Lifestyle Pets Researchers Stunned by 'Very Chunky' Great White Shark Found Swimming in the Atlantic Ocean The large shark was discovered by the Cape Cod-based Atlantic White Shark Conservancy By Nicholas Rice Nicholas Rice Nicholas Rice is a Senior Editor for PEOPLE Magazine. He began working with the brand as an Editorial Intern in early 2020, before later transitioning to a freelance role, and then staff positions soon after. Nicholas writes and edits anywhere between 7 to 9 stories per day on average for PEOPLE, spanning across each vertical the brand covers. People Editorial Guidelines Published on November 8, 2021 02:00PM EST Photo: Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries/Atlantic White Shark Conservancy "You're gonna need a bigger boat!" Last week, researchers with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy were stunned when they came upon a giant great white shark while exploring the Atlantic Ocean. Sharing a photograph of the aquatic animal on their Facebook page, the Cape Cod-based organization marveled at the shark's size in the caption of their post. "There are some sharks that make our data team stop and take a double-take," they wrote. "One of our data team members was analyzing GoPro footage, they came across this very chunky, male, white shark." The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy added that their data team was able to "assume that the shark recently ate due to the size of its stomach." Great White Sharks Have Bad Eyesight, Which Can Cause Them to Attack Humans, Study Finds According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), great white sharks are the world's largest known predatory fish. Instead of chewing their food, the organization notes that the animals will shred their food into "mouth-sized pieces," which are then "swallowed whole." Per National Geographic, there is currently no "reliable population data" relating to great white sharks. Still, scientists agree that their numbers are dwindling due to overfishing, accidental entanglements in fishing gear, and other issues. White sharks are presently classified as vulnerable — one marker away from endangered — by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.