Want To See a Great White Shark? Here's Why You Won’t See One in Captivity in an Aquarium

Great white sharks both fascinate and terrify people around the world. That's because their onscreen personas have helped them gain quite the reputation over the years — we're looking at you, Jaws — while their real-life headlines have also sent shivers of terror down people's spines.

And while we know that most of us have absolutely nothing to fear from these apex predators — they want less to do with us than we want to do with them — people can't help but want to know more about the sharks.

However, you can't get a firsthand look at a great white shark in captivity. That's right, despite being one of the most well-known fish in the sea, it's also the most elusive for commercial aquariums where people line up to see other massive sea creatures, like dolphins and killer whales.

So, what makes great whites so different than some of their oceanic cousins? Keep reading as we break it down and explain why these fish simply cannot be kept in captivity.

If you've ever watched the campy classic Jaws III, you may remember the scene where the main characters celebrate the capture of a young great white, saying that if they add the fish to their aquarium, they'll be the first in the world to do so. The offhand comment may have seemed like a little bit of dramatic prose, but according to the World Animal Protection blog, it's true: there are no great white sharks in captivity.

The reason has to do with the fact that, much like what ultimately happened with the shark in the aforementioned movie, keeping a great white in captivity will kill them.

The reason for this is that the sharks need to continue swimming in order to breathe, and the walls, barriers, and small sizes that appear in many tanks are prohibitive to their natural swimming pattern.

This causes them to get injured when they crash into things, or else causes them extreme distress.

We know so much about why keeping great whites in tanks fails because several people have tried to do it in the past, according to the World Animal Protection blog. One such incident was a great white that was kept in a tank in the Monterey Bay Aquarium for 198 days before being released back into the ocean.

Then, in 2017, a Japanese aquarium had even less luck when it tried to keep a great white shark, which died just three days after it was put into the tank.

So, what is the answer then for people who want to see (and study) great white sharks? It sounds like it's the same as what is said for most animals in the wild: watch them from a distance.

It's very hard for humans to replicate the natural conditions and environments that animals need to survive.

Observing them from a distance while they are in their natural habitat is a much safer practice, and it helps people learn more about how they truly behave in the wild, as opposed to their reactions to the unusual stressors that are unavoidably introduced when they are captured and held in an artificial setting.