Two great white sharks , including a massive 13-foot, 1,300-pound specimen named Bob , were tracked off Jacksonville’s coast in the past week.
Bob was outfitted with a satellite tag by research group OCEARCH scientists in 2021 during an expedition in Nova Scotia. The tag, placed on his dorsal fin, broke the surface of the water and transmitted his location in the waters off Jacksonville to trackers at 9:25 a.m. on Jan. 31.
The large ocean predator has traveled 4,021 miles since he was tagged and has made several visits to the Sunshine State. He swam as far south as St. Augustine in Nov. 2021 and Flagler Beach in 2022.
A smaller, 8-foot 8-inch OCEARCH -tagged white shark named Jekyll pinged near the same location at 5:34 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 4.
Jekyll surprised scientists when they discovered he’d been traveling for 4,000 miles alongside a 9-foot white shark named Simon . White sharks were previously thought to prefer only their own company.
But it looks like they may have parted ways. Simon’s tracker shows him pinging off Marco Island on Feb. 4. Jekyll pinged off South Carolina less than a day before Simon was tracked off Florida’s Treasure Coast on Jan. 20.