The First Great White Shark Of The Year Has Made It To Canada & He's Almost 1,000 Pounds

An absolutely massive great white shark has finally made his way to Canada and he's the first one to arrive for the summer season!

Ironbound, an adult white shark who measures 12 feet 4 inches and 998 pounds, is now swimming around Canadian waters just south of the southwestern part of Nova Scotia.

"This mature male white shark provides a great example of site fidelity, returning to the same region in Nova Scotia year after year," shark research organization OCEARCH said in a tweet on May 26.

At the beginning of May, he started to make the journey north along the U.S. east coast and he was called "the leader of the pack" for leaving earlier than all of the other sharks.

Usually, the animals start to leave southern waters from mid to late May and then arrive in northern waters at the beginning of June so Ironbound really got a jump on the trip.

Great white sharks congregate in Atlantic Canada during the summer and fall months before heading back down south for the winter.

That's because the waters in the region are a "feeding aggregation" for the animals, according to OCEARCH.

Ironbound was first tagged by OCEARCH in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia back in 2019. He's named after West Ironbound Island which is near Lunenburg.

Since then he has been swimming from Nova Scotia, down the U.S. east coast, around Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and then back to Nova Scotia again every year.

He typically stays pretty close to the coastline but he has ventured out into deeper waters a few times.

Another great white shark named Mahone has been "hanging offshore" near Newfoundland recently and he's been slowly getting closer to Nova Scotia.

While Ironbound tends to swim near the coast, Mahone moved away from the U.S. east coast in April and started swimming north further out in the Atlantic Ocean.

His tag last pinged on May 26 at 8:57 p.m. southeast of Nova Scotia's Sable Island.

If you want to watch where these sharks swim around Atlantic Canada, OCEARCH has an online great white shark tracker that you can use!