The oceans around Florida are home to some diverse marine life.
But there is still so much mystery lurking in the waters.
And researchers made one terrifying discovery in the waters off Florida’s coast.
Research group tracks mammoth great white shark around the ocean
Most fans spent Super Bowl Sunday preparing to celebrate the big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Scientists with OCEARCH tracked a massive great white shark in the Atlantic Ocean named Contender.
The 13-foot, 9-inch adult male shark which weighs nearly 1,600 pounds was pinged with a tracking device four times in the ocean off Volusia County, Florida.
OCEARCH scientists attached a Smart Position and Temperature Transmitting (SPOT) tag to Contender’s dorsal fin that sends location data about the shark.
“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,” OCEARCH explained. “Additionally, we’ve collected important biological samples, including urogenital material, which are currently being analyzed.”
Contender was first spotted at the Florida-Georgia line on January 17.
The great white shark has been circling around in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Florida since then.
“Contender is the largest male white shark the OCEARCH team has sampled, tagged, released, and studied to date in the NW Atlantic white shark population! So he’s pretty special,” OCEARCH Chief Marketing Officer Nicole Ralson explained.
The shark was named after Contender Boats, one of the partners of OCEARCH.
The snowbirds head south for the winter in Florida
The great white sharks that OCEARCH tags live in waters off New England and Atlantic Canada during the summer.
These sharks begin to move south in the winter toward warmer waters and more abundant food sources.
Great white sharks typically stay far away from the beach on their journey down the East Coast to Florida.
OCEARCH chief scientist Dr. Bob Hueter said that his group tracks dozens of great white sharks as they migrate to Florida.
“As winter approaches, that availability of food gets lessened and it gets too cold for them, so they start moving south,” Hueter explained. “A lot of these white sharks, most of them actually, tend to kind of come down, they don’t really hug the coast in the sense that they’re right on the beach, but they stay in the continental shelf waters, most of them and they come south.”
Great white sharks feed on seals in the North Atlantic but their diet changes as they head south for the winter.
“We don’t really know what they’re feeding on. There’s some reason to believe that they’re going for schools of fish, like amberjack, that are found in great numbers in the Gulf this time of year. There’s not too much in the way of marine mammals out there compared to up north, so the occasional whale that’s dead and floating but probably mostly fish,” Hueter stated.
Many animals like humans decide that spending the winter in Florida is a better alternative than hanging around for winter in the north.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
