"There's a lot we still don't know," said Gavin Naylor, a biology professor at the College of Charleston. Glimpses of exceptionally large great whites like Deep Blue can help to shed light on the many unknowns of these elusive creatures. "The more big females like Deep Blue that we have in the population, the better off the white shark population will be," Curtis told Live Science. And bigger sharks are more likely to produce big litters, making larger females important from a conservation standpoint. The number of young a shark births can vary, but litters with as many as 10 pups have been documented, said Tobey Curtis of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Shark Files: Largest Shark Ever Filmed Caught On Video Skomal's study hints that there may be much older sharks than Deep Blue out there, and they could be even bigger.Īfter reaching maturity, white sharks' growth slows - but it doesn't stop. Padilla estimated that Deep Blue was about 50 years old, based on her size.
That study also showed that great whites could live to be at least 73.
In fact, Gregory Skomal, a fisheries biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and his colleagues found great whites grow even more slowly than scientists had thought: The biologists' research, published in January in the journal Marine and Freshwater Research, suggested males take 26 years to reach sexual maturity, whereas females aren't ready to have babies until they're about 33 years old - much later than once thought. So, a much-bigger-than-average shark, like Deep Blue, is likely an older shark. Great white sharks need decades to reach adult size, and they continue to grow throughout their lifetimes.
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