Home Sweet Home

Theres no place like home for great white sharks

  • Hannah Schardt
  • Jun 01, 2008
THE GREAT WHITE SHARK may have a reputation as the ocean’s top roving predator, but a new study finds the big fish is actually a bit of a homebody. As part of the multi-organization Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project, Stanford University’s Salvador Jorgensen and colleagues tagged more than 100 great white sharks along the central California coast, then tracked them as they made their long annual journeys, some to the Hawaiian Islands and others to another hot spot in the middle of the Pacific. When they returned to California months later, the sharks headed for the exact same spots where they spent the previous summer. “These animals appear again and again at very specific areas” even though they have the ability to move throughout the ocean, says Jorgensen.

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