Great white shark caught napping on camera for first time
Sharks get tired, too. A film crew delights in rare footage of a huge shark taking a snooze underwater.
Great white sharks have gotten a bad rap thanks to all the "Jaws" movies and irrational human fears. They just want to go about their lives like any other animal, snacking on other critters and catching a few zzzs now and then. While we have plenty of video of great whites dramatically eating things, we haven't had any footage of the big sharks sleeping...until Discovery channel filmed one mid-nap.
The Discovery team used a robotic submersible to capture what the channel calls "the first-ever footage of a great white shark napping." The clip comes from the Shark Week show "Jaws of the Deep." The shark is a female hanging out in shallow water near Guadalupe Island in the Pacific Ocean.
It's nighttime. The shark hugs the shoreline close to the ocean floor and her jaw sits open. The narrator notes that "she appears to be in an almost catatonic state." Nap time for sharks isn't as still as it is for humans. The great white must keep swimming; she just does it in a slow, relaxed state while facing into the current. It's just a very different way of "sleeping with the fishes."