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A 12-foot, 4-inch long great white shark is swimming off the South Carolina coast about a year after it vanished near the New Jersey shore.
Weighing nearly 1 tons (1,189 pounds), researchers initially tagged the male shark in October 2019 in Nova Scotia, according to OCEARCH, a non-profit marine research group tracking shark sightings and migration. The group named the the apex predator Ironbound after Canada’s West Ironbound Island.
Spotted twice on Thursday, Ironbound was pinged in deep water in an area outside Charleston stretching south to Hilton Head, researchers said.
A ping occurs when the spot tag on the shark’s dorsal fin is above water long enough (about 90 seconds) for it to be picked up by satellite.
The most recent sighting marked the first time researchers detected Ironbound since the shark vanished from the tracking site in April 2022, when it pinged off New Jersey’s coastline.
Initially researchers tagged Ironbound in October 2019 at age 20.
Since then, OCEARCH’s data shows the shark has swam more than 15,186 miles.
Great white sharks in the Atlantic Ocean migrate each year between “the northern and southern parts of their range,” which stretches from Newfoundland to the eastern Gulf of Mexico, researchers say.
As of Monday, no shark attacks had been reported this month in South Carolina.
From Novia Scotia as far south as Savannah
Since being tagged, the Ironbound has been pinged as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, according to the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker app, which marks the shark’s position in real time.
OCEARCH has been tagging great whites in the Atlantic Ocean for more than a decade to collect data on their life-cycle. Along with the tagging, the group takes biological samples including blood from them before re-releasing them back into the ocean.
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Contributing: Dan Radel
Natalie Neysa Alund covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.
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