{"id":782537,"date":"2026-07-24T21:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782537\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T21:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:00:13","slug":"12-foot-great-white-shark-ernst-tracked-near-montauk-and-atlantics-biggest-could-be-right-behind-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782537\/","title":{"rendered":"12-foot great white shark ‘Ernst’ tracked near Montauk \u2014 and Atlantic’s biggest could be right behind her"},"content":{"rendered":"

A gigantic 12-foot-long, 1,000-pound great white shark was tracked off of Long Island\u2019s East End in late June \u2014 and the largest great white ever discovered<\/a> in the Atlantic Ocean could be trailing behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The behemoth shark, a female named \u201cErnst,\u201d first pinged on June 20 off of Montauk\u2019s coast as she made her way toward Cape Cod before heading further north \u2014 where experts believe an even bigger, 14-foot, 1,700-pound great white named \u201cContender\u201d is now heading, according to OCEARCH\u2019s shark tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Both sharks seem to be taking similar routes from Florida and traveling up north along the East Coast, likely to pass by Long Island this summer if the fish follow the same pattern, data from the shark tracker reviewed by The Post show<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The female great white shark named Ernst measures 12 feet long and weighs 1,009 pounds. OCEARCH<\/p>\n

\u201cWhite sharks in the western North Atlantic typically migrate north and spend the summer and early fall foraging in the waters of Cape Cod or Atlantic Canada,\u201d a spokesperson for OCEARCH told The Sun<\/a> about the shark\u2019s migration patterns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contender is currently near the Pamlico Sound in North Carolina, while Ernst has made her way to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, according to the shark tracker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The discovery comes as experts reveal there has been a spike in shark sightings and bites<\/a> this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This month alone, authorities have temporarily red-flagged or even fully shuttered beaches from Long Island<\/a> to The Rockaways over an alleged \u201cswarm\u201d of suspected bull sharks<\/a>, which are typically found in warmer climates, while a swimmer had his foot bitten, leaving their bone exposed<\/a>, off Jones Beach by a suspected shark.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nicknamed Contender, the male great white shark measures a whopping 13 feet and 9 inches in length and weighs nearly 1,700 pounds OCEARCH<\/p>\n

\u201cErnst\u201d was first spotted on June 20 off of Montauk\u2019s coast as she made her way toward Cape Cod before heading further north \u2014 where experts believe \u201cContender\u201d is believed to be en route. OCEARCH<\/p>\n

Authorities across Long Island have now been ramping up their shark patrols<\/a> with boats on the water and advanced drones hovering above the coast to monitor the prehistoric predators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But despite the precautions, experts warned it\u2019s hard to know what the fish will do.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unpredictable what\u2019s going to happen this season,\u201d Frank Quevedo, an environmental scientist and executive director of the South Fork Natural History Museum, previously told The Post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A gigantic 12-foot-long, 1,000-pound great white shark was tracked off of Long Island\u2019s East End in late June…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[12604,2239,5871,23821,40359,79,9460,40358],"class_list":["post-782537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-great-white-sharks","tag-long-island","tag-metro","tag-montauk","tag-nassau-county","tag-science","tag-sharks","tag-suffolk-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}