A Deep-Sea Camera Filmed a Great White Shark Hiding From Something at 2,000 Feet

A deep-sea camera at 2,000 feet caught a great white shark jammed into a crack in the rock, holding perfectly still — and a great white that holds still is a great white that's dying. The most feared predator in the ocean cannot stop swimming; it breathes only by moving, so to hide against that rock it was slowly suffocating itself — for twenty minutes, on purpose. We already know what scares a great white: orcas, which make them flee the Farallon Islands within minutes and stay gone for a year — but this shark had already fled downward, into the deep, away from them. At the edge of the camera's light, twice, the dark dimmed and settled, and faced the reef — and the shark bolted into open water rather than stay one second longer. Was it a stress response the technician was right to cut — or did the ocean's apex predator just show us there is something waiting in the deep it flees to?