earth science

White Shark Café

White Shark Café is a earth science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand White Shark Café rather than just read about it. In short: The White Shark Café is a remote mid-Pacific Ocean area noted as a winter and spring habitat of otherwise coastal great white sharks. The area, halfway between Baja California and Hawaii, received its unofficial name in 2002 from researchers at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station who were studying great white sharks by using satellite tracking tags.

Key takeaways

White Shark Café belongs to earth science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect White Shark Café to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of White Shark Café from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The White Shark Café is a remote mid-Pacific Ocean area noted as a winter and spring habitat of otherwise coastal great white sharks. The area, halfway between Baja California and Hawaii, received its unofficial name in 2002 from researchers at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station who were studying great white sharks by using satellite tracking tags. They identified a zone with a radius of approximately 250 kilometres (160 mi) centered at approximately 23.37°N 132.71°W / 23.37; -132.71. The findings, which were initially published in the January 3, 2002 issue of the journal Nature, showed three of four tagged sharks traveled to the Café during a six-month period after they were tagged off the central coast of California. Although the area had not previously been suspected as a shark habitat, when mapping the satellite tracking data, researchers discovered that members of the species frequently travel to and loiter in the area. It was once believed the area had very little food for the animals (researchers described it as the shark equivalent of a desert), but research in early 2018 by the vessel Falkor showed that there is a rich and diverse food chain too deep to be detected by satellites that provides a potentially abundant food supply for the sharks. Male, female, and juvenile great whites have been tracked there. The sharks tracked to the area came from diverse rookeries along the North American coast. They typically took up to 100 days to arrive, traveling around 1 m/s (3.3 ft/s), during which they make periodic dives as deep as 3,000 feet (910 m). While at the Café, they dive to depths of 1,500 feet (460 m) as often as once every ten minutes. By 2006, researchers had observed consistent migration and other behavior. Tracking data indicates that white sharks will leave feeding grounds near the coast in winter, travel to the Café, and some may even summer near Hawaii. But many linger in the Café, often for months, before returning to the coast in the fall, coinciding with the elephant seal breeding season (a favored prey).

Notes

Sources Jorgensen, SJ; Reeb, CA; Chapple, TK; Anderson, S; Perle, C (2010). "Philopatry and Migration of Pacific White Sharks". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 277 (1682): 679–688. doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.1155. PMC 2842735. PMID 19889703. direct PDF link

External links Voyage to the White Shark Café, website for the 2018 expedition aboard Falkor Tagging of Pacific Predators: White Sharks, part of the Census of Marine Life White Shark Cafe - The Film, a documentary about the White Shark Café

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with White Shark Café

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what White Shark Café claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In earth science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to White Shark Café before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about White Shark Café ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of White Shark Café

In research: White Shark Café appears in earth science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses White Shark Café in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: White Shark Café is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Pacific Ocean, Sharks, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for White Shark Café outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study White Shark Café in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what White Shark Café means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain White Shark Café out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is White Shark Café in simple terms?

Why does White Shark Café matter?

Because it connects several earth science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study White Shark Café?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on White Shark Café.