Latest news with #carcharias
Scottish Sun
09-05-2025
- Science
- Scottish Sun
‘Biggest shark EVER tagged by researchers' – 14ft & 1,600lb great white dubbed ‘The Contender' – spotted prowling off US
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THE biggest shark ever tagged by researchers has been spotted prowling up the US east coast. Known as 'The Contender', the massive white shark is currently skulking around the North Carolina coast. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 3 Stock image of a Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias, South Africa, Dyer Island Credit: Getty 3 Scientists track its progress through a tag that "pings" every time the shark's fin breaks the water's surface Credit: Getty 3 The behemoth was previously seen following the Gulf Stream south near Florida. Weighing 1,600 pounds, the beast was first tagged on January 17 this year about 45 miles off the Florida-Georgia border. It was the largest ever shark tagged by research group OCEARCH in the area. Contender, an adult white shark, measures 13 feet and nine inches. From its starting point, Contender stuck to familiar surrounding for the first few weeks of its journey, clinging to the area around the Florida coast. Scientists track its progress through a tag that "pings" every time the shark's fin breaks the water's surface. OCEARCH said the fin needs to be above water for around 90 seconds for the location to be fully accurate. Its website says: "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." Despite Contender's voyage trending south from January through to March, the latest pings have show the beast much further north. The shark didn't emerge for a ping between March 12 and April 8, during which time it had made its way nearer to coastal North Carolina. Contender has travelled more than 1,400 miles over the past 109 days. Since emerging near North Carolina, the shark has been prowling up and down the state's coastal waters. But beachgoers need not panic, as Contender has kept well clear of the shore so far. The most recent ping on May 5 had the shark heading southwards in the vague direction of Onslow Bay. OCEARCH's website describes Contender as "the ultimate ocean warrior" and a "mature male" specimen. It also says his nickname comes in honour of Contender Boats - an old partner of the research group. Sharks will tend to head north and further out to sea during the spring and summer months, according to biologists. A good supply of seals off the northeast US and Canada, makes it a popular destination for sharks.
Forbes
26-04-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Every Year, Hundreds Of Great White Sharks Travel To A Remote Spot In The Pacific Ocean — No One Knows Why
Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) have earned an unfair reputation as mindless killers, thanks in no small part to movies such as 'Jaws.' Yet, they are among the ocean's most sophisticated apex predators with an ancestry dating back over 400 million years. In the early 2000s, marine biologists first noticed a puzzling pattern. They found that sharks tagged off central California embarked on month‑long journeys offshore to a seemingly barren stretch of the mid‑Pacific that came to be dubbed the 'White Shark Café.' This migratory destination appeared devoid of significant prey resources. Yet satellite telemetry revealed that many individuals lingered there for months before returning to coastal feeding grounds. What could draw such large predators to an apparent oceanic desert? Early hypotheses ranged from mating aggregations to navigational waypoints. However, recent oceanographic expeditions have begun peeling back the layers of this mystery, demonstrating that the White Shark Café harbors a hidden web of life and fundamentally reshapes our understanding of pelagic shark behavior. The White Shark Café occupies a roughly circular area centered at 23.37° N, 132.71° W — halfway between Baja California and Hawaii. Spanning an area comparable to the size of Colorado, it was long dismissed as a biological desert due to its low surface productivity. Each winter and spring, hundreds of adult great whites — predominantly male — convene here after fattening on seals and sea lions near California's coast. Tagging data shows individuals often spend 50-100 days in the Café, making periodic dives to depths as great as 3,000 feet and frequent excursions to around 1,500 feet. High-resolution data from pop-up satellites have revealed pronounced diel vertical migrations of micronekton — small fish, squids and jellies — correlating with a deep chlorophyll maximum that lies well below the ocean surface and offered clues to the mystery behind this desolate location. Despite these advances, fundamental questions still befuddle scientists. Do great whites principally feed here, or is the Café also a mating zone? What drives the male‑biased sex ratios observed in tagging studies? And how might interannual oceanographic variability influence these aggregations? The first inkling of the Café emerged when Stanford biologist, Barbara Block, began satellite‑tagging great whites in the late 1990s, revealing offshore migrations that defied coastal‑only models. Her team attached pop‑up satellite archival tags (PSATs) and SPOT (Smart Position or Temperature Transmitting) acoustic tags to sharks near Año Nuevo and the Farallon Islands, enabling both positional fixes and high‑resolution depth‑temperature profiles. In 2018, NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Office of Ocean Exploration joined the effort aboard the RV Falkor, using recovered PSATs as navigational beacons for targeted ROV (Remotely-Operated Vehicle) dives and deploying Slocum gliders and saildrones to map subsurface chlorophyll and other oceanographic parameters. This multi‑platform approach uncovered a deep phytoplankton bloom invisible to satellites and a thriving community of over 100 mesopelagic organisms, suggesting a viable food web sustaining large pelagic predators like the great white shark and upending assumptions about open‑ocean productivity. MPAtlas credits Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute scientists with coining the term 'White Shark Café' in 2002, after plotting central California tag‑release data that repeatedly showed convergence in this mid‑Pacific gyre. Such interdisciplinary, technology‑driven studies have broadened our view of great whites, demonstrating their capacity to exploit both coastal and pelagic ecosystems and highlighting the importance of hidden ocean habitats in their life histories. As the largest known macro-predatory fish, great whites can exceed 6 m in length (~20 feet) and 2,000 kg (~4,500 pounds) in mass, making them formidable apex predators. Unlike most sharks, great whites can keep parts of their body warmer than the surrounding water. They do this with a special system in their muscles that traps body heat, giving them the power to swim fast and for long periods, even in cold oceans. Equipped with six highly refined senses — including electroreception via the ampullae of Lorenzini, acute olfaction and keen vision — the species wields significant top‑down influence on marine ecosystems. Their cartilaginous skeleton and crescent-shaped caudal fin confer exceptional hydrodynamics, white rows of serrated, triangular teeth exert bite forces exceeding two tons, enabling predation on seals, dolphins and other large fish. Recent genomic analyses have also revealed enhanced genes for wound repair and genome stability, offering clues to their remarkable longevity and resilience to injury. These physiological and sensory adaptations underpin the species' ability to traverse vast ocean basins, from coastal foraging grounds to the depths of the White Shark Café, cementing their role as sentinels of both nearshore and open‑ocean ecosystems. Does reading about a mysterious, remote spot in the ocean where hundreds of great white sharks convene make you anxious? Zoophobia is an intense and persistent fear of animals. Take this test and find the characteristics of your fear: Fear of Animals Scale
Forbes
13-04-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Shark Photobomb: Nurse Shark Records Rare Great White Encounter
Marine biologists studying local sharks were stunned when a nurse shark's camera recorded a great ... More white photobombing their research. Marine researchers often hope for surprises when tagging animals with cameras, but no one expected… well, this. Off the coast of Boynton Beach, Florida, a nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) unknowingly became the cinematographer for a rare appearance by a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) — possibly the first time one has ever been documented on video in South Florida waters from another shark's perspective. It's an underwater photobomb that has thrilled scientists and opened the door to new questions about where great whites travel and why. Dr. Stephen Kajiura, a professor at Florida Atlantic University's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, has been tracking and studying sharks in Palm Beach County for years. His team's work has focused on blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus), lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) and hammerheads, especially during their seasonal migrations. They've built a detailed understanding of where and when these species travel along the Florida coast. But this latest footage was a curveball no one saw coming. The research team had equipped a nurse shark with a bright orange camera tag, a piece of technology that is routinely attached to the dorsal fin, left to record the animal's natural behavior, then pop off at a set time to be collected. This one logged both video and motion data, kind of like a FitBit, but for fish. It's not new tech for Kajiura's team. What was new was what they saw when they reviewed the video: a ten-foot-long (3 meters) great white shark swimming casually into view and interacting with the tagged nurse shark near Donny Boy Slipe Reef, an artificial reef structure made of over 800 tons of limestone boulders. 'While divers have reported seeing great whites here recently, this rare footage gives us a shark's-eye view of the interactions between these two very different kinds of sharks,' said Kajiura. The clip shows the two sharks swimming together for about four minutes. The team jokingly dubbed it a 'shark photobomb,' but it's more than just a funny moment — it's a unique record of a rarely seen predator in an unexpected place. The excitement of the footage was nearly overshadowed by the panic of possibly losing it. When the tag failed to ping its location after detaching, Kajiura feared it was lost to the sea. 'At that point, the chances of getting the tag back were slim,' he said. But four days later, luck stepped in. A signal came through, revealing the tag had floated ashore at Gulfstream Golf Club in Delray Beach. Kajiura found it nestled in a pile of seaweed, mere inches away from the tire tracks of a large beach tractor. 'We were incredibly lucky it didn't get run over and crushed!' A nurse shark wearing a camera tag off Boynton Beach captured rare footage of a great white shark, ... More marking a possible first for South Florida waters. Among the research team members is Genevieve Sylvester, a master's student working in FAU's Elasmo Lab under Kajiura's direction. 'What we captured on that footage was a completely unexpected surprise,' she said. She recalled the moment they watched the footage together for the first time: 'We were all huddled around my computer. When we saw the great white shark appear — more than once — we couldn't believe it. To witness it from the shark's point of view made it even more surreal. It was truly an unforgettable moment for our entire team.' The footage is part of a broader effort by Kajiura's team to learn more about shark behavior in South Florida's coastal waters. While the nurse shark may have unintentionally become an underwater filmmaker, the researchers are hoping to capture more valuable footage with this method. They plan to tag more sharks, including great hammerheads (Sphyrna mokarran) and lemon sharks, to gather even more data on how these species use artificial reefs and how they interact with one another. Kajiura says this is just the beginning. The unexpected encounter has only deepend their interest in exploring South Florida's underwater world. With continued support from organizations like the Colgan Foundation, which has backed Kajiura's research over the long term, the team is ready to tag more sharks and see what other surprises the ocean has in store. 'Stay tuned. There is much more to come,' Kajiura said. 'This is just the beginning of an incredible journey.'
