Shark fears as giant great white lurks dangerously close to this popular East Coast beach: trackers
Scientists revealed that a massive great white shark has been pinged swimming dangerously close to a popular tourist destination in Massachusetts — just like the marine 'man-eater' in Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic.
Dubbed Contender after vessels that nonprofit OSEARCH uses to track it, the gargantuan predator was detected off the coast of Nantucket, between Georges Bank and the Nantucket Shoals on July 18, the nonprofit's live tracker shows.
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Measuring around 13.8 feet long and tipping the scales at 1,653 pounds, the so-called 'ultimate ocean warrior' is the largest male OSEARCH ever tagged in the Western Atlantic Ocean, the Cape Cod Times reported. Although it's far from the largest ever documented — as great whites can measure up to 20 feet long and weigh over 5,000 pounds.
4 'The SPOT tag deployed on Contender (pictured) will provide valuable real-time data for approximately five years, helping us track his movements and understand his migration patterns,' OSEARCH wrote in a statement.
OCEARCH / SWNS
OSEARCH, which monitors great whites around the globe with its tagging program, had originally pinged Contender in January, swimming approximately 45 miles off the Florida-Georgia coast, MassLive reported.
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The toothy predator has since made a 1,000-mile pilgrimage up the East Coast, pinging more than 40 times during its journey, including off Vero Beach, Florida, in February, and in June near Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.
Great white sharks are known to head North in the spring and summer in search of prey and cooler waters, and then swim South for the winter when the colder temps return.
4 OSEARCH's live tracker showing Contender's latest ping off Nantucket.
OCEARCH
4 Keeping tabs on great whites helps mitigate the chances of negative interactions with people.
OCEARCH / SWNS
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The tracker, which pings every time Contender's dorsal fin breaks the surface while an Argos satellite is overhead, allows researchers to learn about the predators' movements.
'The SPOT tag deployed on Contender will provide valuable real-time data for approximately five years, helping us track his movements and understand his migration patterns,' OSEARCH wrote in a statement.
In turn, keeping tabs on these apex predators reduces the chances of 'Jaws'-like negative interactions between humans and sea beasts.
4 OSEARCH monitors great whites around the globe.
OCEARCH
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Contrary to popular belief, Contender is far from the biggest great white in the Atlantic — that's a mere shark tale.
In 2019, a Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries collaborator tagged a 15-foot male named Hagans off Hilton Head, South Carolina, the Cape Cod Times reported.
That shark is the biggest male documented along the East Coast to date, according to John Chisholm, an adjunct scientist with the New England Aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.
In fact, he said there are plenty Atlantic males that fall within the 14-15 foot range.
Meanwhile, the Atlantic is also home to plenty of fearsome females — which grow bigger than the males on average — that make Contender look like a pocket shark. One notable specimen is Large Marge, which measured 16 feet in 2012, but is now closer to 18, per Chisholm.
It's yet unclear how big the largest shark ever recorded is. Some experts claim that this title goes to Deep Blue, a famous female in the Pacific that measures 20 feet long and weighs several tons.
Interestingly, she is still dwarfed by the fictional shark in 'Jaws,' which was said to be a whopping 25 feet from nose to tail — a size experts have deemed unrealistic.
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