Study finds Great White sharks hunt in pairs – shedding new light on mysterious predator

ONE shark is scary enough – but where there’s one, there’s likely more.

Using daring techniques, including freediving with Great Whites, researchers have discovered that the beasts might help each other hunt.

Sharks are not thought of traditionally as social animals, who coordinate ambush attacks on prey.

However, what constitutes a social action can be far more subtle than coordinating an attack, according to Yannis Papastamatiou, a marine biologist specializing in predators.

Simply communicating the location of prey to another member of the species might increase the likelihood that both predators walk, or swim, away with a meal.

Papastamatiou wrote for The Conversation: “While the sharks may not be cooperating, they can still potentially benefit by hanging out with each other.”

She and colleagues in Guadalupe Island outfitted Great Whites with transmitters that would indicate when they came within 100 feet of other sharks.

They found that some sharks are more solitary, while two others stood out as extremely social, “[associating] with 12 and 16 other individuals.”

A group of sharks is, terrifyingly, called a shiver of sharks.

Shannon Ainslie was attacked by two Great Whites at the same time at Nahoon Reef in South Africa.

Miraculously, he survived with minor injuries to his arm, wrist and hand.

He is the only known survivor of an attack involving more than one Great White.

Ainslie moved to Norway where there are no sharks in the frigid Scandinavian waters – but he did have a frightening encounter with two orcas whales.

The likelihood of being attacked by a shark is minuscule – SurferToday says your chances of being killed by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067 or .0000026%.

Despite that statistic, it appears Steven Spielberg’s classic film Jaws has a lasting grip on swimmers’ psyche, with the National Post reporting that 43% of people have chronic fears of swimming because of sharks.

Great White sharks are a vulnerable species entitled to conservation protections – their extinction might bring some frightening swimmers relief but could set off a disastrous ecological chain reaction.