Shark cam captures Florida close encounters in nurse shark-great white shark 'photobomb'

Yahoo

11-04-2025

Even sharks have mastered the art of the photobomb.
A camera placed by researchers on a nurse shark captured an unexpected interaction with a great white shark, in what Florida Atlantic University marine biologists believe to be 'the first-ever photobomb' unintentionally documenting the shark in South Florida.
The four-minute interaction occurred at Donny Boy Slipe Reef off Boynton Beach.
Stephen Kajiura, Ph.D., a biological sciences professor at FAU, and his team studies shark behavior and patterns of migration. He says the rare footage gave a 'shark's-eye view' into the interaction between two very different sharks.
'Our footage clearly showed a great white, estimated to be at least 10 feet long, and reveals a rare moment of shark-on-shark action – or what we're coining as a 'shark photobomb,' " Kajiura said.
Kajiura feared the recording equipment on the shark, called a camera tag, was lost when it did not ping when expected. However, the tag ended up pinging four days later and was located at the Gulfstream Golf Club in Delray Beach.
The researchers plan to equip more species with camera tags as a part of their ongoing efforts studying shark behavior.
Yes. North Atlantic great white sharks are known to leave their summer feeding grounds off Atlantic Canada and New England to head as far south as Florida and the Gulf, for warmer waters and more abundant food sources.
OCEARCH experts said during the warmer months, these apex predators take advantage of the abundant seal populations and rich prey resources found in these areas. As temperatures drop and food sources dwindle, white sharks are triggered by a combination of decreasing water temperatures and changes in daylight hours, prompting their southward migration.
Think of them as the snowbirds of sharks.
Most of them tend to stay away from the beaches in continental shelf waters, according to OCEARCH chief scientist Dr. Bob Hueter.
Great white sharks are found in every ocean, though they stay away from the colder waters of Antarctica and the Arctic. They can be found around Florida's coast, from the state's east coast to the Gulf.
There's no absolute data on the global population of white sharks and estimates vary widely – from 3,000 to over 10,000.
According to NOAA Fisheries:
The stock status for white shark populations in U.S. waters is unknown and no stock assessments have been completed. No stock assessments are currently planned in the Atlantic.
Research by NOAA Fisheries scientists indicates that abundance trends have been increasing in the northwest Atlantic since regulations protecting them were first implemented in the 1990s.
According to a NOAA Fisheries status review and recent research, the northeastern Pacific white shark population appears to be increasing and is not at risk of becoming endangered in U.S. waters.
According to NOAA Fisheries, white sharks have a diverse and opportunistic diet of fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals.
Juvenile white sharks mainly eat bottom fish, smaller sharks and rays, schooling fish and squids.
Larger white sharks often gather around seal and sea lion colonies to feed and also occasionally scavenge dead whales.
North Atlantic great white sharks migrate as far south as Florida and the Gulf in winter, searching for warmer waters and more food sources.
OCEARCH has tagged 125 white sharks, many of them along the Eastern Seaboard and Nova Scotia.
You can follow their journeys on the OCEARCH shark tracker website or by downloading the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker app.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Sharks in Florida: FAU unknowingly captures photo of great white shark