- Great white sharks Simon and Jekyll baffled scientists who tracked them down after traveling together on the country’s east coast
- The two sharks, known as solitary animals, haven’t drifted more than 160 miles from each other since their trip last December.
- According to recent tracking data, they are now located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada.
Two great white sharks were tracked swimming together for 4,000 miles along the Atlantic coast.
Named Simon and Jekyll, they were both tagged OCEARCH by marine biologists. We got married last December and have been very close ever since.
The pair, tracked by satellite, are now in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off the coast of New Brunswick, Canada.
The two traveled all the way to the area after first locating them from Georgia.
They are usually solitary creatures, said OCEARCH chief scientist Robert Hueter. T.he is the washington post He had never seen a great white act like this.
“Great white sharks are already more complex than we thought before,” Whiter told the magazine.
“This adds a whole new element to migration, like a familial and social element.”
H, 71, said he, too, is now awaiting blood test results to see if the two are linked.
Simon last pinged his location on August 11th, but Jekyll hasn’t pinged his location since July 18th.
The two began swimming across North Carolina around the same time in April, and Whiter said the distance between them was between 10 and 100 miles.
Simon was a young male, weighing 434 pounds and 9 feet 6 inches tall when tagged.
Jekyll was also a young male, weighing 395 pounds and 8 feet 8 inches tall when tagged.
When the tags they wear break through the ocean surface, their positions are collected.
Whiter says the sharks sometimes spend time together and eat together, but they usually travel alone.
“The social behavior of sharks is largely unknown,” he said.
“And, except maybe in isolated cases in certain species, it’s not thought to be something they have a lot of.”
Ocearch is a non-profit organization dedicated to shark research and conservation. The organization has tagged more than 90 sharks.
This comes after a groundbreaking study found that Cape Cod is home to great white sharks.
A study that monitored the coastline between 2015 and 2018 found that a whopping 800 great white sharks visited the area.