While this footage might be hair-raising to most of us, it's all in a day's work for Taylor, who, along with husband Ron, has worked in close quarters with great white sharks for decades. In the video, Taylor does just that, first coaxing the shark progressively closer to the boat using line baited with fish before finally feeding the shark by hand.
It isn't unheard of, Papastamatiou said, for researchers to hand-feed them. Despite the great white's reputation as a vicious hunter, like many wild animals, with enough practice and patience (and fish), researchers can condition them to take handouts from research vessels. Great white sharks, according to Yannis Papastamatiou, a research biologist in the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, are intelligent and good learners. 'I think the shark and I had an understanding,' Taylor says in a voiceover of the footage, which aired in a TV documentary called 'Shadow of the Shark.' 'This one, I had a feeling for.'
