Great white sharks do not aimlessly wander the ocean waiting to stumble upon their next meal.

Instead, the biggest sharks identify a location from which to strike, and then search the surrounding killing zone for their next victim.

That suggests that the sharks use a premeditated hunting strategy akin to that used by some human serial killers.

Scientists made the discovery while observing hundreds of great white attacks on fur seals off South Africa.

So shark experts Neil Hammerschlag of the University of Miami in Florida, US, and Aiden Martin of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, decided to study the predatory habits of great white sharks hunting off Seal Island, in False Bay, South Africa.

To help analyse the attack pattern of the sharks, Hammerschlag and Martin then teamed up with Kim Rossmo, a criminal justice expert based at Texas State University’s Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation in San Marcos, US.

“White sharks, like other predators, may refine their search patterns with experience,” the researchers write in the Journal of Zoology, published by the Zoological Society of London.