A 1,000-Pound Great White Shark Was Spotted Off The East Coast & It Just Changed Course
Ironbound is on the move 🦈
A shark fin in water. Right: Ironbound the great white shark.
One of the largest known great white sharks in the world was just spotted off the coast of the eastern U.S., and people on the Jersey Shore are feeling pretty nervous about it.
The roughly 12-foot-long, 1,000-pound predator is known as Ironbound, and he’s becoming a legend in the waters off the East Coast of the U.S. and Canada.
A non-profit called OCEARCH first tagged and named Ironbound in October 2019, and since then, his migration patterns have taken him as far south as the Florida Keys and as far north as Halifax and the Bay of Fundy in the years since.
And when a 1,000-pound shark is swimming in your waters, you definitely notice.
Ironbound pinged in the waters off the Jersey Shore on April 28, and the sighting immediately made headlines as the shark seemed to be moving north toward Canada.
But the shark's tracker pinged again on Monday night, and this time it appeared to be heading south, off the coast of North Carolina.
However, that shift south might be temporary, as this is the time of year when great whites typically head to northern waters near Canada to chill in the summer.
"Ironbound is no exception," Bob Hueter, chief scientist at OCEARCH, told CNN.
"Mating season is over, we think, and Ironbound is on his way north to get into some good feeding ground and bulk up again for the next year."
Yes, you read that right: the 1,000-pound shark is looking to get even more swole this summer.
As Hueter pointed out, it's a very busy time for sharks — and humans are being told to watch out.
In Florida, for example, the Pasco County Sheriff's Office recently released footage of dozens of sharks swimming in a sandbar off the state's coast, reminding people to be careful in the water.
"Be cautious of your surroundings," they wrote on Facebook. "It's important to be aware of the dangers below the water as well as above."
Although sharks often get a bad rap thanks to movies like Jaws and Sharknado, they rarely attack humans — and they never show up in tornadoes.
There were a total of 73 unprovoked shark attacks globally in 2021, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File, which tracks reports each year. The ISAF recorded nine deaths from shark attacks last year, with only one of them occurring in the United States.