Watch: World’s first footage of baby great white shark, accidentally captured by YouTuber

A YouTuber may have captured the first video of a baby great white shark.

When he went to a beach in California a year ago, Carlos Guana had no idea he would be creating history. (Daniel Torobekov via Pexels)

Great white sharks are one of the most fascinating predators that you can find in the sea but there was a serious gap in our knowledge about the beautiful beast. But that gap now appears to have been solved by a YouTuber, who might have for the first time captured a newborn great white shark on camera.

The birth of a great white shark has never been witnessed before, according to BBC. But Carlos Guana, a YouTuber known as TheMalibuArtist, may have for the first time in history filmed a baby great white shark.

“I want to kind of tell the story of what sharks do when we aren’t watching, we aren’t interacting with them, when we’re not touching them. And through that experience, I’ve seen some sharks doing some really wild things, things that have no explanation. … You never know what you’re going to see,” said Guana to CBS News.

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Guana is a wildlife photographer and videographer and spends hours filming sharks. His work has featured in National Geographic, Discovery Channel and more. But he didn’t know that he would make history when he set out to capture shark footage on July 9 last year.

Carlos went to a beach near Santa Barbara, California that day when he came across something something he had never seen before. He was familiar with large sharks but there was something else in the water. “This little bitty white, almost albino-looking, white shark came up to the surface,” he said to BBC.

After seeing the small white thing in the water, Carlos brought his drone down to get more details. Great white sharks are gray on top and white on the bottom but this one was different.

The little shark seemed to be white all over and the layer of white seemed to be flaking off. At the time, he was with shark researcher Phil Sternes from the University of California, Riverside, who was astonished by what he was seeing. Their observations have been published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.