Nature
PUBLISHED
The first-ever underwater footage of a great white shark filmed by another shark has been released by marine biologists from Florida Atlantic University.
Shot in 2025, the four-minute encounter was captured by a camera attached to the dorsal fin of a nurse shark, which repeatedly passed by the great white as the pair hung out around an artificial reef.
“Our footage clearly showed a great white, estimated to be at least ten feet long, and reveals a rare moment of shark-on-shark action - or what we’re coining as a ‘shark photobomb’”, said researcher Stephen Kajiura in a statement.
Kajiura and his team have been using the fin-mounted cameras to study the behavior of lemon sharks, hammerheads, blacktips and a number of other sharks native to southern Florida.
“We figured one of the easiest ones to start with would be a nurse shark because they're local, they don't go very far, they probably spend half their time sitting on the bottom, not doing much,” explains Kajiura. “What are the chances that this shark happened to capture another shark and it happened to be a cool, pretty big-sized great white shark?”
Shark pals hanging out
The unexpected cameo was picked up by the camera as the nurse shark swam around an artificial reef called Donny Boy Slipe Reef, a popular scuba diving spot off the coast of Boynton Beach in Florida.
“This rare footage gives us a shark’s-eye view of the interactions between these two very different kinds of sharks,” said Kajiura.
“The interesting thing is, these two sharks interacted for about four minutes. It wasn't just a one-off,” he added. “They passed each other multiple times around this artificial reef.”
The footage was recorded using a tag that had been temporarily attached to the nurse shark’s fin to collect 3D acceleration data, as well as video. After a predetermined period, the tag automatically detached and floated to the surface, ready for collection by the team of marine biologists.
Almost lost footage
In this case, however, the tag initially failed to ping its coordinates back to the control center, leading the researchers to fear that the device was lost.
But after four days of silence, it finally sent the signal, allowing the team to retrieve the camera from a nearby beach where it had washed up.
Upon collection, however, the researchers noticed that all was nearly lost. They found beach tractor tire tracks passing just a few inches from the tag, revealing how close the device had come to being crushed.
Fortunately, the instrument survived and the team were able to bring it back to the lab and watch the footage.
“We were all huddled around my computer, reviewing the footage,” says team member Genevieve Sylvester. “When we saw the great white shark appear - more than once - we couldn’t believe it. To witness it from the shark’s point of view made it even more surreal.”
“It was a truly unforgettable moment for our entire team,” she says.
