The great white shark likes to holiday in New Zealand

The great white shark is considered one of the ocean’s most terrifying residents. This predator can swim thousands of kilometres when migrating, and many actually return to the same original home area. This discovery has been made by New Zealand scientists after a six-year study.

On Thursday this study was issued, and it was found that there are common destinations for the great white shark, mainly the waters around New Zealand’s remote islands. Tonga, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Vanuatu have been named as popular sites for sharks.

There have been inquiries into behaviour and habitat of the great whites, specifically those that are found in places like the Chatham Islands and the southerly Stewart Island. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and the Department of Conservation, (NIWA and DOC respectively,) and the University of Auckland have been looking into great whites feeding on fur seals in these areas during autumn and winter.

However, during the winter and spring time period great whites have been found by New Zealand scientists to spend months at a time in more tropical climates. This shows quite a migratory diversity in the species, and adaptability to changing weather conditions.

Scientists were able to tag 27 great whites around the Titi Islands, located near Stewart Island off the northeast cost. This is a record number, and has been added to the 31 sharks that had been identified and tagged since 2005, reports the NIWA.

“It is our hope that we can collect some breakthrough data that can identify the time and location of each shark. Since they exhibit strong tendencies to migrate to the tropics, we expect more activity during autumn and early winter. Not as much is expected to happen during late winter to summer, since they will be ‘vacationing’ in the tropical areas,” states Dr Malcolm Francis, principal scientist of NIWA.

“Things are slowly starting to shape up in terms of our understanding. We previously understood that the sharks would migrate from New Zealand and take a vacation in the tropics. Our research now has revealed that a lot of them or even the majority will return back to precisely the same New Zealand location,” Francis explained.

Clinton Duffy of the DOC science team explained that Ella, one great white being studied, was found between New Caledonia and the Great Barrier Reef.

DOC scientist Clinton Duffy said one shark, named Ella by the research team, was tracked to the remote Chesterfield Islands in the Coral Sea, between the Great Barrier Reef and New Caledonia.