“We know a few things for certain,” he said. “For example, we know that they’re warm-bodied, like all the lamnid sharks. (Others in the Lamnidae family include shortfin and longfin mako sharks.) Their body temperature is sometimes ten to fifteen degrees [Celsius] warmer than the surrounding water, which makes them efficient predators in cool water. We know they’re primarily coastal, so they have contact with humans, and sometimes they lose. Then again, they do venture into deep water. They’ve been found off Hawaii, in the Coral Sea, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic. But we don’t know much about their travel and migration patterns.”

In my experience the best way to find a great white shark is to go where they’re not supposed to be. A ten-footer and I had a chance meeting underwater years ago in the Bahamas, where, at the time, great whites were unheard of. The shark was as shocked to see me as I was to see it. It stopped dead in the water, braking with its two pectoral fins, voided its bowels, and fled. (My reaction? Well … none of your business.)

I asked Barry if anyone had a reliable estimate of the number of great whites in the world, and he said flatly, “No. We don’t even know how many there are around Australia. Not very many, though.”

“A hundred?” I asked. “More? Less?”

He wouldn’t bite. “Nobody knows.”

Rodney chimed in. “I’ve heard people claim that 40 or 45 great whites are killed every year here in South Australia, by longlines, nets, and illegal fishing. No question, some people still do target them for the jaw or for what they call ‘sport.’ But to sustain a loss like that—45 individuals a year—I would think the population would have to be a couple of thousand. I find it hard to believe that there are that many great white sharks in South Australian waters.”

Until recently sharks have had no constituency: That is, there has been no public outcry to Save the Sharks, as there has been for whales and dolphins. One problem, of course, is that unlike whales and dolphins, sharks aren’t cute, they don’t nurse their young, they don’t appear to “talk” to one another, and consequently they’re hard to anthropomorphize. More practically, unlike whales and dolphins, which are mammals, sharks don’t breathe air, so they don’t surface at regular intervals and thus are not easy to track and count.

Also, great white sharks do have a documented record of killing human beings. (Rarely though: only 74 times in the past hundred years, according to the International Shark Attack File.)

Nowadays more people are coming to respect and appreciate sharks for what they are: beautiful, graceful, efficient, and, above all, integral members of the ocean food chain. In large measure the change is due to television and the abundance of films documenting not only the glories of sharks but also the dangers to them from longlines, nets, and the odious practice of finning—slicing the fins off sharks to sell in Asian markets, then tossing the living animals overboard to die. Gradually governments and individuals are learning that while a dead shark may bring ten or twenty or even fifty dollars to a single fisherman, a live shark can be worth thousands of dollars more in tourist revenue to a community. Divers will fly halfway around the world to see white sharks.