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The white shark is primarily a fish eater, taking all manner of bony fish as prey, from sedentary bottom-living rockfish, lingcod and flatfish to fast open-ocean species such as broadbill swordfish and bluefin tuna.
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Interaction between White Shark and Cormorant; Geyser Island,South Africa, 30.11.93
© Ian K Fergusson
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A broad range of elasmobranchs - sharks and batoids - are eaten by white sharks, as are marine turtles, cephalopods (e.g., squid), molluscs, crustaceans (crabs) and occasionally seabirds.
The role of the white shark as a primary predator upon marine mammals, and especially seals and sealions (pinnipeds), has dominated much contemporary study and commentary on this species but the importance of these prey may be grossly overstated from a more global standpoint, due in part to the bias in contemporary study towards those areas where
sharks and pinnipeds occur together.
White sharks (and especially larger individuals) are also active hunters of small cetaceans including dolphins and porpoises, particularly so (but not exclusively) in regions where pinnipeds are scarce or absent.
These opportunistic sharks will readily congregate to scavenge upon the carcasses of great whales and have been known to ingest basking shark flesh on a number of occasions,
albeit apparently only through scavenging.
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