A 14-foot great white shark has been filmed by scuba divers off the North Carolina coast.
Cindy Norris of Instigator Fishing and Diving Charters had her camera ready and caught the shark on film.
Norris chose the wreck of the SS Papoose Feb. 8 for the first dive of the day. The Papoose is a steamer tanker sunk by the German submarine U-124 in 1942 during World War II. The ship was constructed in 1921 and, after an accident in 1926, was rebuilt and renamed the Papoose.
The ship carried oil and petroleum products around the world and up and down the East Coast.
On March 18, 1942, the Papoose was off the coast of North Carolina. Underneath the waves the U-boat was participating in Operation Drumbeat, which included the targeting of Allied supply ships. The U-124 had sunk three other ships during its eightieth voyage and had its sights set on the Papoose as it traveled alone south of Cape Hatteras.
The U-boat fired a single torpedo that tore into the port side of the tanker rupturing the engine room bulk heads and penetrating the fuel tanks. The explosion created the only fatalities of the attack when it took the lives of two crew members.
The boat sat paralyzed as the captain ordered lifeboats lowered and the abandon ship signal was given. Crew members paddled away in lifeboats only to see another torpedo as it left a glowing trail through phosphorescent algae until it exploded on the ship’s starboard side.
The second hit left a large hole at the water line. The crew members were rescued by the USS Stringham. The Papoose floated for another two days before finally coming to rest on the ocean floor near the Outer Banks Oregon inlet.
The U-124 and all her crew met their end when it was sunk by the British in the Bay of Biscay in 1943. The Papoose is now home to an ample collection of sand tiger sharks and occasionally white sharks.
White shark visits the wreck
The first known white shark visit to the wreck was in 2001. Then a second one was spotted in 2003. This year there have already been three sightings of a white shark on the wreck.
“A fully mature female will generally pup every other year. It’s my though that the same female is coming back to the particular wreck to pup,” Norris told Tracking Sharks.
Due to the enormous size of the wreck, she believes it is an adequate environment for a pup to be born and grow.
Norris has spotted a total of 6 white sharks off North Carolina and has worked with Arizona State University tagging white sharks.
She runs white shark charters during the winter months and is a Shark Awareness instructor. She gives all her divers who have not taken the full course an overview of how to handle sharks.
One of the key indicators of a white shark’s presence is how the other sharks are acting.
She said female sandtigers will overtake the wreck as they are pregnant with sharklings and occasionally you will see one or two juvenile males in the mix. However, when several mature males are spotted, it’s a good indicator a predator is lurking near.
On this day, she guesstimated the size of the white shark to be around 14-feet long.
She always keeps an eye on the sharks and focuses on controlling her heart rate.
“A shark has a natural instinct to respond to an animal in peril or with injury, in which case the heart rate is generally accelerated. Controlling your heart rate is the first vital component,” she said.
She offers megladon fossil hunting and white shark charters during the winter for divers to see sandtigers and hopefully white sharks.
