White sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, are often described as elusive, with little information available due to the logistical difficulties of studying large marine predators that make long-distance migrations across ocean basins. Increased understanding of aggregation patterns, combined with recent advances in technology have, however, facilitated a new breadth of studies revealing fresh insights into the biology and ecology of white sharks. Although we may no longer be able to refer to the white shark as a little-known, elusive species, there remain numerous key questions that warrant investigation and research focus. Although white sharks have separate populations, they seemingly share similar biological and ecological traits across their global distribution. Yet, white shark’s behavior and migratory patterns can widely differ, which makes formalizing similarities across its distribution challenging. Prioritization of research questions is important to maximize limited resources because white sharks are naturally low in abundance and play important regulatory roles in the ecosystem. Here, we consulted 43 white shark experts to identify these issues. The questions listed and developed here provide a global road map for future research on white sharks to advance progress toward key goals that are informed by the needs of the research community and resource managers.

The recent Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals but no clear pathway for how zero loss of important biodiversity areas and halting human-induced extinction of threatened species will be achieved. We assembled a multi-taxa tracking dataset (11 million geopositions from 15,845 tracked individuals across 121 species) to provide a global assessment of space use of highly mobile marine megafauna, showing that 63% of the area that they cover is used 80% of the time as important migratory corridors or residence areas. The GBF 30% threshold (Target 3) will be insufficient for marine megafauna’s effective conservation, leaving important areas exposed to major anthropogenic threats. Coupling area protection with mitigation strategies (e.g., fishing regulation, wildlife-traffic separation) will be essential to reach international goals and conserve biodiversity.

South Africa is reputed to host the world’s largest remaining population of white sharks, yet no studies have accurately determined a population estimate based on mark-recapture of live individuals. We used dorsal fin photographs (fin IDs) to identify white sharks in Gansbaai, South Africa, from January 2007 – December 2011. We used the computer programme DARWIN to catalogue and match fin IDs of individuals; this is the first study to successfully use the software for white shark identification. The programme performed well despite a number of individual fins showing drastic changes in dorsal fin shape over time. Of 1682 fin IDs used, 532 unique individuals were identified. We estimated population size using the open-population POPAN parameterisation in Program MARK, which estimated the superpopulation size at 908 (95% confidence interval 808–1008). This estimated population size is considerably larger than those described at other aggregation areas of the species and is comparable to a previous South African population estimate conducted 16 years prior. Our assessment suggests the species has not made a marked recovery since being nationally protected in 1991. As such, additional international protection may prove vital for the long-term conservation of this threatened species.

Many marine species are difficult to study because components of their lifecycles occur solely or partially outside of the observable realm of researchers. Advances in biologging tags have begun to give us glimpses into these unobservable states. However, many of these tags require rigid attachment to animals, which normally requires catching and restraining the animals. These methods become prohibitive with large, dangerous, or rare species, such as large predatory sharks, and can have significant consequences for individual survival and behavior. Therefore, there is a need for methods and hardware to non-invasively and rigidly attach biologging tags to large predatory sharks that presents limited effects on the animals and researchers. Here we test a clamp tag and methods to non-invasively and rigidly attach biologging tags to white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in Gansbaai, South Africa.