Litters and Estimate of Gestation Period
of White Shark Carcharodon carcharias (Linnaeus, 1758)

After
Francis, M. P. (1996). Observations on a pregnant white shark with a review of reproductive biology. In Great white sharks. In 'The Biology of the White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias'. Eds. A. P. Klimley & D. G. Ainley . Academic Press, San Diego CA USA, pp. 157-172; and
Uchida, S., Toda M., Teshima K., & Yano K. (1996). Pregnant white sharks with near-term fetuses from Japan. In 'The Biology of the White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias'. Eds. A. P. Klimley & D. G. Ainley . Academic Press, San Diego CA USA, pp. 139-155; with interpretation of some litters following
Mollet, H. F., Cliff G., Pratt Jr., H. L. & Stevens J. D. (2000). Reproductive biology of the female shortfin mako, Isurus oxyrinchus Rafinesque, 1810, with comments on the embryonic development of lamnoids. US National Marine Fisheries Service Fishery Bulletin 98, 299-318. Download PDF.

Photograph Litter size TL embryo* (m) Mass embryo* (kg) TL fem. (m) M fem. (kg) Capture date Capture location Reference
  ? ~0 ~200 egg capsules in uteri suggesting blastodisc stage (Mollet et al. 2000, pdf) 5.55   16 Feb 1985 Kin, Okinawa, Japan Uchida et al. (1996)
Cc_images/EmbryoNov72008.jpg ? ~0.1: lateral view ?, eggcases were found also 5.42 1930 7 Nov 2008 Brought to Southern Bay Dock, Taiwan Victor Lin, pers. comm.
  ? < 0.5
smaller than litter below		 ?     1995 to 1996 Offshore waters of
Tai-tung, Taiwan		 Pan-Wen Hsueh pers. comm.
8 0.5-0.6 One embryo was conserved and is on display at re-opened museum in East Taiwan 7?
using M=2000 kg gives ~ 6m TL		 ~2000 13 Oct 1997

Set-net off Baisolane,Taiwan

Compare with porbeagle embryos;
Compare with salmon shark embryos:
Compare with shortfin mako embryos.

V. Lin, pers. comm.

Link for details
  9 0.61 5.4 kg, presumably with large yolk-stomach     Summer 1934 Alexandria, Egypt Norman & Fraser (1937); Ellis & McCosker (1991)
  7 0.8-1.2
my estimate		   ~4.88
(16 feet)		 1300
(2866 lbs)		 18 Jan 2007 Commercial fishermen in the East China Sea netted the pups’ 16-foot-long, 2,866-pound mother on Jan. 18. She was dead, but the seven pups found inside her still were alive and, although premature, were transported from the fishing dock in Yomitan to the Churaumi Aquarium at Ocean Expo Park in Nago.
“The mother shark was believed to have been between the middle and late stages of pregnancy.”
David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, January 26, 2007
    ~1.0       Feb-Mar 1988 Taiwan fish market D. A. Ebert
7 ~1.0-1.1   ~4.7   2 Apr 1986 Taiji, Wakayama, Japan Uchida et al. (1996)
  >7, possibly 17 ~1.1 10-20 ~6.4 >2200 16 Jul 1996
Austral mid-winter?		 ~10 km off Malindi, Kenya
(03 13'S, 40 07'E)		 Cliff et al. (2000)
Uchidaetal1996F02B.jpg 5 ~1.30   4.8   14 May 1992 Uchinoura, Kagoshima, Japan Uchida et al. (1996)
Cc_images/Saidietal2005Fig4.jpg 4 1.32-1.35 27.65-31.50 5.87 >2000 26 Feb 2004 Gulf of Gabès, southern Tunisia Saïdi et al. (2005)
Uchidaetal1996F04A.jpg 10 1.35-1.51
Mean 1.435		 21.3-32.4
Mean 26.3		 5.15   22 May 1992 Toyo, Kochi, Japan Uchida et al. (1996)
Francis1996F02A.jpg 7 1.43-1.45
(2 spec.)		 >23.5-26.1 ~5.36;
~5.0 FL		 1360 incl. 7 pups 13 Nov 1991 Austral mid-spring North Cape, New Zealand;
50 min. tape was taken by J. Bradley.
QuickTime video clip (~4 min/~10 MB) was prepared by Dave Powell.		 Francis (1996)
  3-5 ~ 1.5   ~5.5   ~ 9 Nov 2003; Austral mid-spring Firth of Thames, about 2 km off the eastern end of Waiheke Island NZ The New Zealand Herald
Photograph Litter size TL embryo* (mm) Mass embryo* (kg) TL fem. (m) M fem. (kg) Capture date Capture location Reference
No reliable data is available of early- and mid-term embryos. Mollet et al. (2000, pdf) asssumed that the Kin, Okinawa, Japan specimen was early-term because of the presence of over 200 eggcases in the uteri and that the Alexandria (Egypt) specimen was mid-term. Thanks to efforts by Victor Lin, we now have data for an early-term and a second mid-term litter. Here I further assumed that parturtion in Northern and Southern Hemispheres are six months out of phase. Free-swimmers <~1.62 m TL from both hemispheres were included.
Created April 2002; revised November 2008. Back to previous page
Please send comments or corrections to mollet@pacbell.net