Awesome display as airborne Great White targets 'seal' for lunch... and loses a tooth as it mercilessly chomps down on its prey

By GRAHAM SMITH

No mercy: A Great White shark jumps out of the sea to catch its prey - and loses a tooth in the process

This is the astonishing moment a Great White shark jumps out of the sea to catch its prey - and loses a tooth in the process.
Nature's ultimate killing machine thought it was about to enjoy a Cape fur seal for lunch, but instead chomped into a decoy used by a daredevil photographer patiently wanting to capture the perfect shot.
Unfortunately for the shark, it chomped down so viciously that one of its teeth broke off and ended up flying through the air.

Vicious: With his tooth still flying through the air, the shark chomps down to take its prey beneath the waves

The incident was preserved by British photographer Dan Callister, who regularly travels to Seal Island near Cape Town, South Africa.
Speaking shortly before his latest visit, Mr Callister said: 'I’m looking forward to meeting up with some old friends above and below the water.

Jaws: The shark bit into a decoy seal used by a daredevil photographer patiently wanting to capture the perfect shot

'Hopefully the sharks will be on top form and I manage to get a usable frame or two, to add to the ongoing project.'
Seal Island is well known for the spectacular way the sharks grab their prey.
Coming up from underneath the waves, the giant fish literally launch themselves out of the water with the seal in their mouth.

Up close: British photographer Dan Callister, who regularly travels to Seal Island near Cape Town, took these images

Hungry: Seal Island is well known for the spectacular way the sharks grab their prey
The area where the sharks circle the island is known by locals as the 'Ring Of Death'.

If the seals enter this circle on the sea surface instead of in the murky water near the bed, they are almost certain to be picked off by a speedy and aggressive Great White.
Great whites come to the island to feed on the 65,000 cape fur seals that live there.
When the seals leave the island to go out to sea to feed they gather at a shallow reef just off the island nicknamed the launch-pad. They stay in a groups making it hard for a shark to target an individual.
However, the sharks cruise along the seabed at the edge of the island where shallows drops off into deeper water. Targeting lone stragglers or seals returning from a feed alone, great whites come from below at great speed.
Often the impact takes both the shark and seal airborne.

Success: Coming up from underneath the waves, the giant fish literally launch themselves out of the water with the seal in their mouth

Predator: The area where the sharks circle Seal Island is known by locals as the 'Ring Of Death' for seals

Feeding frenzyL Great whites come to the island to eat some of the 65,000 cape fur seals that live there

source: dailymail

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Great White sharks are already here and UK waters are an ideal hunting ground, claims expert

By Stephanie Darrall



British waters are an ideal hunting ground for great white sharks, who are already 'occasional vagrant visitors', claims a shark expert.



President of the Shark Trust Richard Peirce said that it is only a matter of time until his theory that the predators visit British shores is verified.



Mr Peirce believes he almost proved the presence of a great white in the UK with a photograph of a shark caught off the north-east coast of Scotland.



He said: 'I sent the photo to some of the world's leading experts but as soon as they heard it was caught off Scotland they started looking at what else it could be.'



'The real surprise is that we don't have an established white shark population, because the conditions here mirror those in parts of South Africa, Australia and northern California.



'The normal range of water temperature for great whites is between 14C and 20C which fits with British water in the summer.'



The shark expert has investigated more than 80 reported sightings of great whites in British waters over the last 14 years but only seven were found to be credible.



Fishermen in Cornwall have reported great whites sticking their heads out of the water, known as 'spy-hopping', and fishermen on three different boats described a sighting of a great white within three weeks of one another.



Mr Peirce said: 'The reason the evidence is so compelling is that it's from independent witnesses who do not know each other on different boats.



'The problem is these things happen in a flash. Unless the shark jumps right out of the water or is caught, all we'll see is a dorsal fin sticking out the water.



'The closest capture of a great white was off La Rochelle (in western France) about 200 nautical miles from UK shores which is no distance to them.'



There have been sightings of other sharks in British waters over the summer.



Earlier this month fisherman Jim Millar spotted a 15ft thresher shark off Dartmouth in Devon, where they are very rarely seen.



Another fisherman caught a 21 stone porbeagle shark off the coast of Donegal, Republic of Ireland, last month.



There have also been two separate sightings of what was believed to have been an oceanic whitetip shark, a species also known to attack humans, in St Ives, Cornwall, in June.



Mr Peirce believes it is only a matter of time before proof is found that the species at the top of the marine food chain, the great white shark - Carcharodon carcharias - is occasionally present in British waters.



He said: 'Great whites are highly nomadic in movement around the north Atlantic so it's reasonable to say there's a good chance they may stray into British waters.



'I do suspect we do get the occasional vagrant visitor.'



Global warming may have driven the sharks' prey further north, added Mr Peirce, which could further entice the great white to British shores.



He said: 'The water temperatures around Britain are well within the great white's tolerance range. So in theory there's no reason they shouldn't be here already without global warming.



'But what may be happening is that it may affect the distribution of shark's prey - meaning they may follow that.'



However Dr Russell Wynn, co-ordinator of the SeaWatch SW project and a senior marine scientist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said the odds of a great white being found in British waters were extremely low as the creatures are very rare in the northeast Atlantic.



The SeaWatch SW survey team has spent more than 5,000 hours scanning the seas off southwest England in the past five years but the only predatory sharks seen have been single blues and threshers.



Habitat: A map showing the global distribution of the Great White Shark





'The only large shark the public are likely to see is the harmless plankton-feeding basking shark, which can grow to over 10m long and is occasionally seen leaping out of the water,' he said.



But Dr Wynn accepted there was a small chance of a great white sighting off the British coast.



'It's certainly not impossible that a great white could be seen or caught in British waters one day, as we know they occur off southwest Europe in very low numbers.'



Spotted: In recent months both thresher (left) and porbeagle sharks have been seen around the British Isles





But despite the recent sightings, the opportunity of seeing sharks is decreasing year on year.



A study by Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, concluded that the North Atlantic shark population had declined by more than 50 per cent between 1986 and 2000 due to overfishing.



Mr Peirce said: 'Unless we do something about shark mortality in the Atlantic we won't be having this conversation in 50 years time.'



The Great White: An expert claims these predators will soon be spotted in British waters





source:dailymail

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