Oxnard, Ventura County-Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium have embarked on an effort to become the first in the world to capture a great white shark and keep it alive in captivity.

But they also acknowledge that doing so may prove almost as difficult as making people love the giant predator.

The respected aquarium is in the second year of what could be a four- or five-year effort to study the fearsome sharks, the world's largest known predators, around the Channel Islands. In time, they hope to capture a juvenile-a so-called pup, from 5 to 7 feet long and less than a year old-that can acclimate to life behind glass.

Great white sharks grow to astonishing sizes, as long as 20 feet and up to 5,000 pounds with appetites to match, but these ferocious hunters have proved surprisingly fragile in captivity, surviving no more than a few weeks, and their life habits are still largely a mystery.

Over four or five weeks this summer, the aquarium's scientists are capturing young sharks and attaching electronic tags to learn about their eating and migration habits. Using that information, the scientists hope they will be able to nurture a young shark in a huge underwater viewing pen in Monterey.

At a dockside press conference here Tuesday, aquarium officials also acknowledged that they hope to transform any scientific success into a marketing bonanza.

"Ultimately, it'll be like pandas at a zoo, that kind of novelty and attractiveness," said John O'Sullivan, the aquarium's curator of field operations. "We think people will love it. But there's also a strong research component."

Added Christina Slager, an aquarium curator, "We're looking for an ambassador for the aquarium. They're perfect."

She and the other scientists conceded they had some work to do rehabilitating the lethal reputation of the great white (Carcharodon carcharias), so glossily embellished in "Jaws." The sharks, they argued, have little interest in humans, preferring such fare as sea lions or small whales.

Slager admitted that great whites had been known to bite people, then quickly added, "Yeah, but so have dogs."

Costly Project

The project has become one of the largest undertakings ever for the aquarium, with an expected cost of $1.2 million.

Public aquariums have tried for decades to put great white sharks on exhibit, but the longest one has survived is three weeks. Most of those sharks were captured by fishers. Scientists attribute the failures to stress to the shark during capture, an inability to feed in captivity and poor exhibit tank design.

The Monterey aquarium's spending is being justified not just to produce a possible mascot but also to answer some basic questions about an animal widely mythologized but little understood.

The scientists say that while California is well known for sightings of great white sharks-mostly in the waters around the Farallon Islands and Ano Nuevo, both home to large populations of elephant seals-it is little more than a hypothesis that they bear their young in the waters near the Channel Islands.

Beyond that, they said, little is known about their migration habits, how often they feed, whether they form schools or even their preferred water temperatures. Slager said she guessed that there were perhaps 100 or so adults in California waters, and that the numbers appeared to be dwindling around the world.

But Tim Athens, the gregarious captain of the commercial fishing vessel that the aquarium has chartered for its 32-day search, quickly made clear how little agreement there is, even among people who have spent a great deal of time looking for and dealing with the sharks.

Chatting aboard his boat, he insisted that the numbers of great whites being spotted in the Channel Islands region had been going up and that, by all measures, the population appeared to be growing.

"There is absolutely no question the population is increasing," said Athens, who wore a gold fishhook pendant around his neck and said he had at home the monstrous jaws of a 1,000-pounder he caught a number of years ago. "You can trust them or trust someone who spends 200 days a year on the water," he said dryly of the shark count.

Majestic Creatures

What all agreed on is that great white sharks are extremely charismatic creatures, with a majestic, powerful appearance.

Although they do not appear to seek out humans, great whites can be spontaneous and brutal in their occasional attacks. Athens said he knew of an urchin diver killed near Oxford several years ago from a great white attack, and in Australia a 33-year-old woman was reportedly attacked and eaten in 1985.

Great whites are far more lethal than some other shark species, in part, the scientists said, because they have an unusually fine sense of smell and an ability to detect even tiny electrical currents. In the ocean, minute jolts of electricity are given off when a fish bleeds; this sense can send a great white toward a wounded creature instantly.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has achieved successes in the past with keeping rare creatures alive in captivity, such as unusual jellyfish and mahi mahi. But Randall Kochevar, the aquarium's science communications manager, said that a jellyfish just did not have quite the same pull with the public as a great white.

"There isn't a better messenger for fish conservation," he said.

Capturing great white sharks

The Monterey Bay Aquarium wants to capture and put on exhibit a great white shark. Doing so, it says, will contribute to public understanding and conservation of the much-feared ocean predator.

• Scientists are spending up to five weeks this summer off the Santa Barbara coast trying to capture white sharks less than 12 months old.
  
  
• Some will be held in a 5-million-gallon ocean pen- five times the size of the aquarium's Outer Bay exhibit-where researchers will attempt to get them to feed.
  
  
• If a shark remains in good health after a simulated move, in which it is placed in a transport tank for six hours, it would be brought to the aquarium and placed in the Outer Bay exhibit.
  
  
• Public aquariums round the world have tried to put great white sharks on exhibit, but none has lasted more than three weeks.