Massachusetts drivers may soon be able to show off a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) themed license plate, if a minimum of 1,500 of the plates can be pre-sold by June 20, 2013. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy recently unveiled the new license plates, featuring artwork by marine artist Paul McPhee.

Massachusetts waters around Cape Cod have become a renown aggregation point for white sharks during the summer months. Atlantic White Shark Conservancy have introduced the license plates with the goal of raising awareness, promoting education, and supporting research associated with Atlantic white sharks.

According to the AWSC website…

Atlantic White Shark Conservancy is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization committed to raising public awareness of white sharks.

The Conservancy supports scientific research, improves public safety, and educates the community, to inspire conservation of white sharks in the Atlantic Ocean.

If you are a Massachusetts resident, and you would like to pre-order the AWSC license plate, you can get all the information you need at the campaign website, which includes a link to the license plate order form.

The R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation recently posted the video above to their Vimeo channel. The video is intended as a supplemental “visual abstract” for the research article “White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) Scavenging on Whales and Its Potential Role in Further Shaping the Ecology of an Apex Predator.” The study is based on observations of great white sharks feeding on the carcasses of whales in South Africa’s False Bay and the impact of these events on the surrounding marine ecosystems.

Some key behavioral observations during scavenging at the sites of the whale carcasses:

• a tendency for the white sharks to feed on the fluke first, followed by blubber-rich content
• an absence of eye rolling (to protect the eye) during feeding on the carcass
• a broader variance in individual white shark sizes than is typically seen in the area
• a lack of competitive aggression between white sharks
• a size-dominance based hierarchy (aka “pecking order”)

You can learn more about the findings of this research by checking out the full journal article, which was written by Chris Fallows, Austin J. Gallagher, and Neil Hammerschlag.

A great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) was hooked by a charter fishing boat about a mile and half off the Fort Lauderdale, Florida coast on Tuesday morning, according to a WPTV report. Five teenagers from the Tallahassee Community College baseball team had chartered the boat. While the crew realized that they had hooked something big, they initially thought it was a bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas). However, after the shark had been on the line for over an hour and a half, they realized it was actually a white shark.

Captain Taco Perez told WPTV that the shark was on the line for “about two hours” before the crew “released the fish after taking a quick couple of photos.” Perez also told WPTV that they estimated the shark to be 13′(4m) in length with a weight of approximately 1,000lb (450kg).

The great white shark is a protected species in Florida waters.

WARNING: Brief utterance of language that some might find offensive.

YouTube user Isaac Brumaghim caught a “surprise attack” by what appears to be a tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier), who tried to grab the fisherman’s hooked tuna. The video was shot off of Oahu, Hawaii near Waianae on Sunday, according to a WPTV.com report. Brumaghim captured the event with a GoPro camera he had mounted on his kayak.

The ABC News YouTube channel posted the video above last month which documents what the fisherman say is an 18′ white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) being hooked off the coast of Florida. According to a WFLA report, the video was shot March 15 about 30 miles of the coast of Treasure Island, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. The fisherman reportedly had the shark on the line for nearly 3.5 hours before the crew cut the line, and let the shark “take the whole rig.”

Mote Marine Laboratory researcher Dr. Robert E. Hueter told WFLA that the shark in the video appears to likely be a member of the Lamnidae and is potentially a mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) or great white. Hueter went on to say that white sharks can occasionally end up in the Gulf.

Great white sharks are a protected species in Florida waters.