A great white shark has been spotted off Florida’s Gulf Coast. Where it’s been so far
Red tide isn’t the only thing being tracked off the beach. A great white shark has been spotted off Southwest Florida in Gulf waters.
Keji, a juvenile great white shark, has spent 2023 in the Gulf of Mexico, according to OCEARCH’s tracker. The location of the nine-foot-seven-inch, 578-pound male shark pinged off Longboat Key in late February.
However, a z-ping for Keji occurred Thursday. OCEARCH scientists determine a ping when the shark breaks the surface of the water and a z-ping is a ping with no location data.
The organization first tagged Keji in 2021 near Nova Scotia, Canada. Since then, Keji has migrated down the East Coast of the United States, circling the Florida Keys and reaching as far north as the waters off the Florida Panhandle.
OCEARCH, a global nonprofit shark tracker, named the shark after Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site, located in southwest Nova Scotia.
He’s the ninth shark the organization sampled, tagged and released during their Nova Scotia expedition and became the 82nd shark of their Northwest Atlantic White Shark study.
Two other white sharks on OCEARCH’s tracker have pinged off the Florida Gulf Coast this winter. Maple, a 1,200-pound sub-adult female last pinged near the Panhandle, while Rose, a 600-pound juvenile female, recently pinged in Southwest Florida off Sanibel Island.
