Largest male great white shark ever recorded pinged off New Jersey coast

Contender, the largest male great white shark ever recorded in the Atlantic, is on the move once again.

Contender, an adult male white shark, was tagged by OCEARCH in January, off the Florida/Georgia coastline. 

At a whopping 1653 pounds and 13 feet long, Contender is estimated to be about 32 years old, according to OCEARCH. 

OCEARCH is a global nonprofit that tracks some of the ocean’s giants and marine ecosystems in order to collect essential data to better understand these species and the ocean.

Since January, Contender has been pinged migrating from Florida up the East Coast into Canada.

Now, he’s beginning his trek back down the coast. 

For a ping to register, Contender’s dorsal fin must break water and an Argos satellite must be nearby to record the shark’s location. 

From April to mid-June, Contender was pinged hanging out off the coast of the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

At one point in June, he was pinged roughly 22 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras.

He continued migrating north in July and was pinged again in mid-July off the coast of Massachusetts, according to OCEARCH data.

After several months of no pings from Contender, the next time his location was tracked was in late September, south of Pointe-Parent in the province of Quebec. 

From Oct. 27-29, he was pinged multiple times, moving south from Canada back down toward the US for the fall migration season. 

Nearly two weeks later, on Tuesday, he was pinged several miles off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

“Each ping adds another clue to the puzzle of white shark migration in the Western North Atlantic—and our team is tracking every move,” OCEARCH said. 

The white shark is most likely on the move back down to Florida where waters are warmer and there are more food sources, but well have to see where he shows up next.

Contender and other sharks and sea animals like him can be tracked in real-time using the free OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker app.