's animal with C. rondeleti, realising that this was one and the same species, rather than a unique South African endemic. This assertion has been followed ever since.

For decades, Smith's stuffed C. capensis holotype - a juvenile female measuring just over 2 metres in length - lay gathering dust and more than a few errant white paint-splashes in the storage basement hall of the British Museum of Natural History, London - until re-discovered there in June 1994 by Leonard Compagno, Oliver Crimmen (of the museum's Fish Section) and the author. Manoeuvring the hefty specimen down from it's ceiling-high resting place on a top shelf, and then lifting it up two flights of stairs to a laboratory, was an exhausting episode taking perhaps more physical effort than the process of actually catching it in the first place. Despite showing its age, the shark still had a legible pencilled label affixed to its wooden base, reading "Carcharodon capensis, Cape Seas". Preservation was sufficiently good to even see the black axillar blotch beneath each pectoral fin insertion. The anal fin, however, was missing - perhaps accidentally destroyed during the mounting process.