Rare great white shark was swimming off the Mississippi Coast. See where it pinged
Seasonal migration has brought a visitor to the waters south of the Mississippi Coast: Say hello to Keji, a 9-foot-7, 578-pound, juvenile great white shark.
OCEARCH, a nonprofit organization devoted to tracking the ocean’s sharks, has tagged hundreds of the predators across more than 40 expeditions. Keji is currently the only tagged shark registering south of the Mississippi Coast.
Keji was originally caught and tagged on Sept. 22, 2021, in the waters off Ironbound Island in Nova Scotia. His travels have taken him up and down the Atlantic seaboard and now into the Gulf of Mexico. Keji pinged south of Pascagoula on Monday, one day after a ping registered to the south of Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
White sharks make “predictable annual migrations” from Newfoundland into the Gulf of Mexico starting in the fall, OCEARCH research has revealed.
Keji pinged in yesterday on the edge of the Mississippi River Delta, a region where the river empties into the #GulfofMexico. This is the US’ largest drainage basin & contains large quantities of sediment, creating a physical divider between the W & E parts of the northern Gulf pic.twitter.com/GRjyRKwCJU
— OCEARCH (@OCEARCH) January 9, 2024
According to OCEARCH, Keji has traveled 174 miles in the past three days and nearly 12,000 miles since he was first tagged.
OCEARCH said it named Keji after the Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site, which is located in the region near where the group was able to sample, tag, and release him.
