A nine-foot great white shark’s tracking tag washed ashore months after it vanished, revealing the predator had been eaten whole—but by what? The signal pointed to something far larger, and researchers followed the tag’s data deep into uncharted waters where the trail suddenly went cold.
In 2003, researchers studying great white sharks off the southern coast of Australia recovered a data tag that had washed ashore. The tag had been attached to a nine-foot great white several months earlier as part of a routine tracking study. When the data was analyzed, it showed that the shark had died after being consumed by a larger animal.The tag’s readings showed an abrupt dive from shallow w…