This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm JasonGoldman.The image of a dorsal fin cutting through the sea surface is iconic.But scientists studying the stomach contents of young great white sharks off the coast of Australia were in for a surprisewhen they learned that the predators seem to spend a lot of time patrolling the seafloor."They have a predominantly fish-based diet, which is not unexpected for juvenile white sharks.The most important prey species we identified was eastern Australian salmon."University of Sydney graduate student Richard Grainger.He and his team sorted through the stomach contents of more than 50 juvenile white sharksthat died after being entangled in shark exclusion nets meant to protect swimmers."The overall unexpected finding was just the diversity and importance of bottom-dwelling fishes.Things like stargazers―which bury themselves in the sand, they're quite strange-looking fish―and flathead but also stingrays."People actually did not have a good idea of the particulars of great white shark diets.As Grainger points out, the sharks enjoy protections throughout the world.So most researchers estimated their diets through the chemical markers that they can ethically access by taking small skin samples.These measurements indicate at what level of the food chain the predator is feeding but not the actual critters that make up their meals."There's quite a lot of evidence that lots of different animals,
