{"id":202667,"date":"2025-10-10T12:48:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T12:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202667\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T12:48:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T12:48:17","slug":"biggest-ever-great-white-shark-surfaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202667\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Biggest Ever’ Great White Shark Surfaces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contender, the biggest great white shark<\/a> ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean<\/a>, has reportedly resurfaced just off the Canadian coast and is getting bigger ahead of the winter months, SWNS reports via the New York Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 14-foot shark was tagged 45 miles off Jacksonville by the large marine animal research nonprofit organization OCEARCH in January and his tracker only transmits a locating signal when his dorsal fin is exposed above the surface of water. Contender “pinged” from the far northern reaches of the Gulf of St. Lawrence last week, making history as \u201cone of the furthest northern pinging sharks that we\u2019ve had,\u201d according to researchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly a couple have made it that far north,” said Chris Fischer, founder and expedition leader of OCEARCH.<\/p>\n

The massive shark, reported to weigh 1,653 pounds and estimated to be around 30 years old, has been feasting on seals during the summer and fall in order to build fat before returning to Florida for the winter, according to researchers. OCEARCH scientists are hoping to track Contender in order to potentially discover the world’s first known great white shark mating site.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn animal like that, spending the summer and fall up north \u2013 what are they doing? Well, a lot of what they\u2019re doing is preparing for the winter,” Fischer said.<\/p>\n

The expedition leader added that Contender was \u201cputting a lot of pressure on the seals, eating seals constantly, swimming in front of seal colonies, trying to put on some weight before he proceeds back down to Florida for the oncoming winter,” specifying that the behavior had an unexpected environmental benefit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe byproduct of putting that pressure on the seals is really good, they\u2019re guarding our fish stocks,\u201d Fischer said.\u00a0\u201cWe know that if the white sharks are in front of the seals putting pressure on them, they eat one-fourth as much per day.\u00a0“<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIf that white shark\u2019s not there, those seals go out and they wipe out all the fish,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Contender, the biggest great white shark ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, has reportedly resurfaced just off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[7382,20027,49,48,7028,99658,99659,11595,11592,99657,23762,11594,38003,66,16487,99660,4777,4778],"class_list":["post-202667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-atlantic-ocean","tag-biggest","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-chris-fischer","tag-coast","tag-contender","tag-great-white-shark","tag-great-white-shark-surfaces","tag-new-york-post","tag-ocearch","tag-pressure","tag-science","tag-scientists","tag-seals","tag-shark","tag-sharks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}