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Great White Shark Battle Filmed Off Australia

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 12:56 PST, Oct 7, 2014

Rare footage has emerged of two great white sharks battling each other off the coast of Australia, the second time in just a week that film of an often unseen event has been released.

The video was captured on a diving expedition last year by Russell Gordon, a marine wildlife enthusiast, according to The Telegraph. Gordon filmed the sharks from the safety of a cage just off South Australia’s Neptune Islands, an area renowned for its abundant population of great whites.

In the exceedingly unusual video, a large great white attacks from below a rival shark. Just a few meters away from Gordon’s cage, the great white sinks its teeth into its competitor, ripping flesh away as blood can at one point be seen in the water.

Though Gordon filmed the video last year, he uploaded it to YouTube only on Thursday, according to The Independent. He explained that the video depicted extremely rare behavior in great white sharks that had not previously been observed.

“This video is unique because neither shark has been influenced by bait,” he asserted. “Some of you may have viewed other footage of shark on shark attacks but these are purely accidental incidences because the two sharks strike at the bait line and inadvertently hit each other.”

The footage to which Gordon is referring surfaced last week, showing a large great white attacking a smaller shark in an apparent act of cannibalism. As The Inquisitr noted, the short clip was filmed in the same area off the Neptune Islands, by 33-year-old Adam Malski. The white sharks in Malski’s video appeared to be fighting over the bait with which they were attracted to the boat, causing the smaller shark to get in the way of the larger great white, known as “Gilbert.” While the large shark survived, the smaller animal has not been spotted since the attack.

The sharks in Gordon’s video, by contrast, appear to be fighting over territory, according to Malta Today. There is still much that remains a mystery about the behavior of the species, despite the popularity of sharks and the fact that so many great whites are tracked by organizations like OCEARCH in the United States and the Department of Fisheries in Western Australia.

[Image: Russell Gordon via Malta Today]

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