Great white shark drawing? Massive 'artist' white shark again pings off Florida coast
A massive, 1,400-pound white shark, known for making a great white shark "drawing," pinged off the Florida coast Saturday.
Breton, a 13-foot adult male, was far off the Jacksonville Beach coast when trackers received a ping of his location at 8:54 p.m.
Breton was tagged in 2020 by the research group OCEARCH during an expedition in Nova Scotia.
His pings are tracked when the satellite tag attached to his dorsal fin moves above water long enough to send location information.
Breton is a repeat visitor to Florida. His tracker shows he's visited here the past four winters as many snowbirds do: enjoying the warm waters and plentiful food sources around the Sunshine State.
And on the OCEARCH shark tracker map, Breton's pings reveal something amazing.
He spent a little over two years making a "self-portrait." His pings between September 2020 and January 2022 connect to show what appears to be the outline of a huge shark, with the tail in Nova Scotia, the body along the east coast and head pointed at Florida's east coast.
"You can track Breton, the white shark that made this self-portrait on the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker," the research group posted on X.
Breton was the first shark tagged during OCEARCH's 2020 expedition in Nova Scotia, the group reported.
At that time the adult shark was 13-foot, 3-inches long and weighed in at a whopping 1,437 pounds.
Breton was named by SeaWorld, an OCEARCH partner, for the people of Cape Breton where he was tagged.
Breton has traveled 46,994 miles since he was tagged, his tracker page notes.
A fishing charter off Destin, Florida, encountered a 14-foot great white shark on April 10.
The shark circled the boat for 20 minutes, even mouthing the back of the vessel before swimming away.
'We were on a regular fishing trip, and I looked up ... what I thought I saw in the water was a submarine, and I was waiting next for the periscope to pop out of the water,' charter boat captain Taylor Bankston said.
'But it never did ... and then the submarine turned into something that had giant teeth and a giant eyeball,' he said.
Great white sharks are opportunistic and enjoy a diverse diet of fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals, NOAA Fisheries reported.
Juvenile white sharks mostly eat bottom fish, smaller sharks, rays, schooling fish and squid, while larger great white sharks also eat seals and sea lions and are known to feed on whale carcasses.
While great white sharks are often characterized as apex predators, meaning they top the food chain in their environment, it is not always the case.
In environments where orcas, also known as killer whales, are present, they top the food chain and have been known to hunt great white sharks for their nutrient-rich livers.
For example, an Orca was observed off the South African coast hunting and killing an 8-foot great white shark, eventually eviscerating it and carrying a portion of the shark's liver in its mouth.
Great white sharks have an endless supply of teeth.
Great white sharks have about 50 exposed teeth, with five to six rows of teeth constantly developing behind them, ready to replace any that wear down or fall out.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Great white shark makes shark 'drawing,' pings off Jacksonville Beach
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