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There’s that standard list of creatures that you can pretty much guarantee people will be scared of at least one of. I’m talking spiders, snakes, rats, and, of course, sharks.
And while even the smaller sharks can be fairly creepy, it tends to be that the bigger the shark, the scarier it is.
So prepare for fear levels to be heightened as the ‘biggest great white shark’ ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean has been discovered off the US coast.
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Named ‘Contender’, the ‘powerful’ male shark is tipped as the ‘ultimate ocean warrior’. I know right, sounds like he’s about to take part in Gladiators, doesn’t he?
Global shark tracker, OCEARCH, had a first ping of Contender on 17 January off the coast of the Florida-Georgia border. And it then pinged again on Monday this week further south down the coast of Florida.
The absolute whopper measures in at 13.8 feet long and is estimated to weigh a hefty 749.79 kg.
OCEARCH say having an ‘SPOT’ tag deployed on Contender ‘will provide valuable real-time data for approximately five years’ and help to track his movements and understand his migration patterns.
It’s added that ‘important biological samples’ have also been collected, including ‘urogenital material’ which are now being analysed.
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The shark tracker explained that the shark has been named in honour of Contender Boats, a long-time partner of OCEARCH, who provide boats for its research missions.
It also shared a video to Facebook as it caught Contender to track it. The caption reads: “Contender is the largest male white shark ever caught, SPOT tagged, released and now studied in the NW Atlantic white shark population!”
With the shark travelling 292 miles in 25 days, some users took issue with the shark being caught as it has been explained to be due to research purposes.
The largest preserved female great white shark measured in at 19.1 feet in length and around 2,000 kg in weight.
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Typically though, the males tend to measure in at about 11 to 13 feet and females 15 to 16 feet. A 2014 study found that the lifespan of these whoppers of the sea is estimated to be about 70 years or even longer. So this Contender could be knocking about in the waters for quite some time at its mega length and weight.
Comments on the Facebook video called the shark ‘beautiful’ and an ‘amazing creature’.
Jess Battison