Two huge great white sharks known as Mahone and Ironbound are gathering off the Carolinas.
The gigantic great whites were tracked in the area by Ocearch—an organization that tags sharks to learn more about their behavior. Tagged Ocearch sharks "ping" on the tracker when they move up near the surface of the water.
Mahone is 14 feet long and weighs 1,701 pounds. The great white was fitted with a tracker by Ocearch in 2020 and has been tracked swimming roughly 42 miles off the coast of North Carolina on December 4.
It's not the only great white lurking in the area. Ironbound, a great white shark that weighs 1,000 pounds, was also tracked swimming along the North Carolina coast on December 1.
Mahone and Ironbound belong to a great white shark population that lives along the east coast of the U.S. and Canada. The population makes an annual migration, spending summers in northern waters and winters in the south.
The two sharks are off North Carolina on their way down south for the winter months. Scientists believe the waters are an important area for their life cycle. Many great white sharks stop off by North Carolina on their way north for summer. Scientists believe they head here for their mating season.
Great white sharks are a solitary species, meaning they do not travel with others or follow each other. They are also elusive, and some of their behaviors remain somewhat of a mystery to scientists. However, they do know sharks make this migration in order to follow food sources.
But not all great white sharks stick to the migration route. Breton, a shark that is 13-feet long and weighs 1,400 pounds, was tracked far into the North Atlantic Ocean on November 27. Before this, Breton had been off the coast of Newfoundland.
Gavin Naylor, director at the Florida Program for Shark Research, told Newsweek: "While many white sharks head south this time of year, not all do. Patterns of movement in these animals show a lot of individual variation.
"In the same vein, while the majority of black-tip sharks move north from South Florida to the Carolinas every spring, not all do. Some stick around in South Florida for the entire summer."
Breton was tagged by Ocearch off Nova Scotia in 2020 and was named after the area where he was captured: Cape Breton.
It is not the first time Breton has strayed from the migration route. In July, Ocearch tracked him lurking in the waters off the Florida coast. At this time, most great white sharks were spending the summer in the north.
Naylor told Newsweek at the time that it is "not unusual" for great white sharks to be in Florida then, however they "don't see a lot of them."
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Huge Great White Sharks Mahone and Ironbound Gather off Carolinas - Newsweek
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