Two great white sharks ping off North Carolina coast on journey north, researchers say

Two great white sharks heading north pinged in the waters off the North Carolina coast over the weekend.

A 13-foot, 1,437-pound male named Breton pinged Saturday morning in Onslow Bay off Camp Lejeune in Onslow County, according to the nonprofit research group OCEARCH. Then an 8-foot-8-inch, 396-pound female named Gladee pinged Sunday night in Onslow Bay off the Wilmington area.

The pings over the weekend mark both sharks’ most recent stops on their journey north over the past few weeks.

Breton, an adult shark, was first tagged in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in September, according to OCEARCH. He’s traveled 3 miles in the past 72 hours and 4,730 miles in the past 107 days. He initially swam south to the waters off Florida and has since looped back north, the map shows.

Gladee was tagged in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, as a juvenile in October, OCEARCH says. She’s traveled 6 miles in the past 24 hours, 42 miles in the past 72 hours and 4,808 in the past 95 days. She, too, made an initial descent toward the waters off Florida but has recently journeyed more northward, the map shows.

Nova Scotia is a “hotspot” for great whites, OCEARCH says, and Breton and Gladee were tagged as part of the group’s Expedition Nova Scotia, which seeks to “increase the sample size of tagged and sampled sharks in order to develop the most advanced understanding yet of white shark biology, physiology, health, behavior and more.”

But the North Carolina coast is another favorite hangout spot for the species, McClatchy News has reported.

That’s because they like to take advantage of “upwelling” that occurs on the edge of the Gulf Stream, which stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to roughly 20 miles off Cape Hatteras on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

“Water that rises to the surface as a result of upwelling is typically colder and is rich in nutrients,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. “These nutrients ‘fertilize’ surface waters, meaning that these surface waters often have high biological productivity. Therefore, good fishing grounds typically are found where upwelling is common.”

Those fish then attract hungry sharks.

A study that began in 2012 revealed the Atlantic continental shelf waters off the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida are a “winter hot spot” for big great white sharks, OCEARCH said in 2019.

The region has become known as the Northwest Atlantic Shared Foraging Area, or NASFA.

“Since the beginning of the study, OCEARCH has consistently observed that nearly all tagged, large white sharks in the Northwest Atlantic visit the NASFA at some point during their migrations, with most visiting in the winter,” the group said in a news release.

Great whites are the “largest predatory fish in the ocean” and, though they usually hang out in North Carolina waters during the winter and early spring, they can pop up any time of the year, according to N.C. Sea Grant. They usually stay “well offshore” but sometimes come closer to the beach.

“With their bright white bellies, large black eyes and triangular teeth, white sharks are easily distinguished from other local species,” Sea Grant says.

But even in white shark “hot spots” interactions with humans are “very rare,” NOAA says.