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Incredible Footage Shows 'World's Most Battered' Great White Shark

Incredible Footage Shows 'World's Most Battered' Great White Shark

The huge great white shark was spotted off the Neptune Islands in South Australia

Tom Wood

Tom Wood

Incredible footage shows a great white shark that might just be the 'world's most battered' shark. Seriously, check it out:

The huge sea creature was spotted near to the Neptune Islands in South Australia, which is an area known to be populated by around 1,000 great white sharks.

By the looks of things, this large male has been scrapping with each and every one of them.

Whilst those who filmed the footage thought the giant predator may have been injured by boat propellers or tuna nets, they've since done away with that idea.

Underwater cinematographer Dean Spraakman said the shark was 'friendly' and 'calm', but the marks on it suggest otherwise.

Sea Dragon Films

Dean told the Sun "No one has ever seen a shark in a condition like this before.

"We see sometimes down there the white sharks tracking stingrays because they hunt and eat them and we thought they chase them into shallow reef areas where it's quite sharp and it might get stuck and cause that sort of damage.

"You can only speculate what happened there and to be honest no one knows or ever really know what causes that sort of damage to a shark but the poor guy had a bit of a hard time I think.

Sea Dragon Films

"I noticed he had scars on him but I didn't realise to what length until I reviewed the footage later.

"He was very calm and coming close and quite curious which was great.

"He was really friendly, just very calm and wasn't aggravated from everything he's been through.

"He came very close, within an arm's reach from me - sometimes when you get a good shark like that, they just want to come and look you in the eye, just have a really good look at who you are."

Sea Dragon Films

However, whilst we might not know in this exact case, National Geographic explorer Professor Yannis Papastamatiou reckons some of the marks were caused by fighting with other sharks.

He told the Sun: "Females are often heavily scarred from mating behaviour but males can get bitten as well during dominance interactions between sharks e.g. a larger shark may want a smaller shark and dominate the smaller individual with a non-fatal warning bite.

"Some of the scarrings around the face may also be caused by their prey such as seals."

That sounds likely, given that we know there are large numbers of great whites - some as big as 20-feet - around the area that this was seen.

Either way, it looks badass.

Featured Image Credit: Sea Dragon Films

Topics: Great White Shark, Interesting, Weird, Animals, Australia, shark

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