A new look at research on great white sharks in the eastern north part of the Pacific Ocean indicates the population is likely growing rather than endangered, according to an international research team.

 

The findings upend an impression of alarming low numbers left by a 2011 Stanford University study which led to petitions by conservationists to add white sharks to state and federal endangered lists.

 

Great whites are the largest of the predatory big-toothed, flesh-eating sharks, growing as big as 20 feet long about 6.1 meters).

 

Researchers credit the growth in sharks to 40 years of U.S. federal protections for marine mammals that sharks feed on, especially sea lions and seals. In addition, white sharks have been protected as a prohibited species, making it illegal to bring a great white to dock.

 

The new study claims that the Stanford researchers then claimed inappropriately the 219 count represented half of the adult and near-adult population in the entire eastern north Pacific, which runs from Alaska down to Central America. The group of 10 international shark scientists set out to test the Stanford data and methods. The group pegged the entire population of white sharks along the whole California coast at more than 2,000 and likely rising.

 

The new research indicated that Stanford researchers made assumptions about the white shark population from those feeding off seals and sea lions at Farallon Islands and Tomales Point. They should have taken into account sharks that feed elsewhere and for juvenile sharks whose numbers appear to be growing.

 

The Stanford study also made comparisons between the low number of sharks and the greater numbers of killer whales and polar bears. This comparison was misleading given the greater ease of counting whales, which must surface for air, and bears on land.