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
Objective-C iPhone Programming Lesson 14 - Starting a Game
Hey guys, this is MacHas1 with our 14th iPhone programming tutorial. Now in the last tutorial, I promised you guys that we’d go more into the thing I did then. But, um, it doesn’t seem like many of you are actually interested in this. You just want me to…
We’re at the Beginning of an Infinity of Knowledge
The difference with “The Beginning of Infinity” is that you’re getting a worldview. You’re not being given the standard take from physicists about how to understand quantum theory. You’re not being given the standard take of how to understand knowledge fr…
Ice Breakers - Ep. 1 | National Geographic Presents: IMPACT With Gal Gadot
GAL: “I want them to feel like they don’t have to conceal what they love or who they are to conform.” This is Kameryn’s wish for the girls she coaches as a figure skater and life role model, as she reminds them to always embrace their beauty, their joy, a…
The pre-equilibrium approximation | Kinetics | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
The pre-equilibrium approximation is used to find the rate law for a mechanism with a fast initial step. As an example, let’s look at the reaction between nitric oxide and bromine. In the first step of the mechanism, nitric oxide combines with bromine to…
Limitations of GDP | Economic indicators and the business cycle | AP Macroeconomics | Khan Academy
In other videos, we have already talked about the idea of GDP in some depth—gross domestic product, a measure of the aggregate goods and services produced in a country in a year. But what we’re going to discuss in this video is how good a measure GDP is, …
Subject and object pronouns | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy
All right, so grammarians, I want to talk to you about the difference between subject and object pronouns. But before we do that, let’s start off with a little primer on what subjects and objects actually are—um, just generally, for our grammatical purpos…