Great white shark Jekyll on the move off Jersey Shore, migrates by LBI

Dan Radel, Asbury Park Press
·2 min read
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A great white shark nicknamed Jekyll "pinged" off the New Jersey coast late Wednesday night, making it the first OCEARCH-tagged great white to come inshore here during the apex predator's migration south.

There have been at least two other OCEARCH-tagged sharks to migrate down the coast, but neither came inshore of the submarine canyons, which start about 90 miles east of the shore line.

Jekyll is a male juvenile great white shark that weighed almost 400 pounds and measured over eight feet when it was tagged last year while swimming in the waters off Jekyll Island, Georgia, one of the Sea Islands. Researchers named the shark after the island.

Jekyll was about 40 to 50 miles east of Long Beach Island when his dorsal fin came out of the water long enough for his spot tag to be picked up by satellite, in what is called a "ping."

Jekyll, pictured, is a juvenile great white shark that was tagged by OCEARCH, a nonprofit research group. The shark is seen here during the tagging when it was captured off the coast of Jekyll Island, Georgia, on Dec. 9, 2022.
Jekyll, pictured, is a juvenile great white shark that was tagged by OCEARCH, a nonprofit research group. The shark is seen here during the tagging when it was captured off the coast of Jekyll Island, Georgia, on Dec. 9, 2022.

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Every fall many of the great white sharks that OCEARCH has tagged on the East Coast, follow similar routes from New England and Canadian waters to the southeast coast of the U.S. where they typically spend the winter.

OCEARCH, a nonprofit research group, has been tagging white sharks in the Atlantic Ocean for over a decade in order to collect data on the lifecycle of one of the ocean's apex predators.

See Nukumi, the biggest great white shark OCEARCH has ever tagged, in the video at the top this story.

Along with tagging the sharks, OCEARCH takes biological samples, such as blood and tissue, from the sharks before releasing them into the wild. The group says it uses that data to understand things such as genetics, infections in sharks and develop antibiotics for a shark bite.

Jekyll was tagged Dec. 9, 2022, and since then has swam almost 6,000 miles. The shark went as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada this summer. The shark appears to have begun to turn south in September, according to Ocearch's Global Shark Tracker app, which tracks the movements of the sharks up and down the coast.

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The shark gained some notoriety during its spring migration as it appeared to pair up with another tagged shark Simon on their trek to the gulf. OCEARCH is testing their blood samples to see if the two are related. However, Simon's location is not presently known. The shark's last "ping" was Aug. 10, while it was still in the Gulf.

Simon is also a juvenile male in similar length and weight when it too was tagged off the Georgia coast on Dec. 4, 2022. Simon was captured briefly by OCEARCH in the waters around St. Simon's Island.

When Jersey Shore native Dan Radel is not reporting the news, you can find him in a college classroom where he is a history professor. Reach him @danielradelapp; 732-643-4072; dradel@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Great white shark reaches LBI NJ during fall migration