Great white sharks sometimes breach—powerful leaps where the animal clears the surface to catch prey—most famously observed around South African seal colonies and captured on film by scientists and documentary teams.
Where and when breaching occurs
Breaching is most commonly documented near seal‑rich islands such as Seal Island in False Bay, South Africa, where sharks use explosive bursts of speed from below to launch themselves entirely out of the water during predation attempts.
How and why sharks breach
Sharks accelerate from depth toward a surface target, often a seal or decoy, using momentum and a powerful upward thrust to ambush prey. This surprise tactic combines speed, power and precision to improve hunting success in certain local conditions.
Spectacle and recorded jumps
Documentary footage and field observations have recorded spectacular breaches exceeding several metres above the surface, drawing scientific interest and public attention to the behaviour and its ecological context.
Other possible functions
Beyond feeding, researchers have suggested that vigorous surface activity might also play roles in communication, social interactions or removing parasites, though these hypotheses require further study and depend on local behaviour patterns and observations.
Conservation and ecological context
Breaching events highlight predator–prey dynamics around productive coastal systems and underline the importance of conserving both shark populations and their prey species to maintain healthy marine ecosystems and the behaviours they support.
Takeaway
Great white breaching is an extraordinary example of evolutionary adaptation for ambush predation, combining stealth, speed and strength to capture agile prey and creating some of the ocean’s most dramatic wildlife encounters.