World's Biggest Great White Full Episode | Nat Geo Kids

The following program features trained professionals. Do not attempt what you are about to see. In 2013, cameras captured a glimpse of what's believed to be the largest great white shark ever recorded. Deep blue, she was never seen again until now. But that's just the beginning. What happened next was one of the most unbelievable shark encounters of all time. My boat is sinking. Hawaii, a tropical paradise known for white beaches, stunning scenery, and abundant marine wildlife. Many shark species call these waters home. Tiger sharks, hammerheads, and oceanic white tips are common. But it's extremely rare to see a great white. But on an early morning in January 2019, that was all about to change. A whale carcass we first told you about last night is breaking news. It's now on the reef off Sand Island. The carcass was spotted yesterday off of Kewalo. The current carried it west, and now it's stuck here on the reef off Sand Island Beach Park. I would just professionally advise you not to swim here, because there have been tiger sharks seen on the carcass today, and yesterday there were as many as 15 to 20 tiger sharks on the carcass at one time. On January 11, 2019, everyone on the island of Oahu was talking about a huge sperm whale carcass near the shore attracting sharks. An unusual sight for most, but for wildlife photographer Kimberly Jeffries and boat captain and diver Mark Moeller, it sounded like a chance to capture some amazing photos. So we heard about the whale on the news. We had reports of tiger sharks, oceanic white tips, even hammerheads. We wanted to get out as soon as we could, and by the time we made it out, the whale had already washed ashore right here at Sand Island. That's exactly where it was. It was beached right there on the sand next to the rocks. So we were kind of disappointed that we missed our chance. Kimberly is a professional wildlife photographer and conservationist, capturing amazing images above and below the water. She and her boyfriend Mark dedicate as much of their time as possible to their true passion, photographing and studying animals in the water. On January 12, the Department of Land and Natural Resources tows the dead whale back into the ocean. I was scanning the radio, and I heard reports that they had dropped the whale carcass eight miles offshore. And I was like, let's go check it out. Excited for a second chance to see sharks feasting on the whale, the next morning, Kim, along with two other friends, Andrew Gray and boat captain Danny Roberts, set off in search of the carcass. I had already made plans to scuba dive with some friends. And we basically agreed that if they found it, let me know, and I'll try to get my boat out there. So we were out looking for the whale carcass. I did see something that looked white, almost like the water breaking in the distance. Turns out to be the carcass. We got about 100 meters off the whale and started gearing up. This is the moment they've been waiting for, a chance to see whatever might be lurking under the water, scavenging on the giant carcass. And at that point, tiger sharks started swimming up to our boat and checking us out. So we knew it was going to be a good dive. Andrew and Kim get in the water next to the whale, excited to shoot. Tiger sharks are probably the apex predator around the Hawaiian Islands. And when a dead whale shows up, it's like ringing the dinner bell for tiger sharks. So by and large, sharks don't consider humans food. We are simply not their menu. And there's growing data sets to show that that's the case. But occasionally, people do get bitten. We don't really know why. One possibility is defense. They may actually bite people because they feel threatened. So getting in the water around these sharks is obviously a really cool experience. And the chances of being bitten are obviously low. But we never advise that for the public because that's a good way to become an accident. But an ominous quiet surrounds Kim and Andrew. Strangely, the tiger sharks have vanished. After only minutes in the water, Kim and Andrew discover the tiger sharks had a very good reason to leave quickly. A big shadow started appearing, headed right towards us. And I was thinking, what in the world is this? Because it was way bigger than any shark I'd expect. She was by far the biggest white shark I've ever seen. And honestly, her girth was approaching pilot whale size in just sheer mass. This white shark swims right by Kim and I. And heads directly towards the whale and took a big bite. Andrew yells, that's a white. You know, that's a great white. There it is. She is massive. I'm not going to lie, I got chills right up my spine. And that just changed the whole ballgame. This thing is so big. As a marine biologist, Andrew calculates the size of marine animals for his job. I would estimate this shark at 6 meters. It's about 20 feet long. This seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. And Kim didn't want Mark to miss it. He shouted at Danny to call Mark, because I wanted him to get there right away. Danny, you have to call Mark. I was told to contact Mark. He was out diving with another group of friends. It definitely crossed my mind that Danny would have been messing around with us. He tends to be a jokester. Once he gets the message, Mark jumps at the chance to see a great white, quickly heading his boat towards the whale carcass. Meanwhile, Kim and Andrew are having the diving experience of their lives. I've been to Guadalupe, and I've seen quite a few white sharks in person. And this was, by far, the largest that I'd ever seen. It was really surreal. Her pace was not what you would imagine. She was really just very stately in her movement and manner. She stuck around for about half an hour, circling the whale and feeding. She was incredibly fat. I didn't think she could fit anything else inside of her. And then she dove straight down under the whale, and I thought, she's gone. This is it. Mark's not going to get to see her. I know how rare white shark sightings are in Hawaii. Typically, white sharks are not seen very frequently in the Hawaiian Islands. There was shark control programs that were done in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And I think they caught four total out of thousands and thousands of sharks that were caught. So while we know white sharks come to the Hawaiian Islands, they don't come in huge numbers, like we see off the coast of California or Mexico, South Africa, or Australia. While we were waiting for Mark, tiger sharks started moving in and feeding on the whale. So I figured the white shark was definitely gone. I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to share the experience with Mark, and he hadn't gotten there yet. But at the same time, to have gotten that experience was so amazing. With the great white gone and tiger sharks now returning to the carcass, Mark has missed the opportunity of a lifetime. Kim and Andrew were in the water, and we saw tiger sharks, and they were eating off the whale. But suddenly, the tiger sharks disappear again, and it's quiet, too quiet, until out of the depths, a giant emerges, and it's heading straight for Mark's boat. A great white shark makes a surprise return to a whale carcass floating off the coast of Oahu, arriving just after photographer Mark Moller jumps in the water to join fellow divers. I was in the boat, and I already had my phone out. That's when I saw the shark coming up, and I got footage of it. It was too big to comprehend. This is almost as big as the boat. Meanwhile, in the water, divers Mark, Kim, and Andrew watch the great white getting closer and closer to Mark's boat. The shark came up to the prop, and I thought it was going to bite my prop on my boat. But the great white shark decides rotting whale meat is a better meal and returns to the carcass. Most of the tiger sharks previously feasting on the carcass have fled the scene. One brave tiger shark stuck around and continued to feed. The tiger shark didn't feed for long, and after taking a bite or two, headed out. There is actually dining etiquette that we see in sharks, so smaller ones will get out of the way when bigger sharks show up. Bigger sharks will eat smaller sharks, and of course, that can easily happen at a feast like a dead whale. As the great white continues to chow down, the divers capture amazing footage. This was my first experience with white sharks. Couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a really special experience. I don't think anything can ever come close to this experience. This is not only a lucky day for the divers, but a tremendous opportunity for the white shark. If a shark had a choice between trying to chase down a tuna or take down a whale, especially one that's already dead, that's free. Didn't have to do anything to catch it or kill it. It just gets to eat. And the number of calories it can acquire off a whale compared to a tuna are threefold. Clearly, this shark is making the most of this lucky break, filling her immense body with as much whale meat as possible. This thing is so big. The girth on that shark was just incredible. It was probably as wide as my arm span. With such a big belly and voracious appetite, could she be eating for two? Could she be pregnant? It's possible that she's been out for a year and a half. She could be carrying a womb full of close-to-term pups and getting ready to make her migration back to coastal California or Mexico to give birth. White sharks typically have between two to 10 pups, but can have up to 14 shark babies. The fact that you might look down and see a big, fat, rotund shark doesn't necessarily mean she's pregnant. She could just have a belly full of whale in her stomach. But just how much could a white shark eat? It's thought that a white shark can take out over 400 pounds of whale meat in a sitting. This is when a shark has been seen feeding on this whale for 18 straight hours, where you literally watch its belly extend. It's been estimated that a good feeding off a whale full of fat and blubber could last a white shark a month. So again, we can't use how big their Buddha belly full of whale meat is to determine whether they're pregnant or not. The only way we can tell if a white shark is pregnant for sure is either take some blood and look at sex hormones in her blood or determine whether that shark has been along the California coast and we've been able to track her movements. Finally, the white shark has eaten her fill and dives down deep, disappearing. We stuck around for a while, hoping she'd come back. The tiger sharks moved in, and we decided to call it a day. We were exhausted. It was an incredible day on the water. But who is this giant from the deep? Kim hopes her photos will solve the mystery. There have always been stories about white sharks in the Hawaiian Islands, but there haven't been any photos or very many documented instances of them. We had ID shots and video, and it was more than enough to present to at least the scientific community for identification. It really supports all the science that's been out there and the old Hawaiian stories. Proof of these stories is housed at Honolulu's Bishop Museum, where there's potential evidence of great whites visiting the islands hundreds of years ago. Artifacts offer hard evidence that native Hawaiians encountered these rare giants and even caught them. There is a connection to great white sharks because in the tools that are made, it is the large tooth of a great white that is specific to a weapon or to a cutting implement. And we have those in our collection to date. We have our weapons case with examples of native Hawaiian weapons, mea kaua. What we see are a variety of things that are meant to poke, to prod, to hit, to smash, weapons that are made using shark teeth, and specifically great white shark teeth. And this one is very special. The ring slips around a finger, and it can actually be held in the hand. And so it's used for striking in soft areas. The museum also houses hooks, once used to catch great white sharks. We have two makau mano, or sometimes called ki holo. And these are the kinds of tools that would have been used to catch the large tigers and especially the great whites. So this is another example of the connection between Hawaiians of the past and great white sharks. While great white sharks have a history of visiting Hawaii, Kim, Mark, and Andrew are about to discover they've just seen perhaps the largest white shark in the world, a shark last seen off the coast of Mexico. That notch is definitely a match. I got goosebumps. But there's more than one massive surprise awaiting them back out in the water. Underwater photographers Kim, Mark, and Andrew have all come face to face with a giant white shark feeding on a dead whale off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii. Now they're about to make an astonishing discovery. When I got home, the first thing I did was download images and videos. And I immediately reached out to my friend George, who I've worked with in the past, to identify white sharks in Guadalupe. Using images stored in a database, researchers have figured out a way to identify individual sharks that have visited Guadalupe Island in Mexico. A great white hotspot in the Pacific, currently 261 unique white sharks have been identified. So it turns out white sharks have unique markings that enable us to identify them based on the white and gray markings along the side of their body, along their gills, along their tail. And of course, over the years, they acquire unique scars. During mating, they quite often bite each other. In addition, they'll compete with each other over food. Or sometimes the things that they eat will fight back. So those unique scars and unique markings have been used by researchers to identify individuals. When shark photographer George Probst gets Kim's photos, he can't believe what he sees. With the help of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, he makes a startling conclusion. He responded that we had possibly seen deep blue, to which I said, you're off your rocker, George, and you've seen too many white sharks at this point. Just you're crazy. In 2013, off the coast of Guadalupe Island, Mexico, photographer Michael Meyer films possibly the largest great white shark ever caught on camera. Local shark researcher Mauricio Hoyos names her deep blue. Experts at the time estimated her to be 20 feet long and 50 years old. But the short encounter left many questions. That notch is definitely, definitely a match. So it's that deep blue. I got goosebumps from hearing that news. Deep blue is probably the most famous shark in the world besides jaws, and maybe jaws too. When George told me that it was deep blue, I was really shocked because I've been to Guadalupe, and I went in the season where you see the big females because I wanted to see the biggest white sharks ever. But nothing that I'd seen even compared to that legend of deep blue. So having the chance to see deep blue so far away from Guadalupe in Hawaii was just absolutely flabbergasting. Using photos like Kim's, scientists can now better calculate deep blue's size. One of the ways we go about measuring animals are, of course, if we can catch them, we can put a tape measure on their nose all the way to the tip of their tail, and we can come up with a really accurate measurement of that shark. Now, obviously, you can't catch all sharks. So another technique that scientists use to measure sharks are having something in a frame that gives us calibration. Like a diver, for example, in a frame right next to a shark can be used as a calibration to estimate her size. If we know how big the diver is, we can estimate how big the shark is. With Kim as a reference, deep blue is at least 20 feet long. But what was deep blue doing here in Hawaii in 2019, six years after being spotted off of Guadalupe Island? Back before there was shark tracking technology, shark biologist Layton Taylor had a theory. I did a lot of work in the Hawaiian Islands with sharks. I made a solid guess that white sharks probably migrated here from the West Coast. Today, technology proves some white sharks do make the long journey from the mainland to Hawaii. What other researchers have found is that adult sharks, some of which have been tagged in California, have been detected along the Hawaiian Islands. While there's not a high number of sharks that have been shown to do that, there are some. You know, 25 years ago, if you'd asked any shark biologist what kind of shark we thought a white shark was, we would have said a coastal shark. And if you'd asked how we knew that, we would say, well, in the fall months along the California coast, we'd see adults coming in along the shore to feed on elephant seals. We had no idea where they went in the winter. And it wasn't until the advent of some of the technology that we use, like satellite tags, that literally changed our minds overnight, of white sharks from being a coastal species, at least in the Northeast Pacific, to being an open ocean species. Most of the sharks that have been tagged and tracked, some have been tagged on the Farallon. Some of them have been tagged in Guadalupe. We see very little movement of those sharks between those two locations. They tend to all go out to the same place, kind of in the middle of the Pacific. Researchers coined this area, kind of halfway between Hawaii and Baja, a shared offshore foraging area. Footage of great whites in Hawaii is extremely rare. But deep, submersible missions have captured something surprising and could be a clue why few people see the great whites that make the journey here. Huge shark. Look at this guy. ROV and submersible studies have sighted white sharks as deep as 1,000 feet around Hawaiian islands. And they're, of course, out there doing surveys to look at what animals and organisms are around the islands. It is a great white. That is a great white shark. That is huge. It's about a 12 to 13 foot great white. So it's very likely that white sharks are present here. They're just so deep, we rarely see them. And they don't have to come all the way to the surface to warm up. They can come to within 100 or 200 feet of the surface and be just as warm. So it's possible that there are more white sharks here than we ever see. They're just spending more time deeper. If Deep Blue swam from Guadalupe Island to Hawaii, she would have covered over 2,400 miles, a remarkable distance. But as Kim, Mark, and Andrew were about to discover, Deep Blue wasn't alone. After learning they had filmed what's believed to be the largest great white shark in the world, feeding on a dead whale off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii, underwater photographers Kim, Mark, and Andrew head out, hoping to find the carcass again. The next morning, Mark and Andrew and I went back out just to look for the whale again. The only issue was how much it had actually drifted over the course of the night. We drove for about six hours looking for it and couldn't find it until the end of the day. With no signs of sharks, the team decides to get in to see what's hiding below the surface. We pulled up, got in the water, and wanted to see what was going on underneath. We also wanted to check the carcass out and see how much of the whale had been eaten since the previous day. There's this white mass in the water. There were just chunks missing out of all of it around the entire side. Could the team have missed their chance at a second encounter? So the one thing that we think we know about whale carcasses and feasts for sharks is that they have an expiration date. There are carcasses that you'll see that they actually get too nasty, I think, and sharks stop feeding on them, and they lose interest. After several hours and zero sharks, Kim, Mark, and Andrew call it quits, counting themselves lucky for what they'd captured the day before. But back on shore, they get startling news. Later that night, some additional white shark pictures started surfacing on social media. A white shark was sighted at the carcass again that evening. This meant that after they had left, a great white shark had stopped by for dinner. I was really disappointed that I had possibly missed out on another sighting. Had Deep Blue come back, or was this a different shark? The shark looked smaller and thinner, so we consulted with our shark identification folks that we were working with with Deep Blue, and they did identify that this isn't the same shark. It's a new shark. This new shark, dubbed Kainani, was still a larger than average female at around 17 feet, a promising sign that the whale could still attract more hungry sharks. After learning about the new sighting, it really pushed us to go out the next day. The next morning, Mark has to work, so Kim, Andrew, and another friend, Jeff, all head out in Kim's boat, Rubber Duckie. At this point, we realized the whale hadn't been drifting much at all, so we headed right to the point we had from the day before and found the whale quickly. There's already a boat out there with five divers. We asked if they'd seen anything, and they said they hadn't seen anything except for tiger sharks. Andrew gets in the water right away, leaving Jeff and Kim on the boat. I told Jeff I was going to pop in the water to go to the bathroom. Kim is hanging off the side of her boat, taking a leak, and I see a massive white shark swimming in directly underneath her. I poke my head above the water and say, hey, guys, there's a shark under your boat. And I said, yeah, yeah, whatever, no big deal, because they'd only seen tiger sharks in the area until then. But this isn't a tiger shark. It's a great white, a very large great white. I repeated myself and said, hey, there's a shark under your boat. When they realized what was going on, there was a quick scramble. I pushed myself back into the boat really quickly, grabbed my mask and my camera, put my fins on, and rolled back into the water. Unbelievably, this is a brand new white shark, estimated to be larger than Kainani and almost as big as Deep Blue. And she's hungry, too. But this shark takes a bite out of the wrong thing. My boat is sinking. On day three of their expedition around a whale carcass off the shore of Honolulu, Hawaii, Kim and Andrew, along with their friend Jeff, have just seen a great white shark. And this one has a big appetite. I wasn't sure whether or not it was Deep Blue or not. This was a really large shark that, at first, I did not think was a different individual. She was incredibly huge and just incredibly majestic. She started feeding and swimming around. She was a little bit more inquisitive than Deep Blue, which was one of the first indicators to me that something was slightly different. It was indeed a brand new great white shark that had never been recorded before, a large 18-foot female that was identified through Kim's photographs. I got to name it as a result of taking pictures and presenting it to be identified. And so I named her Haole Girl as a tribute to the Hawaiian culture and a white visitor to our islands. It's possible that this shark has never encountered humans before, especially when you see that she's unidentified and not in any databases. So I think she was just really curious and wanted to check us out and learn something new herself. Sharks are some of the most intelligent and inquisitive animals that I've spent time with in the ocean. They have different personalities and behaviors that are unique to each of them. But Haole Girl was not alone. This shark was being escorted by two rough-toothed dolphins that were essentially swimming around her. And it looked like they were playing with her. It was interesting because before they showed up, I could have sworn that I heard dolphins in the water. But I was like, no, we're way too far offshore. That's not possible. Rough-toothed dolphins on their own are an uncommon sight here. And now we have two of these animals playing around with a white shark. To see them swim around with a white shark for so long was just an absolutely incredible experience. On occasion, marine mammals, seals, sea lions, dolphins, even whales, will kind of trail white sharks. And one of the thoughts is maybe by being close to another white shark, it's almost like a remora. So you're not going to get ambushed by another white shark because you're close to this bigger one. So it could be they're also using it for cover. Or the other possibility is that they kind of harass them. We just don't know. But dolphins are very smart social animals. And they're communicating amongst each other, which gives them an advantage. After cruising with the dolphins, something else catches Haole Girl's eye, something far more frightening. This shark was especially interested in our boat. It's possible that she thought the boat was a chunk of the whale. So the boat we were in is Rubber Duckie. It's my boat. It's about 17 feet long, a comparable size to Haole Girl. It has sponsons around the side of it that are filled with air and a hard hull. This shark would repeatedly come up and nose the sponsons. It was a little bit unnerving because we knew that it wouldn't take much for her to pop this thing. If she takes too big a bite, she could sink the boat. She gave a little test nibble on the starboard side. And that's when she popped one of the tubes. We hear air hissing out. It must have been just a couple minutes before she came back to the same area, took a nice bite, and made a big gash right into it. I swim up to the hole to assess the damage. And that part of the boat is completely flat. I can stick my entire arm right inside of it. At this point, we were eight miles offshore. My boat is sinking. After an amazing few hours with a great white named Haole Girl, Kim's boat, Rubber Duckie, has been bitten by the shark and started to deflate. 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning, I get a text message from Kim that says, shark bit the boat. We're fine. Come out now. Mark came out in about an hour. He did bring some tie downs to strap the tube in place. So not long after I had checked their boat out and threw some supplies on it to strap the torn pontoon up, we saw that the shark was coming in behind the boat that I brought out. And that's when I got the really cool picture from the surface of Kim in the water right in front of Haole Girl. Mark captured incredible photos of Kim and the shark, really showcasing her size. After swimming around us for hours, she eventually took off. After that encounter with Haole Girl, that was the last time we saw a white shark out with a whale and the last that anyone did that I'm aware of. The encounters might be over, but the sightings of three different great white sharks in the same location is truly remarkable. And the footage captured, invaluable to scientists. Finding one white shark and a whale, sure. You know, that's like being out in the desert and you stumbling along blindly and finding the food truck, right? Getting three large female white sharks on a whale, that's different, right? That means those sharks had to be close enough in the vicinity to, number one, detect the odor of that whale. And then also, it might mean that these sharks are traveling together. It's something we've never really been able to see or study or understand. The fact that we're getting more humpbacks here, more mugseals, more white sharks, is an indication of our ecosystems are coming back through the positive actions of humans, protecting these animals, realizing that we need balance. The white shark population has probably been reduced for over 100 years due to loss of their favorite food and overhunting. So now that white sharks are coming back, we don't know whether the patterns we're seeing now are the patterns that were always there or whether they're new patterns as the population grows. Did the team film the world's biggest known great white shark? Quite possibly. But they definitely encountered the three largest white sharks ever recorded in Hawaii, giving hope that an even larger shark might be hiding somewhere in the deep. I'm bigger than this. It's really remarkable that this whale brought in not one, not two, but three different individuals that we saw to feed. I know how rare white shark sightings are in Hawaii. And this experience was absolutely incredible. By far the best I've ever had in the water. This was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in my life. It's something that underwater photographers dream about their whole life. There have always been legends of white sharks in Hawaii. But to actually have gotten the chance to see one and then ultimately getting to name one was just absolutely incredible. It's mind-blowing. It was an amazing experience. It was rare. We got some incredible footage of it. We got to identify three unique white sharks in Hawaii. We got a very personal experience. We really wanted to tell our story and really share this amazing experience and how special it was to us.