June 22 The great white shark, which gained notoriety as a killer in the Steven Spielberg movie "Jaws," hunts in ways similar to how serial criminals track their victims, researchers in the U.S. and Canada said.

Great whites don't attack seals at random: rather, they wait for prey at a base and return to it time and again, according to a Journal of Zoology study published today. That's a tactic also used by serial criminals, said Neil Hammerschlag, a marine biologist at the University of Miami, in an interview.

"A criminal has to be close enough that they can observe and track their victims," said Hammerschlag, a co-author of the paper. "They also need to have this buffer area and be far enough away that the victim can't track the predator."

The scientists studied 340 attacks by great whites on Cape fur seals at Seal Island in False Bay, South Africa, and found sharks waited on the seabed about 100 meters (328 feet) from the main entry point of seals into the water. Researchers employed a technique called Geographic Profiling, a tool originally used to analyze patterns of serial crime.

"This model tries to predict the spatial hunting patterns of criminals, and the information it requires is a map of the cities and the GPS locations of where the attacks occurred," Hammerschlag said. "We found that white shark hunting is non- random, and they have an anchor point or search base."

The great white shark, whose Latin name is Carcharodon carcharias, is listed as "vulnerable" to extinction on the Red List of endangered species compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The fish, found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans and in the Mediterranean Sea, can grow to more than seven meters long.

‘Hollywood Monster'

"Notoriety of this shark as an ultimate Hollywood monster encourages inflated values for white shark products, and encourages illicit trade in white shark parts that is difficult to assess and control," the Red List says. Where detailed population data are available, there are indications that the number and average size of white sharks have declined, the Red List says.

Of 59 shark attacks on humans by all species worldwide last year, four were fatal, according to the International Shark Attack File compiled by the Florida Museum of Natural History. Of 137 fatal attacks by sharks since 1580 documented by the Web site, 65 have been by great whites.

Sharks differ from serial killers in that their hunting is typically for survival. The profiling technique is useful as a measure to protect sharks rather than humans, Hammerschlag said.

"The white shark hunting patterns remain very poorly understood," he said. "Natural predation is rarely observed in the wild and it's even tougher in the marine environment."

Increased knowledge of sharks also helps protect people. "You wouldn't want to build a bridge or an oil rig or allow a party boat to go near the anchor point," Hammerschlag said.