Great white shark population lower than previously believed

Far fewer great white sharks are cruising the waters off of California than previously thought, according to researchers who conducted a unique shark census in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. "This low number was a real surprise," said Taylor Chapple, a doctoral student at the University of California, Davis when he led the great white shark study. "It's lower than we expected, and also substantially smaller than populations of other large marine predators, such as killer whales and polar bears," said Chapple, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.