{"id":148942,"date":"2025-11-19T21:11:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T21:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/148942\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T21:11:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T21:11:06","slug":"largest-great-white-male-ever-recorded-in-the-atlantic-is-making-his-way-down-the-east-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/148942\/","title":{"rendered":"Largest Great White Male Ever Recorded in the Atlantic Is Making His Way Down the East Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the grand scheme of things, a 14-foot great white shark is not all that unusual.\u00a0That is until you consider that 14 feet is actually exceptional for a\u00a0male\u00a0great white shark, which only grow to 11-13 feet on average. Females, on the other hand, grow to around 16 feet and larger. This all makes\u00a0Contender,\u00a0a 14-foot long, 1,600-pound male great white shark patrolling the Atlantic, an incredibly unique animal. He\u2019s the largest-ever great white recorded in the Atlantic Ocean and he\u2019s recently resurfaced near Ocean City, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Contender was tagged off the coast of Florida back in January<\/a> and has spent 2025 covering thousands of miles up to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and back down the U.S. East Coast once again. According to OCEARCH<\/a>, who tracks every one of Contender\u2019s pings, he\u2019s traveled more than 4,000 miles since researchers first put a tag on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough we have tagged and released a number of sharks as part of this project, animals of adult size have proven elusive,\u201d Harley Newton, OCEARCH\u2019s chief scientist and veterinarian, said back in February.<\/a> \u201cMale white sharks are mature at around 11.5 feet and 26 years of age, so Contender at nearly 14 feet is an adult male probably in his early 30s and early in his reproductive life. He is an important part of the effective breeding population and will hopefully contribute to the rebuilding of the western North Atlantic white shark population.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s \u201cas big as they get,\u201d Wildlife Biologist Rosie Moore told\u00a0Fox News,\u00a0adding that \u201cthese sharks like to hang out pretty far off the coast. Not necessarily in areas that people swim or hang out in.\u201d According to Moore, Contender\u2019s moving south now for a seasonal change in diet. During the summer months, when he was up north, he was likely feeding off of seals. \u201cNow they\u2019re gonna be moving down here, feasting off tuna, large fish, and cetaceans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the grand scheme of things, a 14-foot great white shark is not all that unusual.\u00a0That is until…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[47990,84606,10876,61,60,47987,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-148942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-contender","9":"tag-great-white","10":"tag-great-white-shark","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-ocearch","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}