iStockphoto / Alessandro De Maddalena
The largest male great white shark ever tagged in the Northern Atlantic by OCEARCH just pinged near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, a summer hot spot for tourists and locals alike. This absolutely gargantuan shark was tagged on January 17th and named in honor of Contender Boats and he is an absolute unit.
Contender weighs an estimated 1,653 pounds. They’re pretty accurate at estimating the weights of these sharks when tagging them due to their incredible technology but of course it’s nearly impossible to weight a great white shark at sea, right?
While tagging Contender, OCEARCH did however get an accurate length measurement at 13’9″ long making this a fully grown male great white shark. They were excited to announce the shark’s tag pinging, which only occurs when the tag attached to the dorsal fin breaches the surface of the ocean which doesn’t happen too often, but it did this week near Pamlico Sound off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina:
Contender is truly a massive shark. At just shy of 14-feet and weighing an estimated 1,653 pounds, Contender is the biggest male great white shark ever tagged in the Atlantic. They were over the moon to announce this tag back in January when he was tagged 45 miles off the Florida-Georgia coastline.
@ocearch Contender is the largest male white shark ever caught, SPOT tagged, released and now studied in the NW Atlantic white shark population! 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. Additionally, we’ve collected important biological samples, including urogenital material, which are currently being analyzed. Follow Contender’s journey on the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker www.ocearch.org/app #OCEARCH #SharkTracker #WhiteSharks #OceanConservation #SharkResearch #FactsOverFear #MarineScience
14′ and 1,653 pounds is huge, right? Right. Nobody would deny that. But if you look around the Internet for news about Contender you’ll see headlines like this one from CBS News saying “Largest shark ever tagged by research group — nicknamed “Contender” — is swimming off north Florida” or this one today on the NYPost which reads “Biggest great white shark ever recorded in Atlantic tracked off North Carolina coast.”
They’re not necessarily outright false, they just aren’t telling the full truth. Because OCEARCH has tagged Nukumi in the Atlantic, a female great white shark that measured 17ft long and weighed an estimated 3,541 pounds, making it one of the largest white sharks ever spotted with human eyes let alone tagged. Here is Nukumi in all her glory:
Nukumi was first tagged in Nova Scotia in October 2020 and pinged all throughout the Northern and Mid-Atlantic region until her tag appears to have fallen off in April 2021.
So while Contender is a truly massive shark he is kind of still a guppy compared to Nukumi who weighed over double his hefty body weight.
Content shared from brobible.com.