Two nice white sharks appear to be following one another all the best way from the southeast U.S. to Canada. Nice white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are normally solitary animals and journey huge distances alone. So the pair’s 4,000-mile (6,400 kilometers) swim collectively has left scientists puzzled.
“White sharks lead a really solitary existence,” Robert Hueter, a shark scientist on the nonprofit group OCEARCH that tagged the pair, stated in a video posted to Fb. “We do not actually count on to see these white sharks staying collectively.”
The juvenile nice whites — nicknamed Simon and Jekyll — have been tagged with monitoring units by researchers off the coast of Georgia in December. And over the months that adopted, they’ve stayed shut to 1 one other on their method north.
OCEARCH tags sharks with sensors that ping their location when the sharks spend time close to the floor of the water. Researchers can use this information to observe particular person sharks throughout the ocean.
The info present that Simon and Jekyll have been typically following the identical path alongside the coast — although they have not at all times been in the very same place on the identical time. In early March, for instance, each sharks have been pinged off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina. However by early Could, Simon appeared to have reached Lengthy Island, New York, whereas Jekyll was round southern New Jersey.
But by early July, each sharks have been once more pinged in the identical location off the coast of Nova Scotia, and by the center of the month they have been each within the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the outlet of the Nice Lakes. Jekyll hasn’t pinged since mid-July, however Simon pinged as just lately as Aug. 11, off the coast of New Brunswick, Canada.
Hueter stated within the video that he is “by no means seen something fairly like this” and famous that scientists have taken tissue samples from each sharks and can verify to see in the event that they is perhaps associated.
Scientists nonetheless do not absolutely perceive sharks’ social conduct, Hueter advised the Washington Publish. However researchers at the moment are trying into how these marine predators work together with one another.
Final 12 months, for instance, researchers discovered that particular person white sharks would possibly generally keep near different white sharks to assist discover meals. “Our new proof means that white sharks are certainly social animals,” a kind of researchers wrote in an article for The Dialog.