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The sharks have either been killed by targeted commercial fishing for their fins and meat, or accidentally caught in other fisheries. Elsewhere, they are hunted for trophies, grandstanding profile pictures or because they are seen as a threat to humans. It has been estimated that between 63m and 273m sharks could be killed every year by fishing. Populations have reached such low numbers in places that some species now are at a high risk of extinction.

Which makes the latest sighting very special indeed. At a time when many species are struggling, such a large shark is a rare sight.

There is a famous tendency to exaggerate the size of fish — and sharks, in particular. The referenceless of the ocean can make judging distances and length difficult and with no solid means to verify the size of this shark, we can’t say for sure that it really was seven metres long. While coast guards reported that the shark was bigger than their six-metre jet boat, it is hard to extract any biologically relevant information from the fleeting sighting other than it was a big shark doing what sharks do.

What we can say, however, is that large great white sharks are usually the old ones. And they can get really quite old. In fact, a recent study found that white sharks might live as long as 70 years. These older sharks are great for the population, because they have had ample opportunity to reproduce, introducing offspring into a dwindling population.

But in all the Jaws-style fanfare, it’s important to look also at how the local community has dealt with the sighting. In many places around the world, just as in the film Jaws, we might have seen a large-scale hunt undertaken to capture the “man-eating” monster and stop it from killing on their beaches.