Great White Shark – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by Martin Prochazkacz
Off the shore of Daytona Beach, Florida, on New Year’s Day, a massive great white shark almost the size of a car was spotted. Since he was first tagged in Nova Scotia, researchers have been tracking the male shark, named Breton, who weighs over 1,400 pounds.
Since 2020, OCEARCH, a foundation dedicated to marine science, has been tracking Breton, a 13-foot, 3-inch great white shark. Since being tagged by scientists in September of that year in the vicinity of Scatarie Island, Nova Scotia, the adult shark has traveled almost 34,000 miles to reach the waters of Florida. Breton was discovered in the North Atlantic near New England at the beginning of December.
Breton was the first shark that the researchers tagged on their 2020 expedition to Nova Scotia, according to reports. He had traveled to Florida around this time of year before, and in 2022, his tag pings revealed that he had supposedly painted an image of a shark outline in coastal waters, which caused him to go viral.
Furthermore, Breton is not the only great white to have recently appeared on the Atlantic coast of the state.
A juvenile shark known as Penny, which weighed 522 pounds and measured 10-foot length, was sighted near Boynton Beach on December 28. A few days later, it was traced off the Florida Keys.
Sharks are experiencing a “winter snowbird” moment, according to Dr. Bob Hueter, senior advisor for science and academics at OCEARCH, who spoke with CBS News affiliate WKMG.
“The sharks start heading south in the fall as the temperatures drop up north,” Huter stated. “We have probably about a dozen species that are on the move right now.”
According to Hueter, the station, the shark migration began in the middle of October and continued until early December, at which time a large number of sharks were “off the Florida East coast.”
He stated that most of them stay between one and 100 miles offshore. “And then a great number of them go all the way around the Keys and into the Gulf of Mexico, the eastern Gulf of Mexico primarily,” he said.
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Chris began his writing as a hobby while attending Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. Today he and his wife live in the Orlando area with their three children and dog.
