Well this isn't the ocean. That's because you initially hatch from an egg while still inside your mother. Even at this age work has already started as you're introduced to the predatory lifestyle by mom feeding you some underdeveloped eggs.
Once you hit 5 ft, you are born. . .
somewhere. We don't really know where because we've never seen it, but we can narrow it down to, the whole ocean. Likely at one of these prey rich hotpots.
Along with your seven siblings you immediately swim away from mom who may now only see you as prey. Which is probably what happened to this guy. I'm sure that's not a scarring image.
You're a nepo baby, instantly starting life at the top of the food chain where you can continue your parents legacy of eating everyone else so you can grow larger and larger. One present mom did pass on to you is a starter pack of knowledge for you to learn on what to eat and how to kill it, something that a lot of animals have to gather themselves. Let's see what's next on the list.
Many great whites don't survive the first year so you have to get a move on and focus on pure growth. Your jaw isn't quite strong enough to take on large prey so you stick to smaller fish and, whatever else you can find. Because of your smaller size you live a sheltered life around shallow coastal waters, but these early years see your fastest growth rate adding on about a foot per year until you reach 3 or 4 years old.
As you come to the end of your pup years you decide to celebrate with a one off treat. You are now a juvenile Great White Shark. Let's see what's on the next card.
At 8 to 9 feet you can now take on some slightly larger prey, still not quite ready for mammals though. Up until now all of your prey have had no choice but to suffer your wrath, but your next target is your first test of consuming someone who has other options. Something that helps you with this is countershading, your form of camouflage where your dark back blends in with the sea, your white belly blends in with the sunlight, and the two together break up your outline.
This allows you to strategically trick the penguins into thinking that the water is a nice place to be. Having successfully orphaned a chick, you merrily move on to your next target. Oh no, looks like there's a killer on the loose.
You're still an easy target for an adult shark's growth plan so best keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile an innocent stingray flaps its wing sending a weak electrical pulse through the ocean that you can detect with the 1 and a half thousand jelly filled pores all over your head. This sixth sense gives you the ability to easily yoink unsuspecting prey with pinpoint accuracy.
Another strong sense that's been gifted down to you is your sense of smell. Just under your snout are two nostril like holes that can detect a seal colony 2 miles away, but they do have their limits. It is true that you can smell a drop of blood in an Olympic sized swimming pool.
. . if it's only slightly filled.
About the same as most fish. One thing you can easily pick up is the delicious smell of a dead whale carcass. Coincidence that is the next thing on your training.
Unfortunately this opportunity also attracts a lot of other, bigger sharks, and you don't want to tempt fate, especially with a known killer around. You take the safe option of hovering around the area picking off any chunks that drift away. I guess that counts.
I mean you didn't really eat the whale but at the top of the food chain normal rules don't apply to you. After a few more years of keeping the ocean in check you've grown to around 12 or 13 ft and are ready for your final challenge of juvenile life. Yellow fin tuna can grow up to 8 ft long so this will be a true test of your strength and ability.
As you finish your set a convenient school swims over your head, and one seems to be struggling behind. You've learned to always take advantage of the weak and helpless, so employ all your stealth skills to get as close as possible, then detach your jaw from your skull to open wide as you burst through the tuna, taking a fat chunk of it with you. That seemed a bit easy.
Wonder what was wrong with the tuna. Anyway, you did it! You're becoming an unstoppable force of nature, well.
. . nearly unstoppable.
Another murder, they must still be out there. At least you're becoming less of an easy target. You are now an adult great white shark.
I know up until now you've been targeting different animals, but you're really an opportunistic feeder, and a good opportunity has arisen for you to get your next meal. People smiling makes you sick, so you close in from behind carefully avoiding their echo location then 0 to 25 and. .
. Who said sharks were afraid of dolphins. That was your first mammal kill and since your jaws now strong enough you can go after some more.
Brown fur seals are your next target, and you opportunistically hunt them by deliberately heading to somewhere called Seal Island. Obviously lots of seals means lots of competitors and there's a dominance hierarchy in the market that goes along the lines of, larger beats smaller, female beats male, and if both those fail whoever got there first. It's theorized that you may share information about different prey with each other but given the number of dead sharks you've seen, you're going to give that a miss.
Hunting these guys is a bit more complicated but with a quick read of your gifted natural instincts, you should be sorted. You hover in the depths and look up at your unsuspecting victim who's just trying to provide for their family. You take aim at the target then with five strong swooshes hit your top speed.
Just as you're about to make contact everything goes black. . .
because you roll your eyes back in your head for protection. Next thing you know you're 10 ft in the air, no seal in mouth, looking down at something that isn't the ocean. The balance rock in your ear is having a melt down as you scramble back to the ocean in shame.
You're a massive failure. Hey, I know who you can take it out on. That other completely innocent seal over there.
50% success rate, that sounds about right. Not very successful for your teeth though. Don't worry, that's normal.
They're only held in by soft tissue. You have seven rows of teeth all ready to step up for duty when the front ones fall. As the conveyor belt moves forward you continually produce new teeth that join at the back row.
Of the 300 teeth in your mouth only around 50 are actively tearing up families. Speaking of that it's been a few days so you're hungry again. You slowly approach a new colony.
That looks like a good target. Oh there's another next to them as well, and another one over there. Wait there's loads of them, everywhere, and they're all coming right towards you.
As the seals start mobbing around you you're as close to terrified as your brain lets you be, so mildly concerned. You try to swim away but they follow on mass, taking the occasional nasty jab at you. They're obviously not a fan.
It's not your fault, you can't help what you were born into, you're just trying to do your job. And what they don't realize is that you're actually good for them, even though you bring only misery. Without you keeping the populations down there'd be too many of them and not enough food to go around, so they'd die anyway.
At least if you kill them someone gets the benefit. They don't look convinced. You know a lost cause when you see one.
I guess you're not as formidable when everyone comes together. After that reality check you're faced with another surprise. The seals are probably not capable of this.
The shark's 14 ft about the same size as you. Whoever did this has to be one massive shark, meaning it's not even safe to be an adult here. Time for you to migrate elsewhere.
You're known to migrate vast distances using your electro-reception to navigate Earth's magnetic field. Some of the usual routes look like this, but I'm making a new one up. To avoid the killer you make sure to swim at different depths maxing out at over 3,000 ft, relying on the fat and oil stored in your liver for buoyancy and energy.
You've arrived, time to establish yourself. You're fed up with dealing with seals for now so look at your training for something else. California sea lions.
Well that seems easy enough. Similar setup to the fur seals just without the spectacle. You locate your target, go to fifth gear, and hit them with possibly the most powerful bite in the animal kingdom.
At over 1,000 kilos the impact alone is probably enough, but you don't give them any chance by dragging them down below. Nice what's next. Sea otters can be up to 5 ft long so not the hardest kill, but you do have to be really nasty.
Right that's enough training for now, you need to rest for a big trip ahead. A couple problems you have are that you need to keep moving so oxygenated water flows over your gills, and you don't have eyelids, so typical sleep isn't on the cards. To you get around this you find a strong current face it head on and open wide.
This neat trick means you can slow right down to recover without suffering the same fate as the sea lion. At least, we think. How you sleep is really still a mystery but this is one theory based on some observations.
You've planned out your annual holiday to a nearby feeding paradise called the white shark cafe. And by nearby I mean over a month's swim along an actual migration route. Here you take a break from the usual grind you tuck into a wide variety of nutritious deep sea fish.
A few months later your belly's full and you're sad to be leaving the cafe, but there are exciting days ahead. Your natural instincts tell you to head further north along the California coast. These waters are getting colder but luckily your family, the mackerel sharks are part of a very elite group.
Most fish are cold blooded and need to rely on the water temperature to regulate their body temperature, but of the over 33,000 species you're one of the around 35 that have warm-blooded capabilities. As you swim along warm blood from your working muscles transfers heat to the cooler blood on its way to your organs, helping you maintain a higher body temperature than the surrounding water. This means you're still as lethal as ever and can generously help manage the population of that elephant seal colony over there.
Now these guys can be quite large, which is why you're here for the pup season. You can take out an adult but it's a lot easier to take advantage of the ones just getting their start in the world. You could probably just wallop it and swallow it a whole, but it's still important to maintain the correct technique to avoid injury and practice for the adults.
In this case you bite their lower body to immobilize, then casually wait it out till they bleed to death. Every day's a holiday when you love your job. You're lingering around to get another bite until you notice something on the rock face in the distance.
You head on over and as soon as you can make out what it is, you lose your appetite. They must be following you. Now that you're massive everyone wants a piece.
There's a few more sharks around here. Is it them? or them?
You're not taking any chances Ah well, this guy's only like 8 ft long so it wouldn't have been them. . .
whoops. At least the part of your brain responsible for feelings isn't very developed so you couldn't care less. So the killer is still out there, time for another made up migration route.
As you're settling into your new home you get a nice tasty whiff. Now that you're an adult you should be safe to go over. You take a deep breath, well not really cause you're a shark.
I guess maybe you open your mouth a bit wider then go in for your first bite. Okay so far so good, no one seems interested. You've never been one for chewing so continue to go back and forth ripping off chunks you can swallow whole, until you mis-time your bite.
Now you're going to get it, or not, they don't seem to care at all. Everyone seems to be a lot more civil than your experiences have taught you, and it looks like you've even caught someone's eye. Well time does fly by and you've already hit maturity at around 26 if you're male or 33 if you're female.
But another thing we don't know a lot about is mating, because we've never seen it. Although it is thought that whale carcasses could be a popular meeting point. As a female you'll typically be a few feet bigger than the males, probably because you need room to store up to 10 pups.
You don't have arms. . .
so the only way the male can hold on to you is with their jaw. Luckily your skin is made up of miniature interlocking teeth making it very rough and durable. This skin, similar to a golf ball, also helps you to be hydrodynamic so the male can efficiently get lost when he's done.
12 months down the line you pass on your wisdom to seven or eight new pups who all immediately leg it from you. Next on your training is sea turtle so hopefully you'll come across one soon, but right now you've spotted an opportunity for a quick snack. The water's a bit murky and you can't quite make out what it is, so using the pores along your body that detect vibrations along with all your overpowered senses you go for a taster bite.
Whoops mistaken identity, you're not a fan of human, too much bone. But for some reason that massive shell doesn't seem to bother you. This one is very straightforward, just raw power to break through the shell.
Nice you've completed your training, now there's just one more final boss, but first what's that over there? You're a very curious species so decide to get closer and pop your head up for a look, something known as spy hopping. Nothing of Interest.
As you're swimming back you suddenly realize that you're not going anywhere. Okay this can go two ways. If they're nice and this is an accident, you go free, if not, you end up as soup.
Saved by the plot armor. But it looks like someone wasn't. They've got to be like 19 ft long, looking very battle scarred, and there appears to be some shark remains spilling out its stomach.
That can't be coincidence, this has to be the killer. Must have followed you here. I guess they finally ran out of steam.
Right, after that detour you're now ready for your final challenge. Humpback Whale. .
. juvenile. An adult would be a bit of a push.
You decide to swim back towards South Africa until the opportunity arises, then check the instructions. In true final boss fashion they're double your size, have a ton of Health, but don't actually deal that much damage, especially if you avoid their special attack. So you just attack away for half an hour until you eventually win.
Nice now you can eat till your belly's full. Oh is that all you can fit. .
. well that was a bit pointless then, anyway. You've finally done it.
You've killed everything, ruined lives, all to get to a whopping 20 ft long. You're the most feared predator in the ocean and no one can stand up to you. You've proven you're the undisputed ruler of the seas and [Stab sound] [Flashback sounds] That's not what you expected.
