This is different from countershading, which is a well-known camouflage strategy of many marine predators in which their top halves are naturally darker and their bottom halves are lighter. “What excited me about this research was that we wanted to look into something incredibly subtle and microscopic.”Īnecdotally, Johnson and other scientists have noticed that great whites appear to alter the hue of their top half, or dorsal side. “Their speed, their power, their size, their ability to overwhelm prey,” he says. Most of the focus on the great white in recent decades, understandably, has been on its charisma, says Ryan Johnson, a shark biologist at the Blue Wilderness Shark Research Unit in South Africa and Kuguru’s research partner. Photographs by Fiona Ayerst, National Geographic Unraveling secrets of the great white shark But other experts say the possibilities are tantalizing. With data from a limited number of sharks, the scientists caution that the great white’s ability to alter its appearance is not yet validated, and that their research has not been published in a scientific journal. “So we tested it, and not only did it work, but it was a swinging success,” says Kuguru, who is also a National Geographic Explorer and 2022 recipient of the National Geographic Wayfinder Award.

“We wanted to trick these shark cells into thinking they were getting some kind of stimulus, like the sun or an emotional stimulus to see if we could get them to change and become lighter or darker,” says Gibbs Kuguru, a shark scientist at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. Camo Sharks airs July 10 at 10/9c as part of SharkFest on National Geographic or Disney+. SharkFest is back! Beginning July 10, viewers can sink their teeth into new shows featuring captivating science and stunning visuals of the iconic apex predators.

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