An adult great white is a big shark – really big. It has been responsible for more shark bites and human deaths than any other species, according to the International Shark Attack File. This is probably because it sees us as aberrant marine mammals flailing about in the water and certainly worth an exploratory bite – but a gentle mouthing from a two-tonne white shark, with its jaws filled with row upon row of razor-sharp teeth, could result in a severe mauling for any victim unlucky enough to have attracted its attention.
Though its danger was well known to ancient mariners, it was not until the mid-1970s that it came to occupy its current place in the popular imagination, when Jaws was unleashed on an unsuspecting public. The great white shark's reputation hit rock bottom in the wake of the Spielberg classic, of course. But during the fifty years since the film's first release, public interest in the species has sparked a renaissance in research, producing remarkable new insights into the life of this extraordinary animal.
White Shark tells the intimate story of the great white shark from the perspectives of history, psychology and biology. It discovers, among many other things, that Jaws-mania was far from a new phenomenon. Fragments of a vase dated 725 bce, excavated at Lacco Ameno on the Italian island of Ischia, depict a shipwrecked sailor being devoured by a fish, probably a white shark – the world's first 'report' of a shark attack.
