There are a lot of great white sharks off the Carolina coast right now, trackers show
Great white sharks, including one that’s almost 15 feet long and weighs more than 1,300 pounds, are clustered off the coast of North Carolina and South Carolina, according to an organization that tracks big sharks.
Ten great white sharks have pinged off the Carolina coast in recent weeks.
White sharks regularly show up along the Carolina coast, Ocearch data shows, especially during migrations in the fall and spring each year. The organization tags the sharks with GPS trackers that “ping” each time they surface so researchers and the public can watch their movements.
The latest ping was at about 9 a.m. Monday from a shark named Brunswick near Charleston. The 8-foot 9-inch male great white weighs more than 430 pounds and was tagged in February off Hilton Head, South Carolina, according to Ocearch.
Since Brunswick was tagged almost 10 months ago he’s traveled more than 6,000 miles — up past Nova Scotia in Canada and back down to South Carolina, the data shows.
Shaw, a 10-foot, 560-pound white shark, also pinged off the Outer Banks Monday morning, according to Ocearch. Shaw was tracked from the waters off Nova Scotia, where the male shark was tagged on Oct. 1.
Shaw has been tracked more than 2,600 miles since he was tagged 103 days ago, according to Ocearch. His most recent ping was off Rodanthe, North Carolina.
Carolina coast a ‘white shark nursery’
Researchers call the Southeast coast from North Carolina to Florida “a winter hot spot for large white sharks.”
Ocearch founder Chris Fischer called the area off Cape Hatteras “a staging area for migration.”
The biggest shark to show up recently off the Carolina coast is called Murdoch by the Ocearch team. He is a 14-foot 10-inch male great white shark who weighs in at 1,325 pounds, according to Ocearch.
Murdoch was tagged on Sept. 16 off Nova Scotia and since then he’s swam almost 1,800 miles until his latest ping on Nov. 29 off Carolina Beach and Wilmington.
Fischer said the waters off North Carolina and South Carolina are where young white sharks spend the winter. In an interview with McClatchy news group, he called the area a nursery for great whites.
“Those baby white sharks are the future,” he said.
The waters off the Outer Banks are “just a really important place,” Fischer said, and conservation efforts in the region are showing success. “We have to get it right there, and I think we are getting it right,” he said in an interview.
In a press release earlier this year, Jacksonville University researcher Bryan Franks said, “The body of colder water trapped between the Gulf Stream and the coast is a key feature of this region.”
Franks collaborates on research with Ocearch.
“This ‘wedge’ of cold water extends from the Outer Banks in North Carolina down to Cape Canaveral in Florida. This feature results in a range of water temperatures in a relatively short horizontal distance from the coast out to the Gulf Stream. In addition, there is the potential for abundant prey in the migrating populations along the coastlines,” he said.
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 10:52 AM with the headline "There are a lot of great white sharks off the Carolina coast right now, trackers show."
