Great white sharks are the snowbirds of the shark world. They swim south when the water gets too cold and food sources get scarce up north.
USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida
A 9-foot 7-inch great white shark, tagged by the research group OCEARCH, was tracked off Southwest Florida’s coast for the second time this month.
The shark, nicknamed Keji, pinged off Marco Island, near the edge of the West Florida Escarpment, on Friday at 8:01 p.m. Keji previously pinged in the same area on Feb. 4.
The West Florida Escarpment is a 560-mile-long cliff in the Gulf of Mexico where the seafloor plunges from just over 300 feet to nearly 10,000 feet deep. It sits 155-215 miles off the coast.
OCEARCH attaches satellite tags to sharks’ dorsal fins. When a tag breaks the surface of the water it emits a ping that transmits location information to the OCEARCH tracker.
Keji has been hanging around the Sunshine State since November. His tracked pings show him near the Florida Keys on Dec. 13, and southeast of St. Augustine on Nov. 30. He also swam all the way to the Panhandle in early 2023 and wintered around Florida in 2021 and 2022.