How Big Do Great White Sharks Get? Size and Records

Typical size of an adult great white shark

The great white shark is the largest predatory fish alive today. Its size depends mostly on sex and age. Males usually reach maturity at about 3.4–4 m (11–13 ft) and females at about 4.6–4.9 m (15–16 ft). Most sharks seen by divers and researchers fall somewhere in this range.

Great whites are bulky sharks, so weight rises steeply with length. A shark that is 5 m (16 ft) long can weigh twice as much as one of 4 m (13 ft). Weight also changes through the year. The liver, which stores oil for energy and buoyancy, can make up about a quarter of the body weight and shrinks during long journeys.

Why are female great whites bigger?

In many sharks, females outgrow males, and the great white is a clear example. A bigger female has more room for her pups and can carry larger ones. White shark pups develop inside the mother for about a year and are born large, so a big body is an advantage.

Females also mature later. A study of sharks from the northwest Atlantic found that males mature at about 26 years and females at about 33 years, which gives females more years of growth before breeding. As a result, the very largest white sharks on record are generally females.

The largest great white sharks on record

Measuring a great white is hard. Most are never caught, and estimates made from boats or cages are easily off by a meter or more. Reliable records come mainly from sharks that were caught in nets or fisheries and measured on land.

A 2014 study of catch records from the northwest Pacific found the longest reliably measured white shark to be 6.02 m (19.8 ft) and the heaviest 2,530 kg (5,580 lb). Before that, shark expert John Randall considered a 5.94 m (19.5 ft) shark from Ledge Point, Western Australia, in 1984 the longest well-documented specimen. A female caught in the Mediterranean in 1956, now displayed in Lausanne, Switzerland, measures 5.83 m (19.1 ft) and is the largest preserved specimen.

Experts agree that a few white sharks probably grow somewhat longer than 6 m (20 ft), but sharks of that size are extremely rare.

Exaggerated and discredited records

For more than a century, books listed great whites of 10–11 m (33–37 ft). Two cases were especially famous:

• Port Fairy, Australia, 1870s. A shark caught here was listed at about 10.9 m (36 ft). In the 1970s, John Randall studied its jaws in the Natural History Museum in London and estimated that the shark had been only about 5 m (16 ft) long. The original figure was most likely a recording error.
• New Brunswick, Canada, 1930s. A shark of about 11.3 m (37 ft) trapped in a herring weir was reported as a white shark. It was most likely a basking shark, a much larger plankton feeder with a similar body shape.

Modern myths spread through photos. Forced perspective, where a shark close to the camera looks larger than the people or boat behind it, makes many sharks look huge. Length guessed from a boat is also unreliable, since only part of the shark is usually visible.

Deep Blue and other famous giants

The best-known large great white today is Deep Blue, a female filmed at Guadalupe Island, Mexico. She is estimated at about 6 m (20 ft) long, and in January 2019 she was filmed again near a dead sperm whale off Oahu, Hawaii. She has never been measured, so her size remains an estimate. At least one shark expert has suggested she may be closer to 5.5–5.8 m (18–19 ft), which would still make her one of the largest white sharks known.

Mary Lee, a female tagged by researchers off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 2012, was measured at about 4.9 m (16 ft), with an estimated weight of about 1,570 kg (3,456 lb). Her tracked journeys along the US East Coast made her famous, and her size is typical of a large adult female.

How fast do great white sharks grow?

White sharks start large but grow slowly. Pups are born at about 1–1.6 m (3–5 ft) and are able to catch fish straight away. Growth is fastest in the first years and slows as the shark matures, and it seems to level off after about 40 years.

Because growth is so slow, size is a poor guide to age in adults. A 5 m (16 ft) shark could be in its 30s or much older. Radiocarbon dating suggests that great whites can live 70 years or more, as explained in How long do great white sharks live?

How do great whites compare with other big sharks?

The great white is big, but it is not the biggest shark. The whale shark is far larger, with adults often 8–12 m (26–39 ft) long, and the basking shark regularly reaches 7–8.5 m (23–28 ft). Both are filter feeders that eat plankton. The Greenland shark can reach 6.4 m (21 ft), and the tiger shark has been verified at about 5.5 m (18 ft). The rankings are explained in largest fish in the world.

The extinct megalodon dwarfed them all. Estimates based on its teeth and vertebrae put the largest individuals at roughly 14–24 m (47–80 ft), depending on the method used. Megalodon died out about 3.6 million years ago, as explained in Is megalodon still alive?