Great White Shark With Battle Scars and Scratches Filmed by Scientists

A great white shark with "battle scars and scratches" has been filmed and tagged by scientists in New Zealand waters.

Shark researcher Riley Elliott and colleagues tagged the female great white, which measures around 10.5 feet in length, just off the north coast of the country's North Island on Monday.

Elliott is conducting a tracking project that aims initially to tag 20 great whites to collect data on them and monitor their movements.

An integrated app receives this data in real-time and displays the locations of the sharks on a map.

The locations of the sharks are updated when their dorsal fins—on which the tags are placed—break the surface of the ocean, sending out a signal to an orbiting satellite.

The 10.5-foot shark was the third and largest great white tagged since the start of the project. It has been named "Mananui" by a local indigenous Māori group.

"Her presence was awe-inspiring, in size and demeanour," Elliott said in a Facebook post. "She wears battle scars and scratches, but was cautious and calculated."

The shark is thought to be around 6 years old and is considered a sub-adult, meaning that she is no longer a juvenile but is not yet mature enough to reproduce.

"Generally, at this size/age, great whites' metabolism speeds up, requiring them to feed on seals," Elliott said. "Their teeth widen for hunting this prey, compared to more needle-like teeth of juveniles, which eat fish."

The researcher told the Bay of Plenty Times newspaper that the process of tagging the shark "was incredibly difficult and tiring," with the team spending around a week out on the water in "cooking hot weather."

"Sharks don't just come up and eat stuff. They are very shy and calculated, and they are just trying to go about their own business. It's a privilege when they do show up," Elliott said.

"About 1 percent of the time, when I am on the water, I am seeing a great white shark. The rest of the time is just getting sunburnt or trying not to."

While Elliott said that the moment the scientists tagged the shark—as shown in the video—might look "intense," the specific placement of the device on the animal is as "non-invasive as it gets" in this field of work.

"That's reflected by the fact that she turned right around and continued to bless us with her interactions for several hours," he said in the Facebook post.

Photos taken by local fishermen show that the shark had been seen in the area where it was tagged in the past three summers.

Mananui is now visible on the Great White App, where you can track her movements, as well as the two other sharks that have been tagged.

Elliott told the Bay of Plenty Times that the project, which resembles research by marine science non-profit OCEARCH, is helping to change "potential fear to fascination" regarding great whites.