This fascinating footage will delight sea creature lovers. A team of scientists travelled to Seal Island as part of the Air Jaws series on the Discovery Channel, off the coast of South Africa, to observe great white sharks breaching, a hunting method that relies on the speed and strength of the fearsome predator.
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You've never heard of breaching? Well, it's a technique that great white sharks use only in places like Cape Town, South Africa, usually to hunt the region's many sea lions. The great white sharkpositions itself on the sea bed and once it has spotted its prey, it jumps out of the water at full speed. It then strikes its preyand grabs it as it falls back into the water.
A jump more than 15 feet above the surface
During this trip at sea, shark expert Chris Fallows captured this unusual jump with a specially designed camera. As you can see in the video below (at 1:45), the animal makes a pretty mind-boggling jump, estimated by the Air Jaws team at being over 15 feet high.
While this hunting technique is impressive, it is also important to know that sea lions have tactics to escape their powerful predator. They travel across the area in groups and then disperse once theshark has been spotted. If they get too close to the predator, they manage to swim alongside it, avoiding the jaws at all costs.
