2 great white sharks just appeared along the SC coast. Take a look
A couple of great white sharks decided to spend the weekend in South Carolina waters.
The two young great white sharks were detected on Friday swimming along the South Carolina coastline as they head farther south to warmer waters, according to research group, OCEARCH. One of the sharks, named Jekyll, is an 8-foot, 8-inch-long male juvenile that weighs 395 pounds. The other shark, named Anne Bonny, is a 9-foot, 3-inch-long female juvenile that weighs 425 pounds.
To view the tracking of the two sharks or others in the system, click here.
Jekyll was first tagged on Dec. 9, 2022 and is named after Jekyll Island, Georgia, which was near where he was first found.
Anne Bonney was first tagged on April 21, 2023 off of Ocracoke, N.C. She was named after the notorious female pirate that frequented the waters around Cape Hatteras in the early 1700s, near where she was tagged.
OCEARCH is a global nonprofit that conducts research to help scientists collect previously unattainable data in the ocean. The nonprofit is recognized as a world leader in generating scientific data related to tracking and biological studies of keystone marine species like great white sharks, tiger sharks and others.
Through the tagging of great whites, OCEARCH has shown the predators make “predictable annual migrations between the northern and southern parts of their range, which stretches from Newfoundland to the eastern Gulf of Mexico,” according to an OCEARCH report. “The sharks spend summer and fall primarily in coastal waters off New England and Atlantic Canada, feeding on high-calorie prey such as seals, before heading back south to warmer winter waters off the southeast U.S. from South Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico.
OCEARCH recently completed its 46th ocean research expedition to further learn about great whites as they migrated to the Southeast for their winter residency. The goal of the expedition, which lasted from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15 in waters from Jacksonville. Fla. to Morehead City, N.C., was to study mature sharks to better understand how they use their overwintering area and identify what oceanographic features and diet resources are important to them.
