Dehghan
Rebekah Dehghan
5 Dec 2013
Extra Credit
TTH 12:30-1:50
In the Book The Devil’s Teeth, by Susan Casey, the story of the mysterious
Farallon Islands, and the mysterious Great White sharks are told. The Farallon
Islands are a 211 acre-archipelago of ten islets in the Pacific Ocean. The
Farallon Islands are located twenty-seven miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Susan Casey describes the Farallon Islands as a glimpse into another realm. “I
realized that somewhere between San Francisco and the Farallon Islands, there
was a border crossing. On one side of the divide was the world of blacktop and
happy hour, and on the other was an inhabitable place where four hundred
million year old predators still roamed.” (Casey 12).
Every September one of the worlds largest and densest congregations of
great white sharks assemble around the Farallon Islands. This grouping of large
numbers of Great White sharks congregate around the waters of this island for a
period of three months. The Farallon Islands are the only place on Earth where
scientists can study the natural behavior of sharks without the presence of
humans interrupting the sharks natural behaviors. What scientists have
discovered is that the same number of great white sharks return year after year,
in the precise location. The question arises as to why the same particular sharks
return every year to the Farallons. Many scientists believe the great white’s
return year after year for the hunting and the feeding. Sharks are known to eat
Dehghan
many miscellaneous objects including license plates, lobster traps, and other
large objects floating in the ocean. Yet what sharks prefer to eat the most, is
seals. At the Farallon Islands, seals are practically overcrowding the islands. With
an abundance of northern elephant seals, harbor seals, fur seals, and many
more seals, the great whites congregate together to feast on the abundance of
seals.
Although sharks have been around before trees originated on Earth, scientists
still don’t know many of the characteristics of sharks, and why they behave the
way they do. For example, scientists still don’t know how long they live, where
they mate, how often they mate, and how big the sharks can get. Sharks
skeletons are made completely of cartilage, therefore there are no fossil records
