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Megalodon Sightings


Mothmen

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This shark was a recorded 21ft but i bet most people would say it is much larger...we just are not very good at judging the size of things and the fact its in the water makes it even harder..

post-117688-0-73068100-1333480214_thumb.

Edited by BrianPotter
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2 fishermen off the coast of Malta last summer reported a giant shark,which was" bigger than their boat",and that was 35 feet long,and they refused to go back out the next day...I dont think Great Whites grow that big (but I dont know for sure)....

That's much bigger than a Great White, but well within the range of Whale Sharks, which are the biggest species of shark, but not as well known or interesting as they aren't ferocious predators, but rather dull filter feeders like baleen whales.

The sighting of a large shark off the coast of Malta is unlikely to be a Whale Shark as they aren't known in the Mediterranean.

The Basking Shark on the other hand is found in the Mediterranean and can reach a maximum size of around 40ft, although most are closer to the 30ft mark.

As to the Great White the largest reliably recorded size is around 20ft, although in recent years they normally don't get much longer than 16 or so feet.

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The sighting of a large shark off the coast of Malta is unlikely to be a Whale Shark as they aren't known in the Mediterranean.

The Basking Shark on the other hand is found in the Mediterranean and can reach a maximum size of around 40ft, although most are closer to the 30ft mark.

As to the Great White the largest reliably recorded size is around 20ft, although in recent years they normally don't get much longer than 16 or so feet.

Great Whites are occasionally found in the Med and some even think they use it as a breeding ground..if you look on Wiki they have a global range map and the Med is on it...i even think they have had fatalities around Cyprus and Malta that was attributed to a Great White...i do agree though that it was most certainly a Whale Shark....

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Edited by BrianPotter
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Great Whites are occasionally found in the Med and some even think they use it as a breeding ground..if you look on Wiki they have a global range map and the Med is on it...i even think they have had fatalities around Cyprus and Malta that was attributed to a Great White...i do agree though that it was most certainly a Whale Shark....

My link

I know Great Whites are found in the Med, my point was that Great Whites don't reach the size of the shark sighted off Malta.

As I mentioned in my last post, it most certainly is not a Whale Shark as they are not found in the Mediterranean.

Therefore it was most likely a Basking Shark that was sighted.

My link

Edited by grendals_bane
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I know Great Whites are found in the Med, my point was that Great Whites don't reach the size of the shark sighted off Malta.

As I mentioned in my last post, it most certainly is not a Whale Shark as they are not found in the Mediterranean.

Therefore it was most likely a Basking Shark that was sighted.

My link

Do you know..i just read your post again and you are damn right young sir......to be honest i cant even remember writing mine.....:blush: ..sorry about that and i think a trip to an opticians and to try to invent a Breathalyzer machine for the computer that stops you logging on when slightly/extremely tipsy is on the cards for me.....genuinelly sorry...

Edited by BrianPotter
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Funny how we have extensive information on every other shark species in the world, but yet this giant shark seems to allude the efforts of scientists worldwide.

funny how I can see a claim that we have "extensive information on every other shark species in the world" when brand new shark species keep turning up (such as the new species of hammerhead that was 'discovered' just a few weeks ago or the new species of angel shark discovered in the Philippines last year).

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It wouldn't surprise me, we know less about what is under our water surfaces than we do what's out in space! We can see a good whack of the universe but we can't dive into the deepest parts of our waters! When it comes to sea cryptids, I always keep an open mind for this reason, and this reason alone.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This premise was actually put forth in the book version of JAWS.

And dont many species have offspring before becoming full grown?

Full grown has nothing to do with sexually mature.

A 12 year old human can have a child,but is far from full grown.

This is mammals of course,but it's a consideration.

I recently saw a clip of a dinosaur expert,who totally blows former thought about dinosaurs out of the water.

He feels many dinosaur specimens,are not all different species.

He would cite maybe 4 dinosaurs,and show how they were all the same dinosaur,all at different stages of life development.

He did it with numerous different dinosaurs,and some have major changes structurally,as it went thru the developmental stages.

Size and bone structure both.

I forget the guys name....i will look for it.

But id say it's entirely possible,given sharks are ancient,that in todays world,maybe some do mature,but maybe the ones we see commonly,do not.

Another example of this is lobster.

The little 2 pounders we see on plates with butter sauce,are juveniles.

Full sized lobsters are super rare,because we fish them long before they get to be 40lbs.

There are records kept by the pilgrims I believe,who noted these creatures,and how huge they were,just back in the 1700s.

We fished adults into extinction for food.

I'd say this is a possibility .....no one has kept a great white in captivity (save Monterey ,for six mos)

So no one knows how big they might get,not exposed to the harshest elements they face day to day.

Sorry mate but no it isnt a possibility. I saw your comments about being quite interested in sharks, so am i. I actually am a marine biologist and work with them. I saw that talk on dinosaurs you refered to but this doesnt apply to sharks. As far as great whites growing further if undisturbed. well i wish it worked like that, but all animals display growth shaped in a very specific way. The most accurately growth model for elasmobranchs, the von Bertalanfy growth function platoes at a certain max size, which means that growth rates decrease exponentialy untill they reach a maximum theoretical lenght, so we are quite certain that great whites cannot grow to megalodon like sizes. Additionaly, new information on the taxonomy and phylogeny of the megalodon show it as being coloser to long fin mackos than great whites, so it is likely tha morphologically this was true as well. Id like to think so, since that would be by far a more formidable shark, adapted as an oceanic pelagic hunter...

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Interesting topic,

Zane Grey's sighting is the most intriguing and probable. The shark was described to have a square head, which means it had a boxy head instead of the GWS pointed or Whale Shark's flat one's, the former's head being more suitable to attack whales. There was also a 10 m unknown and very high-finned shark observed in Bay of Fundy in 1999 by a experienced diver and photographer which seems to looked like the one pictured here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Basking_shark_Harper%27s_Weekly_October_24,_1868.jpg

It was found in Maine and I personnally doubt it was a basking shark.

Also, I have read that goblin shark could grow to a lenght of 6,2 m ! as big as GWS !

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funny how I can see a claim that we have "extensive information on every other shark species in the world" when brand new shark species keep turning up (such as the new species of hammerhead that was 'discovered' just a few weeks ago or the new species of angel shark discovered in the Philippines last year).

New species of shark that are so simliar to known species that only genetic testing can tell the difference are hardly the same thing as having breeding populations of Megladons roaming the world's oceans.

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:::Shrug::: new unique species of sea life are found fairly frequently as well, including sharks (in the last ten years over 200 new species of sharks and rays have been catalogued... not all of them).

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:::Shrug::: new unique species of sea life are found fairly frequently as well, including sharks (in the last ten years over 200 new species of sharks and rays have been catalogued... not all of them).

Did any of them have the characteristics of a Megalodon type creature - basically a gigantic great white that primarily hunts and lives near the shores and in relatively shallow water?

Yours reminds me of the argument that because some biologist found a new type of caterpillar in the Amazon then therefore bigfoot must exist.

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I am not arguing that megaldon still exists at all (it clearly is extinct, and if there were to be a giant shark swimming around out there it would certainly be a different species), I am railing at the sheer ignorance of people stating such things as "Funny how we have extensive information on every other shark species in the world..." and pointing out that such statements are not true... leading off an argument with such a statement basically makes anything else you want to add to the argument irrelevent, you are already an unreliable source.

Some research has also shown that Megaldon was likely not as closely related to the great white as has long been thought.

Edited by Conrad Clough
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I am not arguing that megaldon still exists at all (it clearly is extinct, and if there were to be a giant shark swimming around out there it would certainly be a different species)

Yes. Just like coyotes started to replace the void left by wolves in Yellowstone and grew bigger and stronger. Meg went extinct about 1,5 million years ago, so there was enough time span for an other shark to evolve to somewhat fill this empty niche. Beaked whales and giant squids would make good and sizeable preys for it.

Zane Grey said the shark he had witnessed had immense pectoral fins and I found this on wikipedia :

Fins

The fins of C. megalodon would have been most likely proportionally larger and thicker in comparison to the fins of great white sharks because relatively larger fins are a necessity for propulsion and control of movements of a larger shark.[7]

Edited by Kouprey
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I am not arguing that megaldon still exists at all (it clearly is extinct, and if there were to be a giant shark swimming around out there it would certainly be a different species), I am railing at the sheer ignorance of people stating such things as "Funny how we have extensive information on every other shark species in the world..." and pointing out that such statements are not true... leading off an argument with such a statement basically makes anything else you want to add to the argument irrelevent, you are already an unreliable source.

Some research has also shown that Megaldon was likely not as closely related to the great white as has long been thought.

But yet my statement didn't preclude the discovery of new species, did it? My point was simply that given the extensive knowledge we have of known sharks, that having an unknown species that was so far off the scale of known species would hardly go undetected.

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Pls have the time to elaborate this video, i am very interested in this subject, yet i don't know much about sharks. What kind of species is this? And in the future, would you be so kind when you're talking about dimensions(girth, length etsc..) talk in meters.We're not all from America, Great Britain and such. Thank you.

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What kind of species is this?

Pacific sleeper shark. Eugenie Clark, an American ichthyologist, estimated it to be around 7 m long.

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But yet my statement didn't preclude the discovery of new species, did it? My point was simply that given the extensive knowledge we have of known sharks, that having an unknown species that was so far off the scale of known species would hardly go undetected.

uhmmm yes... 'extensive information on every other shark species in the world' does literally preclude the discovery of new species because 'every other' is an absolutre statement when used, as you did, with out any sort of qualifying statments to suggest otherwise, and in this case your argument would not have sounded nearly as strong had you said 'every other known shark species' considering the threads about a cryptozological shark.
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uhmmm yes... 'extensive information on every other shark species in the world' does literally preclude the discovery of new species because 'every other' is an absolutre statement when used, as you did, with out any sort of qualifying statments to suggest otherwise, and in this case your argument would not have sounded nearly as strong had you said 'every other known shark species' considering the threads about a cryptozological shark.

In the future I'll choose my words more carefully so as not to offend your demand for accuracy.

Feel free to get the last word in.

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Feel free to get the last word in.
Why thank you, that is very generous... my point is that unless you are running for public office overblown hyperbole doesn't actually help you form a strong argument, something to keep in mind if you ever really want to sway somebody to your view point (or away from thiers).
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Pls have the time to elaborate this video, i am very interested in this subject, yet i don't know much about sharks. What kind of species is this? And in the future, would you be so kind when you're talking about dimensions(girth, length etsc..) talk in meters.We're not all from America, Great Britain and such. Thank you.

Are you also talking about the fish at around 7 seconds? I am pretty sure that is a Chimaera, a relative to the shark. Wikipedia says they can get around 4 and 1/2 feet long. I never saw one in person, but remember seeing it on a shark documentary a while back.

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The shark at the end of the video looks like a sleeper shark to me, a rather large one maybe in the 5-6 meter range (assuming the bait box is the size I think suspect it is).

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Are you also talking about the fish at around 7 seconds? I am pretty sure that is a Chimaera, a relative to the shark. Wikipedia says they can get around 4 and 1/2 feet long. I never saw one in person, but remember seeing it on a shark documentary a while back.

I was aiming at the shark at the end of the video, but yea now that you mention it that one is interesting too :)

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Ok, ok this is my kinda topic, I may as well be a shark expert (even though Im not). I think this is a wicked consept, but there are MANY gaps in the eveidence saying there IS still a Megalodon. So, the biggest gap is, if the Megalodon is real wouldnt it have a hard time staying hidden? I mean its a freaking 60ft long shark! And the second biggest is that Megalogon fed on Whales, so if they are still around then wouldnt there be a shortage in whales? What these fishermen are probally seeing is overgrow greath whites, some great whites can get to about 30ft long.

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so if they are still around then wouldnt there be a shortage in whales?

Or at least more whales found swimming around with big bites taken out of them.

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