In a surprising development for marine scientists, one of the largest great white sharks in the world has reappeared in a very unanticipated place way to the north.
Contender is an enormous 13-foot, 8-inch male that was monitored in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near Maine on October 4, which is a rare occurrence in the area of an Ocearch-tagged shark.
The expedition of this 1,652 pound apex predator has intrigued researchers. John Tyminski, a senior data scientist at Ocearch, says that “Contender spent 857 miles since the last position was recorded off Nantucket, Massachusetts in July, and travels an average of approximately 12 miles a day until he was spotted close to the island of Anticosti in Quebec, Canada.”
Scientists conjecture that the shift in ocean temperatures and high prey levels must have attracted Contender further north.
Marine experts described this region as a place abundant in food supply; the Gulf of St. Lawrence exhibited seals and schooling fish, which were going to be an excellent source of hunting prey to the giant predator.
Contender is the largest male great white that has ever been tagged, captured, and followed in the Northwest Atlantic shark population, which originally made headlines in January.
The tracking device should last a minimum of five years, and this is especially important to the scientists because his movements will become more valuable.
In an Instagram post, Ocearch posted about the strange appearance of Contender in the North stating that the tracking of “shark’s movement expands our knowledge of white shark in the Northwest Atlantic.”
The organization further explained that such unforeseen tracking information can assist scientists to comprehend the behavior and relocation patterns of sharks in evolving oceans better.