{"id":324963,"date":"2026-03-11T23:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T23:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/324963\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T23:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T23:26:09","slug":"a-16-foot-great-white-shark-weighing-over-a-ton-pinged-off-the-coast-of-vancouver-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/324963\/","title":{"rendered":"A 16-Foot Great White Shark Weighing Over a Ton Pinged Off the Coast of Vancouver Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Great<\/p>\n

Great white sharks aren\u2019t generally a worry in the heads of island surfers, but it sure is cool to know they might be around. Photo: Unsplash<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Great white sharks<\/a> aren\u2019t normally in the heads of surfers off Vancouver Island, but a few days ago, a 16-foot female with a tag pinged in the Canadian waters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been studying these white sharks for almost 30 years,\u201d Michael Domeier, who works with the Marine Conservation Science Institute, told the CBC<\/a>, \u201cand this is the first one that\u2019s gone this far north.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shark in question is named Kara, and she was tagged in October of 2025. Weighing a little over a ton, Kara was first fitted with a tracking device near California\u2019s Point Conception. Her tag pings when her dorsal fin breaks the surface so that researchers following along with her journey can figure out a little more about the daily lives of the world\u2019s most feared and misunderstood shark. This particular tracking program looks specifically at female great whites in hopes of learning where they give birth.<\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

Kara is checking out the coast of Vancouver Island. Image: Expedition White Shark App<\/p>\n

While it is indeed rare \u2014 I grew up on Vancouver Island and live here now and have never heard of one kicking around the lineups \u2014 it\u2019s not a huge surprise. Sharks have been recorded in Alaska, so unless they\u2019re hopping on a plane, they\u2019re swimming through Canadian waters. White sharks have washed up on Haida Gwaii<\/a>, a stupidly beautiful but remote archipelago off British Columbia\u2019s northern coast. Still, though, researchers were very excited to see Kara on their radars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know they traverse these waters, we just don\u2019t often see them, so it\u2019s newsworthy in the fact that we have evidence of the shark being there,\u201d said Laura Briggs who runs a Facebook group called Field Naturalists of Vancouver Island<\/a>. That\u2019s uncommon\u2026 We actually have no clue how many white sharks are off the coast of B.C. There are no reliable estimates of their population.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s not clear whether Kara\u2019s presence off Vancouver Island is part of a broader movement in migratory routes or just a shark doing a bit of a walk-about, it\u2019s helpful for researchers to know where she is.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy understanding sharks, by diving deeper into their research, by knowing more about their movement and their ecology and their biology,\u201d Meaghen McCord, who works with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told the CBC, \u201cwe\u2019re really helping to understand the ecosystem as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Great white sharks aren\u2019t generally a worry in the heads of island surfers, but it sure is cool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[96930,16140,111,139,69,147,71184,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-324963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-great-white","9":"tag-great-white-shark","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-vancouver-island","15":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}