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. 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. The sharks hang back and observe from a not-too-close, not-too-far base, hunt strategically, and learn from previous attempts, according to a study being published online Monday in the Journal of Zoology. Researchers used a serial killer profiling method to figure out just how the fearsome ocean predator hunts, something that’s been hard to observe beneath the surface.