A great white shark surfaced off the coast of New Jersey on April 28 in search of rich fishing grounds farther north.
When the shark was first caught and tagged, researchers dubbed him Ironbound, as he was found near West Ironbound Island in Nova Scotia. The shark showed up on satellite.
Ironbound is on his way north to get into some good feeding ground and bulk up again for the next year, according to Bob Hueter, chief scientist at the nonprofit Ocearch.
Ocearch tags and tracks great white sharks in order to better understand their elusive migrations. A SPOT tag is attached to the shark's fin and relays its location to a global positioning device. After a few years, the tag is supposed to fall off.
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The shark's precise location might be off by a few feet or meters when they surface within range of a gps satellite because the trackers have an error margin.
The error bar can be the difference between one side of Long Island and the other, according to George Burgess, a marine biologist and director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
According to CNN, Ocearch has tagged great white sharks as large as 17 feet (5 m) and as heavy as 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms), meaning Ironbound is not very large.
Since he was first tagged, Ironbound has traveled an estimated 20,000 miles. The adult male was spotted east of Philadelphia on May 3, according to Ocearch data.
Great whites are famous among the public due to their appearance in movies such as Jaws and Sharknado. Their behavior is nowhere near what the movies show them.
White sharks are often portrayed as mindless killers and fond of human flesh, but this does not seem to be the case.
They migrate for food and breeding, and researchers have recorded them off the coast of countries such as the U.S., Australia and South Africa.
Great white sharks are vulnerable to extinction and have a decreasing population according to an assessment. The sharks are not at risk of becoming extinct, but they are at risk of becoming extinct due to human threats.
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