Carcharodon Carcharias

Carcharodon carcharias (Great white shark), 6,5 m.

Supervised by Alessandro De Maddalena.

The great white shark is probably most iconic shark in the world. It is found in all coastal waters of the warmer oceans, and can reach 6.1 m in length and 1,905 kg in weight at maturity.
Females grow larger than males. They can get as old as 70 years, making them one of the longest living cartilaginous fishes. The ability to grow old, also mean that male great white sharks take 26 years to reach sexual maturity, while the females take 33 years to be ready to produce offspring - this makes great whites vulnerable to fishing, as they are likely to be fished out of the ocean before having produced any offspring. This fact also earned great whites a listing as Vulnerable on the UICN red list.

The novel Jaws by Peter Benchley and the subsequent film by Steven Spielberg depicted the great white shark as a "ferocious man eater". Humans are not the preferred prey of the great white shark, but, nevertheless, the great white is responsible for the largest number of reported and identified fatal unprovoked shark attacks on humans.