Massive great white shark resurfaces off North Carolina coast
Massive great white shark resurfaces off North Carolina coast
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Great white shark splashes close to shore
Drone footage captured a great white shark swimming along the beach in Montauk, New York.
Perhaps the big fish is visiting for the upcoming 50th birthday of 'Jaws,' the upcoming July 4 holiday, or it is just plain migrating north.
Whatever the reason, the Atlantic Ocean's largest tagged great white shark on record resurfaced off the coast of North Carolina, just off the Outer Banks near Cape Hatteras, this week, scientists said
At nearly 14 feet in length, "Contender," a great white male shark is "making moves along the Atlantic coast, giving us more valuable data on the lives of white sharks in the Northwest Atlantic," OCEARCH, a global non-profit marine research group tracking shark sightings and migration wrote on social media.
Shark attack: 9-year-old girl bit by fish while snorkeling in Florida, family says
Massive great white shark pings in East Coast water
Researchers first tagged Contender in January off the Florida-Georgia coast, as previously reported by USA TODAY.
Since then, the shark has pinged several times including on Jan. 26 and Feb. 6.
A ping means the Smart Position and Temperature Transmitting tag attached to the fish's dorsal fin was spotted above the surface for a brief period as it swam, transmitting a near-live location signal to the OCEARCH shark tracker.
Dunn-dunn... 'Jaws' returning to theaters for 50th anniversary: See when
How much does the biggest great white tagged weigh?
According to OCEARCH's shark tracker page, Contender weighs 1,653 pounds.
How old is Contender, the great white shark?
Contender is an adult male shark believed to be just over 30 years old.
See live view of tagged sharks that are tracked:
The visit comes at the time of year when great white sharks start migrating north to warmer waters for a larger food supply, according to the non-profit
"Every ping helps us get one step closer to understanding and protecting these incredible animals," it wrote on Facebook.
To track Contender and other sharks online, download the free OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker App, available on iOS, Android, and on desktop at ocearch.org
Contributing: USA TODAY's Taylor Ardrey
Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on X @nataliealund.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Is today the longest day of the year? What to know about summer solstice.
The longest day of the year, and the official start of summer, has arrived in the U.S. The summer solstice takes place Friday, June 20, and will be both the longest day and shortest night of 2025 in the Northern Hemisphere, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Recognized as a day of extra sunlight that ushers in warmer weather to come, the solstice is also celebrated in multiple cultures and religions. It marks the start of the Pagan holiday Litha, also known as Midsummer, which is famously celebrated at the ancient Stonehenge ruins in Wiltshire, England, where many gather to herald the season. Here's what to know about the solstice. The summer solstice marks the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest day of the year. Meanwhile, the Southern Hemisphere will greet winter with its winter solstice. The summer solstice will take place on Friday, June 20, at 10:42 p.m. ET, according to The solstice itself only lasts moments, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. The date of the summer solstice can fall at any point between June 20 and June 22, depending on the year. During the summer solstice, the Earth's tilt brings our planet's northernmost point closer to the sun, resulting in more hours of sunlight and fewer hours of night. "The Northern Hemisphere's tilt toward the Sun is greatest on this day," according to NASA. "This means the Sun travels its longest, highest arc across the sky all year for those north of the equator." Several locations around the world are particularly known for celebrating the solstice, including Newgrange in Ireland. Solstices are often associated with pagan religions and draw revelers of different faiths. Pagans come by the thousands to Stonehenge, the prehistoric ruins of a monument built between approximately 3100 and 1600 BC in Wiltshire, England. It is one of the most famous landmarks in the U.K., but little is known about the civilization that built it or why, as these ancient peoples left no written records behind. It was during the 20th century that Stonehenge became a site of religious significance to people who subscribed to New Age beliefs, including Neopaganism and Neo-Druids, according to USA TODAY's previous reporting. When constructed, the stone circle was aligned with the sun, and to this day, thousands of people gather to witness the moment the sun peeks perfectly through its pillars. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why is today the longest day of the year? Explaining summer solstice
Newsweek
20 hours ago
- Newsweek
11ft Great White Shark Just Spotted off Long Island Coast As Summer Nears
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. As summer approaches, a juvenile great white shark named Dold has today been detected off the Long Island coastline, marking the latest milestone in a months-long migration that has taken him up the U.S. East Coast. While beachgoers are planning trips to the shore to enjoy the good weather, but many will be thinking about what lurks in the water, and the latest data from trackers at OCEARCH gives an insight to shark behaviors. First tagged by researchers from OCEARCH in February near the Florida–Georgia border, Dold weighs 761 pounds and measures 11 feet 2 inches from tip to tail. His most recent position, recorded in the early hours of June 20, places him off the coast of Long Island, some 80–120 miles offshore—near the Hudson Canyon, a common corridor for migrating sharks. This is Dold's first ping since May 21, when he was detected in the Florida Gap off the coast of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Since being tagged, Dold has covered an estimated 2,875 miles in just under four months, demonstrating the far-reaching seasonal migrations juvenile white sharks undertake in search of prey and suitable water temperatures. OCEARCH, a global nonprofit that tags and tracks marine life for scientific study, monitors sharks like Dold to better understand their behavior, travel patterns, and environmental needs. Their insights also help inform public safety along populated coastlines. A file photo of a great white shark off the coast of False Bay, South Africa. A file photo of a great white shark off the coast of False Bay, South Africa. AlessandroShark Activity off the U.S. Coast As summer heats up and crowds return to U.S. beaches, the movements of sharks like Dold serve as a seasonal reminder of increased shark activity near shorelines. Spring and summer months bring warmer waters, which white sharks favor as they move north for feeding and breeding. Great white sharks are found along both the East and West Coasts of the United States. According to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF)—which is maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History—the U.S. leads the world in the number of unprovoked shark bites each year. In 2023, the U.S. reported 36 unprovoked shark bites, including two fatalities. Florida had the highest number (16 in 2023), followed by Hawaii, California and New York. Despite this, fatal shark attacks are extremely rare. Between 2013 and 2022 there was an average of just one fatal shark bite per year in the U.S., compared with tens of millions of people entering the water annually. By contrast, Shark Guardian estimates approximately 100 million sharks are killed globally each year, including being intentionally targeted for fishing as well as those caught by bycatch in fishing nets. Other Sharks on the Radar Lower down the Atlantic seaboard, another shark continues to make waves: Contender, currently the largest great white shark tracked by OCEARCH. A huge 1,653 pounds and 13 feet 9 inches, contender has been pinged several times this year, most recently on June 7 in Pamlico Sound, North Carolina. Though Dold and Contender are impressive in size and range, the record for the largest great white ever reliably documented remains with Deep Blue—a massive female shark estimated at 20 to 21 feet long and weighing around 5,000 pounds. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about sharks? Let us know via science@
CNN
21 hours ago
- CNN
Is ‘Jaws' what made us all fear sharks?
We hardly see the cartilaginous villain of 'Jaws' before it tears through a skinny-dipper, a dog, a little boy and an overconfident fisherman. It takes nearly two hours to finally watch the great white shark leap out of the water to swallow the gruff veteran Quint. Until then, we only really catch its dorsal fin before victims are ripped under the waves as the water around them turns the color of ketchup. 'Jaws' is credited with inventing the summer blockbuster. It inspired decades of creature features and suspenseful flicks. It kickstarted a whole subgenre of shark-centric horror (with diminishing returns). It also inflamed our fear of sharks as man-eating monsters, said Jennifer Martin, an environmental historian who teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 'I'm struggling to think of a parallel example of a film that so powerfully shaped our understanding of another creature,' she said. 'They were killing machines. They were not really creatures. They weren't playing an ecological role.' Fifty years on, 'Jaws' preys on our existing fears of the oceanic unknown. The film even briefly influenced the popularity of shark-killing tournaments after its release, Martin said. But it also enticed marine biologists and researchers to better understand the deranged shark at its center. Real white sharks are not as large as the demonic fish in 'Jaws,' nor do they hunt humans for bloodsport. But they are certainly intimidating, and they do occasionally bite the odd swimmer, sometimes fatally. 'Being bitten by a wild animal, and in particular one that lives in the ocean, was frightening for us already,' said Gregory Skomal, a marine biologist who has spent decades studying white sharks. 'That's really what I think 'Jaws' did — it put the fear in our face.' When 'Jaws' premiered to an invigorated public in June 1975, most of the research on sharks focused on preventing shark attacks, Skomal said. 'We knew it was big, it could swim fast and we knew it bit people,' he said. 'So those aspects of the film are fairly accurate, just exaggerated.' White sharks like the toothy menace of 'Jaws' already had a reputation for violence by the time the film premiered, Skomal said: There had been recorded attacks on fishermen and scuba divers in Australia and surfers in California. But sharks didn't evolve to feed on humans, Skomal said: They've existed for at least 400 million years — they predate dinosaurs by several hundred million. Sharks only encountered people in their waters in the last few thousand years, since we started exploring by sea. Though there's some disagreement, most shark researchers believe shark attacks are a case of mistaken identity: A shark may confuse a person for prey. They typically take a bite, realize their mistake and move on, Skomal said. Not so in 'Jaws.' The film's shark dispatches his victims with purpose, munching on some body parts while leaving a head or arm as a warning to any who dare swim in his waters. 'That's one of the reasons the film is so powerful,' Martin said. 'None of us want to look like food.' In the decades before 'Jaws,' white sharks weren't considered to be among the ocean's most fearsome predators. In the early 20th century, many sharks were thought of as 'garbage eaters,' Martin said: Coastal cities dumped their garbage in the ocean, and clever sharks learned to anticipate the barges' arrival. Sharks, city dwellers thought, were 'not very beautiful, not very commercially important,' Martin said. 'An animal that's in an in-between space — sort of a pest, sort of dangerous.' After some misbegotten attempts to fish sharks commercially, humans started to invade the waters where sharks hung out, and sharks graduated from pest to predator. With the popularization of maritime activities like scuba diving and surfing in the mid-20th century, people were spending more time underwater, which meant they were more likely to bump into a shark, Martin said. 'There were so many more humans in there,' said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History. 'It was just a matter of time before people got nobbled.' Previously, shark tales were mostly traded between fishermen who encountered them on the high seas. Now, with more people exploring 'shark-infested waters,' run-ins with sharks were getting picked up by local newspapers. A particularly scary documentary, 1971's 'Blue Water, White Death,' which featured a tense confrontation with aggressive white sharks, also helped shape our view of sharks as creatures to be feared, Skomal said — but 'Jaws' cemented it. The glee with which Amity Island's fishermen hunt would-be killer sharks wasn't totally fictional, either. Shark fishing tourneys already existed in the US prior to the success of 'Jaws,' but the film brought new publicity to the competitions and the sport of hunting 'trophy sharks,' Martin said. 'The killing of these animals became sanctioned, approved of, as a result of the film,' Martin said. Peter Benchley, who wrote the 1974 novel upon which the film was based, expressed some regret that some audiences viewed sharks as man-eating monsters because of 'Jaws,' a work of pure, pulpy fiction. ''Jaws,' the movie particularly, sparked a spurt of macho madness,' he told southwest Florida's News-Press in 2005. 'People were running around saying, 'Hey, let's slaughter sharks.'' Benchley later spent many years steeped in shark advocacy. Most contemporary audiences left 'Jaws' cheering for Chief Brody after he successfully exploded the monstrous shark (and overcame his fear of the open ocean, to boot!). But even scaredy cats couldn't deny that big old shark was fascinating. 'They are charismatic,' Martin said. 'They command our attention through their size, the way their bodies are shaped, their morphology, their behavior. But the big part of it is their ability to turn us into food. We don't like to be reminded of it, but we are food in an ecosystem.' Our morbid fascination with white sharks' ability to kill us drove the success of 'Jaws' and, eventually, decades of 'Shark Week,' Discovery's annual TV marathon that always features programs about fatal run-ins with sharks. (Discovery and CNN share a parent company.) 'We're drawn to things that could potentially hurt us,' Skomal said. 'And sharks have that unique history of being an animal, to this day, that can still harm us. The probability is extremely rare, but it's an animal that's shrouded in the ocean environment. We're land animals.' In the intervening years between the advent of shark fishing tournaments and our present, when dozens of nonprofits exist solely to serve shark conservation efforts, researchers have gotten to know the creatures beyond their enormous teeth. 'The negative perception of sharks at the time — which was tapped into and exacerbated by 'Jaws' — I think has definitely changed into fascination, respect, a desire to conserve, a desire to interact with and protect,' Skomal said. Now that we better understand their role in our underwater ecosystems — at the top of the food chain, they maintain balance by keeping the species below them in check — we can better appreciate white sharks (while maintaining a healthy dose of caution in waters they occupy), Martin said. Appreciation for sharks is especially important since several sharks species' populations have been on the decline, largely due to overfishing — sharks are often accidentally caught and killed. So it's perfectly wonderful to love sharks and want to protect them, said Naylor — just don't get too comfortable around them. 'Sharks are becoming the new cuddly whales,' he said. 'They're not. They are predaceous fishes that are efficient. They don't target people, but in certain conditions when water is murky, they make mistakes.' Need reminding of the potential dangers sharks can pose? Just watch 'Jaws.'
