if the two sharks were related.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\nWhile the analysis revealed Simon and Jekyll weren\u2019t related, they did find that Jekyll and another white shark, Olympia, were siblings with the same parents, born five years apart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Olympia was tagged in 2021 as a juvenile white shark off the coast of Cape Cod. Her OCEARCH tracker stopped publicly releasing data in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Jekyll, also a juvenile at the time of tagging in 2022, was tagged off the coast of Jekyll Island, Georgia, hence his name. His tracker stopped publicly releasing data in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
OCEARCH said researchers also found that each of the full sibling pairs had been sampled in similar seasonal habitats\u2014one sibling in the southeastern United States during winter or spring and the other in New England or New York during summer or fall.<\/p>\n
And while this information is important, researchers stressed it does not mean that white sharks recognize one another, intentionally travel together or inherit their migration routes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
OCEARCH said researchers also found that each of the full sibling pairs had been sampled in similar seasonal habitats. OCEARCH<\/p>\n
Scientists originally noticed in 2025 that Jekyll\u2019s migration patterns were nearly identical to another tagged white shark named Simon. OCEARCH<\/p>\n
\u201cThis study is really the beginning, not the end,\u201d said Dr. David Portnoy, an OCEARCH collaborating scientist and principal investigator of the study conducted at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve identified close family relationships among Western North Atlantic white sharks, but we\u2019ve only scratched the surface of what those relationships may tell us. By integrating genomics with years of satellite tracking data, we can now begin exploring whether related sharks share similar patterns of habitat use or migration. Those are exciting scientific questions, but they\u2019ll require additional research before we understand exactly what patterns exist and why.\u201d<\/p>\n
The findings also raise the question of population size in the Western North Atlantic. With multiple sibling pairs identified from a small sample collection, it could suggest a small population of white sharks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
OCEARCH said if supported by further analysis, this finding could have significant implications for conservation policies aimed at rebuilding the Western North Atlantic white shark population.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor OCEARCH, the findings represent another milestone in its mission to transform our understanding of white sharks and the oceans they help sustain. The organization has spent nearly two decades building the world\u2019s largest open-access database of white shark movement and biological information,\u201d OCEARCH said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis latest research expands that mission from documenting where sharks travel to exploring how family relationships may shape their lives across generations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Track great white sharks like Olympia and Jekyll with OCEARCH\u2019s free global shark tracker app.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is believed to be the first genomic study of white sharks in the Western North Atlantic has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1147,15773,79,9460,2068,194,201],"class_list":["post-845311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-atlantic-ocean","tag-science","tag-sharks","tag-siblings","tag-us-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845311","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=845311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}