A great white shark, likely to be over 10 feet long and up to 1,000 pounds, has been tracked within a mile of the shoreline in the Everglades watershed in Southwest Florida.
The shark, dubbed George after it was tagged with a satellite tracking device by an Ocearch expedition in 2016, pinged in a little over a mile from the mouth of First Bay around noon on Tuesday. The adult male appeared to be headed north towards Everglades City after pinging in just south of Chokoloskee just five hours later.
Heads up Highland Beach, incoming great white shark! https://t.co/HaSFH3UK88 @OCEARCH @ChrisOCEARCH @EvergladesNPS pic.twitter.com/Ni5nSQMMVk
— George The Shark (@GWSharkGeorge) February 4, 2018
Thanks to real-time tracking data provided by satellite tags — which relay a signal each time a sharks dorsal fin breaches the surface of the water — researchers have found that the presence of great white sharks off the coast of Florida isn’t out of the ordinary, especially during winter months.
Miss Costa, a 12-foot 5-inch, 1,668-pound female, pinged in just south of the Florida Keys on February 5 after making her way up to the coast of Clearwater before returning to southernmost keys. Savannah, a 460-pound female shark that was also tagged as part of Ocearch’s Global Shark Tracker program, pinged off New Port Richey, just north of Tampa on January 29. Hilton, a 12 1/2-foot, 1,300 pound male, made it as far south as Jacksonville on the Atlantic before turning north again.
What makes George’s track unique is that the water in this part of the Gulf of Mexico has an average depth of seven to 10 feet. Great whites tend to prefer deeper –and colder water — and it is rare to see a shark of its size in shallow water.
To see George and other Ocearch-tagged animals latest whereabouts, click here to see the Ocearch Global Shark Tracker.
