World's Biggest Shark: The Megalodon

A typical adult Great White Shark measures 4 to 4.8 metres (13 to 16 ft) with a typical weight of 680 to 1,100 kilograms (1,500 to 2,450 lbs), females generally being larger than males. The maximum size of the Great White Shark has been subject to much debate, conjecture, and misinformation. Richard Ellis and John E. McCosker, both academic shark experts, devote a full chapter in their book, The Great White Shark (1991), to analysing various accounts of extreme size.


Today, most experts contend that the Great White Shark's "normal" maximum size is about 6 metres (20 ft), with a "normal" maximum weight of about 1,900 kilograms (4,200 lb).


For several decades, many ichthyological works, as well as the Guinness Book of World Records, listed two great white sharks as the largest individuals caught: an 11 metre (36 ft) great white captured in South Australian waters near Port Fairy in the 1870s, and an 11.3 metre (37.6 ft) shark trapped in a herring weir in New Brunswick, Canada in the 1930s. While this was the commonly accepted maximum size, reports of 7.5 to 10 metre (25 to 33.3 ft) Great White Sharks were common and often deemed credible.