5.5m great white monster drowns in net off Waiheke Is

By ANNE BESTON

It might be the end for this monster shark but fishermen managed to save and release two of her offspring.

The 5.5m, pregnant great white drowned in a net set by Tararu fisherman Dwayne Havord in the Firth of Thames, about 2km off the eastern end of Waiheke Island.

Colleague Daniel Scott, of Thames, towed the dead shark to shore using a 5.1m aluminium boat.

The men discovered the shark was carrying five 1.8m-long pups and saved two of them by holding them in the water until they swam away.

"We thought she was a killer whale at first," Mr Scott said. "I've never seen a great white that big before."

The shark was a rare catch, said Department of Conservation marine ecologist Clint Duffy, with just one documented case of a pregnant great white caught in New Zealand waters and only about 10 in scientific literature worldwide.

"I would have loved to have seen it but the fishermen did everything right. I think they felt pretty sad about it," he said.

Mr Duffy receives about 10 reports of great white sharks around New Zealand each year but he said swimmers could take comfort from the fact that this one was in the inner Hauraki Gulf breeding, not feeding.

"If they are going into pup they stop feeding, and they tend not to hang around the nursery area because they might eat the pups."

While the great white lurks in the imagination of most swimmers at some time or another, the star of the 1970s movie Jaws was thought to attack humans by mistake, said National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research marine biologist Dr Malcolm Francis.

"They usually bite and spit you out because you don't taste as nice as a seal - although admittedly if it happens it can be disastrous."

He said no one knew how many great whites, or white pointers, there were around the New Zealand coast.

The biggest was reliably measured at about 7m but they commonly reach 4-5m. The female is bigger than the male.

They are a super-predator, with up to 3000 razor-sharp teeth, a well-honed sense of smell and the ability to pick up electric currents to lead them to prey.

Great whites are a protected species around the coastline of the US, Australia and South Africa.