yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Great White Sharks of Guadalupe Island | Most Wanted Sharks


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

NARRATOR: But everyone loves Lucy. The story of this great white is the classic "Finding Nemo" tale, but about 2,000 pounds heavier. When divers spotted Lucy back in 2008, her distinctive tail wound looked fresh. And she seemed in desperate need of a good meal. A damaged caudal often puts a shark's life in danger. It's crucial for propelling a shark through water.

APRYL BOYLE: Lucy's tail deformity could be from fighting with another shark when she was younger.

NARRATOR: And Lucy's not only survived, she's thrived. She did it by modifying the way she swims to sway a little more than the average great white. And now Lucy's adoring public keeps an eye out for her signature floppy fin and her unique swagger. Unlike other female great whites, Lucy returns to Guadalupe Island every year. And that is because she has not given birth yet. If she did, she'd be gone at least 12 to 18 months, because that's how long a shark pregnancy lasts.

NARRATOR: Fans don't know for sure why Lucy is still not a mom. It could be that male sharks are turned off by her misshapen fin. Or maybe Lucy hasn't yet met Zapata, the most famous and recognizable male great white of Guadalupe Island. This tough guy is a 14-footer, who has mixed it up with other apex predators and has the battle scars to prove it.

RALPH COLLIER: Zapata is a very large shark. To sustain the wounds it received, the attacking shark must have been very large, possibly 18 or 20 feet in length.

NARRATOR: He might not play well with other sharks. But luckily, unlike Bullet, Zapata actually enjoys hanging out with people. That's my favorite shark right there, Zapata.

NARRATOR: Scarboard, at an intimidating 18 feet long, isn't just one of the most massive sharks at Guadalupe Island, she's one of the biggest great whites in the world. But like all sharks, no one will know for sure how old she is until after she dies.

RALPH COLLIER: One of the ways to determine the age of a shark is by dissecting it. If we cut through a vertebra, we can see rings similar to those of a tree showing annual growth. She got her nautically themed name because of scars on the right, or starboard, side of her body.

APRYL BOYLE: When sharks engage in head-to-head combat, they can do incredible damage to each other, which is what happened to Scarboard. But sharks have amazing healing abilities.

NARRATOR: Scarboard shows up at Guadalupe every other year. And the next time you see her, many of her scars might be gone. Bullet, Lucy, Zapata, and Scarboard, four sharks whose physical flaws grabbed our attention and helped make them famous.

More Articles

View All
The 2023 Recession Just Got...Cancelled?
What’s up, Graham? It’s guys here. So, despite ongoing mass layoffs, skyrocketing credit card debt, and a 2008-style housing crash throughout four U.S. cities, a new theory is beginning to make its way through the markets, and that would be the chance of …
Morning Caribou before Coffee (Clip) | Alaska: The Next Generation
You can never really put your finger on exactly what caribou are going to do. They move from one place to another, and just when I think I start to understand them, they do something completely different. So I just woke up and came outside to go to the b…
The On, Off Switch of Consciousness | Breakthrough
To map what goes on inside the brain, Muhammad implants tiny electrodes in his patients’ skulls. He then sends pulses to these electrodes, gradually increasing the current, sometimes with dramatic results. Recently, he inserted an electrode next to a smal…
Every Lie You Believe In
Tim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Google, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the president of the United States—when you think of the people controlling the world, these names come to mind. But the truth is, while these people have a significant influence over our …
Finishing the intro lagrange multiplier example
So, in the last two videos, we were talking about this constrained optimization problem where we want to maximize a certain function on a certain set: the set of all points ( x, y ) where ( x^2 + y^2 = 1 ). We ended up working out, through some nice geom…
Safari Live - Day 15 | National Geographic
Watching, maybe they will be the only things that stick around; but if the wind picks up, they may also blow. Hey, my name is Taylor, and on camera with me today is Sebastian. Well, hopefully, our drive is going to be filled with a couple more animals tha…