Despite fears that the species has been declining, the great white shark population appears to be rising on both the east and west coasts of the U.S., according to new research.
Sometimes growing to more than 20 feet in length, great whites tend to be loners that don't frequently cluster together, making them difficult to track.
"They're rare animals," said lead study author Tobey Curtis, as quoted by Live Science. "They're not commonly seen, and it takes a lot of effort to track down verified records of sightings and fishery captures."
Curtis, a shark researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office in Gloucester, Mass., headed a study on great whites off the East Coast that was published in the journal PLOS ONE this month.
The findings indicate that conservation efforts have helped the great white population to grow. The species was put on state and federal endangered lists after dangerously low population numbers were documented in a 2011 Stanford University study, Reuters reported.
"It's a good news story and one we don't hear often enough with sharks," said George Burgess, a researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville, as quoted by Live Science.
The Stanford study estimated that only 219 adult and almost-mature great whites were swimming near the central California coast. Burgess contends that the 2011 data is inaccurate; the new study in PLOS ONE puts the great white population along the California coast at more than 2,000 sharks.
The researcher pointed out to Reuters that species that aren't actually endangered should not be put on the list, so conservation efforts can be focused on populations that are truly at risk. The new study has influenced state and federal officials to keep the great white at its current level of protection instead of bumping it up.
"This is a real pleasure for us in the biology business to be talking about because it's a success story," Burgess said.
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