A couple in California may be shedding light on one of the greatest mysteries of the ocean: young great white sharks.

In a press release from the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and doctoral student Philip Sternes of the University of California, Santa Barbara, were searching the waters for sharks when Gauna’s drone captured footage of something unusual.

“We enlarged the images, put them in slow motion, and realized the white layer was being shed from the body as it was swimming,” Sternes told UC Riverside. “I believe it was a newborn white shark shedding its embryonic layer.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that because of their gray upper half and white underside, great white sharks are known as white sharks in the scientific community.
According to UC Riverside, this shark was “pure white” and “roughly 5-foot-long”.

The significance of the discovery is explained in a new publication that details the results and is published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.

“The paper suggests that it was only hours to days old. The white substance could have been uterine milk which mother sharks produce to feed the embryos,” Fox Weather reported. “The usual gray became evident after the layer sloughed off.”

THE MISSION OF SHARK ATTACK SURVIVOR IS TO PROTECT THESE ANIMALS: ‘Fear Is Not Always a Bad Motivator’

The studies made by Sternes and Gauna may provide light on the mystery surrounding the great white shark’s mating practices.

One of the great mysteries of shark science is the place where white sharks give birth. Nobody has ever seen a newborn shark alive, nor has anyone been able to determine where they are born,” Gauna said.

“Dead white sharks have been discovered inside of pregnant women who have passed away. However, nothing comparable to this.”

The report stated that although Gauna and Sternes don’t think this is the case, it may be the result of a skin problem if the tape showed a shark shedding its skin (rather than a newborn shark).

“If that is what we saw, then that too is monumental because no such condition has ever been reported for these sharks,” Gauna stated.

The fact that there were “large, likely pregnant great whites” in the area where Gauna and Sternes took the video is one of the main reasons they think this is, in fact, a juvenile white shark.

“I filmed three very large sharks that appeared pregnant at this specific location in the days prior. On this day, one of them dove down, and not long afterward, this fully white shark appears,” Gauna said.