New data suggests there are a load of large great white sharks - including one that is 15 feet long and weighs 600kg - hanging out off the Carolina coast on the Eastern Seaboard of the USA.
While this isn't exactly unusual, it is interesting because 10 of the sharks have emerged in the last few weeks, according to data collected through tags attached to them.
Advert
They're not unfamiliar sharks, you see.
Researchers from a marine wildlife science data company called Ocearch have managed to attach GPS trackers to a number of sharks. Those tags 'ping' each time the shark comes up to near the surface.
The Carolina coast down to Florida on America's south east is known as 'a winter hot spot for large great white sharks'.
When they say large, they're not messing about, either.
One of the sharks that they captured - let's not forget that they tag these animals by hand - is just under 15ft long (that's 4.5 metres) and weighs in at around 600kg. That's more than half a tonne.
It's bloody massive, in short.
Ocearch's founder Chris Fischer explained that the area near Cape Hatteras, a group of scattered islands into the Atlantic Ocean off North Carolina, is a 'staging area for migration' for the sharks.
The last ping they had was this Monday, from a male shark called Brunswick that's nearly nine feet long.
That particular shark illustrates well the distances these apex predators actually travel.
In the past 10 months, Brunswick has been on a journey of more than 6,000 miles. He's been up past Nova Scotia in Canada's north, then returned back down to South Carolina for the winter.
The big boy that we've been speaking about is called Murdoch.
Murdoch was only tagged earlier this year, so we haven't been able to discover how far he's travelled or to where for very long.
The scientists tagged him off Nova Scotia on 16 September and since then he's managed to make the 1,800 mile journey down from Canada to pop up near Carolina Beach and Wilmington on 29 November.
As mentioned before, each of these creatures must be tagged by hand. That means that after they've been shepherded onto a submersible platform, someone else has got to get up close and personal with them to apply the tag.
That person was ship captain Brett McBride.
Speaking about a 12-foot shark Ocearch tagged last weekend, Fischer explained: "Our Fishing Master Captain Brett McBride said that it was one of the toughest sharks he has seen, especially considering its size.
"At 12 foot, 4 inches and right about 1,000 pounds, [it] fought like some of the much bigger sharks we've encountered in places like Guadalupe Island, Mexico and South Africa that were 15 feet long or more."
Well, it's important research, and sharks are f***ing cool. Keep doing what you're doing, guys.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Interesting, US News, Weird, Animals