{"id":378820,"date":"2026-04-07T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378820\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T02:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:00:11","slug":"biggest-ever-great-white-shark-makes-sudden-movement-near-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378820\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Biggest ever great white shark’ makes ‘sudden movement’ near coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tagged by researchers last year, the biggest great white shark ever recorded in the Atlantic has made its way up and down the US coast.<\/p>\n

Contender <\/a>weighs in at nearly a whopping 1,700 pounds and is measured at an also mega 13 feet and nine inches. Since OCEARCH began tracking his movements <\/a>on 17 January in 2025, he\u2019s travelled over 6,800 miles.<\/p>\n

And now the shark has made a \u2018sudden movement\u2019, that could be very helpful for science<\/a>. Contender previously got pretty close to the coast of a popular tourist destination<\/a>, six miles off St Augustine in Florida.<\/a><\/p>\n

That came as his tracking story was described as one of OCEARCH\u2019s \u2018most fascinating\u2019, going from the Florida-Georgia coast into Canada and back.<\/p>\n

In the early hours of this morning (6 April), he pinged further north, off the South Carolina and North Carolina coasts.<\/p>\n

\"ContenderContender is an absolute whopper.(OCEARCH)<\/p>\n

Contender suddenly moved into, offshore waters earlier this month as scientists said it was possibly for breeding purposes \u2018although it is not certain\u2019.<\/p>\n

OCEARCH<\/a> Senior Data Scientist John Tyminski said: \u201cThis sudden movement could be to forage in deeper waters, but we cannot rule out the possibility that it\u2019s related to reproduction at this time of year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers added: \u201cEach new ping deepens our understanding of these apex predators\u2014their life history, movements, and potential breeding areas\u2014offering critical insights for conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n

OCEARCH said on its social channels that these trends are common among mature male white sharks, such as Contender.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a particular point of interest for the researchers as they reckon he could hold the key to one of the ocean\u2019s many mysteries: where great whites mate.<\/p>\n

\u201cContender has become a pretty famous shark, in part because he’s the largest mature male that OCEARCH has ever tagged,\u201d Tyminski previously said.<\/p>\n

\"ContenderContender has travelled thousands of miles. (OCEARCH)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s shown very interesting movements \u2013 gone all the way up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence during the summer and has come all the way back down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Described as \u2018sexually mature\u2019, the whopper white shark\u2019s movement patterns could possibly give researchers crucial insights into the breed\u2019s reproductive biology.<\/p>\n

“Keeping an eye on white sharks like Contender can give us some indirect clues as to where mating may be occurring,” Tyminski said.<\/p>\n

“It is definitely one of the questions that we still really want to try to answer to help protect and conserve white sharks.”<\/p>\n

Contender\u2019s tag will provide data for approximately five years and the team have also collected \u2018important biological samples, including urogenital material\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tagged by researchers last year, the biggest great white shark ever recorded in the Atlantic has made its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2594,85,46,141,12850,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-378820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sharks","13":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}