A group of great white sharks is swimming off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, according to the shark research organization Ocearch, including a giant that’s 15 feet and 5 inches long and weighs 2,076 pounds. And Ocearch says that more are on the way.
The concentration of great whites is part of their migration south each fall in search of warmer water. Ocearch says it tracked ten great whites off the Carolinas in the past few weeks. It tags the sharks with GPS trackers that ping when sharks surface. The non-profit organization says the coast from North Carolina to Florida is “a winter hot spot for large white sharks.” Helena, a 12-foot, 5-inch female was there a week ago but now is pinging south of Florida.
Ocearch named the largest shark, the 2,076 pounder, Unama’ki when they tagged him off Nova Scotia. He was one of the largest great whites ever tagged in the Northwest Atlantic.
Three other male great whites have been tracked off the Outer Banks recently; they’re all between 10 and 12 feet long. Murdoch, who is 14 feet and 10 inches long and weighs 1,324 pounds, was tagged off Nova Scotia on Sept. 16 and swam almost 1,800 miles until he surfaced and pinged off Carolina Beach and Wilmington, North Carolina, on Nov. 29. Ironbound, a male who’s 12-feet, 4-inches long and weighs 998 pounds, was off Cape Hatteras a few days ago.
Ocearch runs a Shark Tracker website, where you can see the location of many of the sharks it has tagged. It completed a successful tagging operation this fall, which started up at Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and ended at West Ironbound Island, just south of Lunenburg. It said that West Ironbound Island is one of the best places in the Northwest Atlantic to find great whites. Read more:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article236557538.html
