Submarine

A few years ago on Shark Week I saw a program called "Great White: In Search of the Elusive Giant."

During the program, they mentioned a truely mammoth great white, nicknamed "The Submarine" due to it's tremendous size. A 27 foot great white that weighed over 5000 pounds. Strong enough to straighten hooks designed to catch great whites. Supposedly, it was incredibly aggressive, and lingered in a certain area for decades.

Doing my own research on it I found several things.
#1 world record size great whites don't come near the size of this thing.
#2 I found an article(now I can't locate it) in which a man claimed to have started the myth himself, and as sort of a chain reaction, it spread.

Does anyone else have a take on this? Surely I'm not the only person to ever hear of it.

It was a group of journalists in South Africa that started this legend. They were sitting around drinking and talking about how gullible people really were.

In the early seventies a group of journalists from the Cape Times and the Argus gathered for a few ales at the Tavern of the Seas.[citation needed] A dispute arose as to how gullible the average reader really was. A bet was made to the following effect: the journalists would create an entirely fictitious tale about a Brobdingnagian shark in False Bay. It would have certain distinguishing markings and a certain huge length. The tale would be published, in one of the newspapers, with a fake "eye-witness account". The journalists would then sit back and wait until somebody phoned to claim that they had "seen" the fish.

The results stunned everyone involved. The switchboards were immediately jammed with reports of sightings of the shark, or of the exact details of its markings and habits, or of its exact length.

en.wikipedia.org...

Thank you. The reason I posted this because I vaguely recall people from that Discovery special claiming they encountered it. But I guess if no one appeared by now to take about it, they aint gonna right?

Thanks again.

double post

[edit on 22-6-2007 by TheGreySwordsman]

double post...again

[edit on 22-6-2007 by TheGreySwordsman]

I saw this show and, if i remember correctly, they intervied a fisherman who said it tried to eat his boat with him in it. He said it was more like 18-20ft long though.

Last week I was watching a shark fishing show East Coast vs. West Coast on the outdoor life channel and it was showing footage from a West Coast team fishing before the tournament that encountered a 20 foot Great White.

They had spotted an estimated 800lb mako shark in their chum slick and it took off really fast for some reason. They were all talking about what could chase it off when this gigantic great white came up and started chewing on their motor on the back of the boat. They were freaking out and it was pretty funny because just about everything being said was being bleeped out.

No first hand experience, but I live near the ocean and know a lot of fishermen. They tell me that there's monsters out there, size-wise I mean; and not to believe the maximum sizes given by 'experts' for marine species, and particularly Great Whites, as that was usually what got us on the subject.

Many times shark attacks don't make the press here [scares the tourists] and sightings almost never do. I find the people who spend the bulk of their lives on the water more credible than experts who remain on land most of the time, even taking into account human's propensity to embelliesh and make a good fish story.

I've talked to more than a few fishermen, including a few shark hunters. My guess on the sizes is the following.

Big sharks are the older ones. As they die there are fewer of them.
Many of the larger sharks were hunted down decades ago, and it's taking time for the newer generations to catch up in size.

I heard some rumor from friends of a 30 footer that was around in the late 80's early 90's. I wouldn't doubt it. The more detail we put into our studies, the more information we can be wrong about.

Experts schmexperts. This applies to all fields. Having paper credentials only goes so far.

There was supposed to be a prehistoric fossilized shark's tooth dug up in South Carolina many decades ago, which put the size of it's owner about three times bigger than the average modern great white, so there is the potential in their DNA.

Originally posted by sy.gunson
There was supposed to be a prehistoric fossilized shark's tooth dug up in South Carolina many decades ago, which put the size of it's owner about three times bigger than the average modern great white, so there is the potential in their DNA.

That would be the Carcharodon Megalodon, an ancient anscestor of the great white. Here's a link to a page about them or you could just google the scientific name

www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com...